University of California • Berkeley Gift of Mrs. T. K. V/hipple ON TRANSLATING HOMER LONDON PBINTED EX SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STBEET SQUAEE ON TRANSLATING HOMER LAST WORDS A LECTUEE GIVEN AT OXFORD BT MATTHEW AENOLD, M.A. PBOPESSOB OF POEIEX IN THE UNITERSIXr OF OXFOED, AND rOKMEBLT FELLOW OF OEIEL COLLEGE LONDON LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS 1SG2 MuUi, qui persequuntur me, ct tribulant me: a icslimoniis non declinavi. ON TEANSLATING HOMER: LAST WORDS. BuFFOX, the great French naturalist, imposed on himself the rule of steadily abstaining from all answer to attacks made upon him. ' Je n'ai jamais repondu a aucune critique,' he said to one of his friends who, on the occasion of a certain criticism, was eager to take up arms in his behalf; 'je n'ai jamais repondu a aucune critique, et je garderai le meme silence sur celle-ci.' On another occasion, when accused of plagiarism, and pressed by his friends to answer, * II vaut mieux,' he said, ' laisser ces mau- vaises gens dans I'incertitude.' Even when reply to an attack was made successfully, he disapproved of it, he regretted that those he esteemed should make it. Montesquieu, more sensitive to criticism than Bufifon, had answered, and successfully answered, an attack made upon his great work, the Esprit des Lois, by the Gazetier Janseniste. This Jansenist Gazetteer was a periodical of those times, — a periodical such as other times, also, have occasionally seen, — very pre- tentious, very aggressive, and, when the point to be seized was at all a delicate one, very apt to miss it. B 2 Olf TEAIfSLATIN'G HOMER: * Notwithstanding this example,' said Buffon, — who, as well as Montesquieu, had been attacked by the Jansenist Gazetteer, — ' notwithstanding this example, I think I may promise my course will be different. I shall not answer a single word.' And to any one who has noticed the baneful effects of controversy, with all its train of personal rivalries and hatreds, on men of letters or men of science ; to any one who has observed how it tends to impair, not only their dignity and repose, but their productive force, their genuine activity ; how it always checks the free play of the spirit, and often ends by stopping it altogether ; it can hardly seem doubtful, that the rule thus imposed on himself by Buffon was a wise one. His own career, indeed, admirably shows the wisdom of it. That career was as glorious as it was serene ; but it owed to its serenity no small part of its glory. The regularity and completeness with which he gradually built up the great work which he had designed, the air of equable majesty which he shed over it, struck powerfully the imagination of his contemporaries, and surrounded Buffon's fame with a peculiar respect and dignity. * He is,' said Frederick the Great of him, * the man who has best deserved the great celebrity which he has acquired.' And this regularity of production, this equableness of temper, he maintained by his resolute disdain of personal controversy. Buffon's example seems to me worthy of all imita- LAST WORDS. 3 tion, and in my humble way I mean always to follow it. I never have replied, I never will reply, to any literary assailant; in such encoimters tempers are lost, the world laughs, and truth is not served. Least of all should I think of using this Chair as a place from which to carry on such a conflict. But when a learned and estimable man thinks he has reason to complain of language used by me in this Chair, — when he attributes to me intentions and feelincfs to- wards him which are far from my heart, I owe him some explanation, — and I am bound, too, to make the explanation as public as the words which gave offence. This is the reason why I revert once more to the subject of translating Homer. But being thus brought back to that subject, and not wishing to occupy you solely with an explanation which, after all, is Mr. Newman's affair and mine, not the public's, I shall take the opportunity, — not certainly to enter into any conflict with any one, — but to try to establish our old friend, the coming translator of Homer, yet a little firmer in the positions which I hope we have now secured for him; to protect him against the danger of relaxing, in the confusion of dispute, his attention to those matters which alone I consider important for him ; to save him from losing sight, in the dust of the attacks delivered over it, of the real body of Patroclus. He will probably, when he arrives, requite my solicitude very ill, and be in haste to disown his benefactor ; but my interest in B 2 4 ON TRANSLATING HOMER: him is so sincere that I can disregard his probable ingratitude. First, however, for the explanation. Mr. Newman has published a reply to the remarks which I made on his translation of the Iliad. He seems to think that the respect which at the outset of those remarks I professed for him must have been professed ironi- cally ; he says that I use ' forms of attack against him which he does not know how to characterise ; ' that I * speak scornfully ' of him, treat him with ' gratuitous insult, gratuitous rancour ; ' that I ' propagate slan- ders ' against him, that I wish to ' damage him with my readers,' to * stimulate my readers to despise' him. He is entirely mistaken. I respect Mr. New- man sincerely ; I respect him as one of the few learned men we have, one of the few who love learn- ing for its own sake ; this respect for him I had before I read his translation of the Iliad, I retained it while I was commenting on that translation, I have not lost it after reading his reply. Any vivacities of expression which may have given him pain I sincerely regret, and can only assure him that I used them without a thought of insult or rancour. "When I took the liberty of creating the verb to Neiumanise, my intentions were no more rancorous than if I had said to Miltonise ; when I exclaimed, in my astonish- ment at his vocabulary, — ' With whom can Mr. New- man have lived?' — I meant merely to convey, in a familiar form of speech, the sense of bewilderment LAST WORDS. 5 one has at finding a person to whom words one thought all the world knew seem strange, and words one thought entirely strange, intelligible. Yet this simple expression of my bewilderment Mr. Newman construes into an accusation that he is * often guilty of keeping low compan}^,' and says that I shall ' never want a stone to throw at him.' And what is stranger still, one of his friends gravely tells me that Mr. Newman ' lived with the fellows of Bal- liol.' As if that made Mr. Newman's glossary less inexplicable to me ! As if he could have got his glossary from the fellows of Balliol ! As if I could believe, that the members of that distinguished so- ciety, — of whose discourse, not so many years after- wards, I myself was an unworthy hearer, — were in Mr. Newman's time so far removed from the Attic purity of speech which we all of us admired, that when one of them called a calf a bidkin, the rest * easily understood ' him ; or, when he wanted to say that a newspaper-article was ^proudl}^ fine,' it mattered little whether he said it was that or bragly ! No ; his having lived with the fellows of Balliol does not explain jNIr. Newman's glossary to me. I will no longer ask ' with whom he can have lived,' since that gives him offence ; but I must still declare that where he got his test of rarity or intelligibility for words is a mystery to me. That, however, does not prevent me from enter- taining a very sincere respect for Mr. Newman B 3 6 ON TEAIs'SLATING HOMER: and since he doubts it, I am glad to reiterate my expression of it. But the truth of the matter is this: I unfeignedly admire Mr. Newman's ability and learning; but I think in his translation of Homer he has employed that ability and learning quite amiss. I think he has chosen quite the wrong field for turning his ability and learning to account. I think that in England, partly from the want of an Academy, partly from a national habit of intel- lect to which that want of an Academy is itself due, there exists too little of what I may call a public force of correct literary opinion, possessing within certain limits a clear sense of what is right and wrong, sound and unsound, and sharply recalling men of ability and learning from any flagrant mis- direction of these then- advantages. I think, even, that in our country a powerful misdirection of this kind is often more likely to subjugate and pervert opinion, than to be checked and corrected by it.* Hence a chaos of false tendencies, wasted efforts, impotent conclusions, works which ought never to have been undertaken. Any one who can introduce a little * < ' It is the fact, that scholars of fastidious refinement, but of a judgment which I think far more masculine than Mr. Arnold's, have passed a most encouragiug sentence on large specimens of my translation. I at present count eight such names.' — 'Before ven- tm-ing to print, I sought to ascertain how unlearned women and children would accept my verses. I coidd boast how children and half-educated women have extolled them, how greedily a workiaw man has inquired for them, without knowing who was the trans- lator.'— Mr. Newman's Bcjyly, pp. 2, 12, 13. LAST TTOKDS. 7 order into this chaos by establishing in any quarter a single sound rule of criticism, a single rule which clearly marks what is right as right, and what is wrong as wrong, does a good deed ; and his deed is so much the better the greater force he counteracts of learning and ability applied to thicken the chaos. Of course no one can be sure that he has fixed any such rules ; he can only do his best to fix them ; but somewhere or other, in the literary opinion of Europe, if not in the literary opinion of one nation, in fifty years, if not in five, there is a final judg- ment on these matters, and the critic's work -will at last stand or fall by its true merits. Meanwhile, the charge of having in one instance misapplied his powers, of having once followed a false tendency, is no such grievous charge to bring against a man ; it does not exclude a great respect for himself personally, or for his powers in the happier manifestation of them. False tendency is, I have said, an evil to which the artist or the man of letters in England is peculiarly prone ; but every- where in our time he is liable to it, — the greatest as well as the humblest. 'The first beginnings of my Wilhelm Meister,' says Groethe, ' arose out of an obscure sense of the great truth that man will often attempt something for which nature has denied him the proper powers, vnll vmdertake and practise somethincf in which he cannot become skilled. An inward feeling warns him to desist' (yes, but there B 4 8 OX TRAI\'SLATING HOMEE : are, unhappily, cases of absolute judicial blindness !), * nevertheless he cannot get clear in himself about it, and is driven along a false road to a false goal, without knowing how it is with him. To this we may refer everything which goes by the name of false tendency, dilettantism, and so on. A great many men waste in this way the fairest portion of their lives, and fall at last into wonderful delusion.' Yet after all, — Goethe adds, — it sometimes happens that even on this false road a man finds, not indeed that which he sought, but something which is good and useful for him ; ' like Saul, the son of Kish, who went forth to look for his father's asses, and found a kingdom.' And thus false tendency as well as true, vain effort as well as fruitful, go together to produce that great movement of life, to present that immense and magic spectacle of human affairs, which from boyhood to old age fascinates the gaze of every man of imagination, and which would be his terror, if it were not at the same time his delight. So Mr. Newman may see how wide-spread a danger it is, to which he has, as I think, in setting himself to translate Homer, fallen a prey. He may be well satisfied if he can escape from it by paying it the tribute of a single work only. He may judge how unlikely it is that I should ' despise ' him for once falling a prey to it. I know far too well how exposed to it we all are ; how exposed to it I myself am. At this very moment, for example, I MST WORDS. 9 am fresh from reading ]\lr. Newman's reply to my lectures; a reply full of that erudition in which (as I am so often and so good-naturedly reminded, but indeed I know it without being reminded), Mr. Newman is immeasurably my superior. Well, the demon that pushes us all to our ruin is even now prompting me to follow Mr. Newman into a dis- cussion about the digamma, and I know not what providence holds me back. And some day, I have no doubt, I shall lecture on the lano-uage of the Berbers, and give him his entire revenge. But Mr. Newman does not confine himself to complaints on his own behalf, he complains on Homer's behalf too. He says that my * statements about Greek literature are against the most notorious and elementary fact ' ; that I ' do a public wrong to literature by publishing them;' and that the Pro- fessors to whom I appealed in my three Lectures, ' would only lose credit if they sanctioned the use I make of their names.' He does these eminent men the kindness of adding, however, that 'whether they are pleased with this parading of their names in behalf of paradoxical error, he may well doubt,' and that ' until they endorse it themselves, he shall treat my process as a piece of forgery.' He proceeds to discuss my statements at great length, and with an erudition and ingenuity which nobody can admire more than I do. And he ends by saying that my ignorance is great. 10 ON TEANSLATING HOMER: Alas ! that is very true. Much as Mr. Newman was mistaken when he talked of my rancour, he is entirely right when he talks of my ignorance. And yet, perverse as it seems to say so, I sometimes find myself mshiug, when dealing -with these matters of poetical criticism, that my ignorance were even greater than it is. To handle these matters pro- perly there is needed a poise so perfect, that the least overweight in any direction tends to destroy the balance. Temper destroys it, a crotchet destroys it, even erudition may destroy it. To press to the sense of the thing itself with which one is dealing, not to go off on some collateral issue about the thing, is the hardest matter in the world. The ^thincf itself with which one is here dealing, — the critical perception of poetic truth, — is of all things the most volatile, elusive, and evanescent; by even pressing too impetuously after it, one runs the risk of losing it. The critic of poetry should have the finest tact, the nicest moderation, the most free, flexible, and elastic spirit imaginable ; he should be indeed the ' ondoyant et divers,' the undulating and diverse being of Montaigne. The less he can deal with his object simply and freely, the more things he has to take into account in dealing with it, — the more, in short, he has to encumber himself, — so much the greater force of spirit he needs to retain his elasticity. But one cannot exactly have this greater force by wishing for it ; so, for the force of spirit one has, the LAST WORDS. 11 load put upon it is often heavier than it mil well bear. The late Duke of Wellington said of a certain peer that * it was a great pity his education had been so far too much for his abilities.' In like manner, one often sees erudition out of all proportion to its owner's critical faculty. Little as I know, therefore, I am always apprehensive, in dealing with poetry, lest even that little should prove * too much for my abilities.' - With this consciousness of my own lack of learn- ing, — nay, with this sort of acquiescence in it, with this belief that for the labourer in the field of poetical criticism learning has its disadvantages, — I am not likely to dispute with Mr. Newman about matters of erudition. All that he says on these matters in his Eeply I read with great interest : in general I agree with him ; but only, I am sorry to say, up to a certain point. Like all learned men, accustomed to desire definite rules, he draws his conclusions too absolutely ; he wants to include too much under his rules; he does not quite perceive that in poetical criticism the shade, the fine dis- tinction, is everything ; and that, when he has once missed this, in all he says he is in truth but beatincf the air. For instance: because I think Homer noble, he imagines I -must think him ele- gant ; and in fact he says in plain words that I do think him so, — that to me Homer seems ' per- vadingly elegant.' But he does not. Virgil is ele- 12 OX TEANSLATIXG HOMER: gant, — 'pervadingly elegant,' — even in passages of the highest emotion : 0, uti campi, SperelieOsque, et virginibus bacchata Lacsenis Taygeta ! * Even there Virgil, though of a divine elegance, is still elegant : but Homer is not elegant ; the word is quite a wrong one to apply to him, and Mr. Newman is quite right in blaming any one he finds so applying it. Again; arguing against my asser- tion that Homer is not quaint, he says : * It is quaint to call waves luet, milk ivMte, blood dusky, horses single-Jwofed, words ivinged, Vulcan Lobfoot (KwAXoTroS/wv), a spear longshadoivy,^ and so on. I find I know not how many distinctions to draw here. I do not think it quaint to call waves luef, or milk white, or words winged; but I do think it quaint to call horses single-hoofed, or Vulcan Lobfoot, or a spear longshadoivy. As to calling blood dushj, I do not feel quite sure ; I will tell Mr. Newman my opinion when I see the passage in which he calls it so. But then, again, because it is quaint to call Vulcan Lob- foot, I cannot admit that it was quaint to call him KuXXoTToSi'wv ; nor that, because it is quaint to call a spear longshadoivy, it was quaint to call it loKi^oa-Kiov. Here Mr. Newman's erudition misleads him : he * * Oh for tlie fields of Thessaly and the streams of Spercheios ! Oh for the hills alive with the dances of the Laconian maidens, the hills of Taygetus!' — Gcorgics, ii. 486. LAST WORDS. 13 knows the literal value of the Greek so well, that he thinks his literal rendering identical with the Greek, and that the Greek must stand or fall along with his rendering. But the real question is, not whether he has given us, so to speak, full change for the Greek, but hoiv he gives us our change : we want it in gold, and he gives it us in copper. Again : * It is quaint,' says Mr. Ne-svman, 'to address a young friend as "0 Pippin!" — it is quaint to compare Ajax to an ass whom boys are belabouring.' Here, too, INIr. Newman goes much too fast, and his category of quaintness is too comprehensive. To address a young friend as ' Pippin I ' is, I cordially agree with him, very quaint; although I do not think it was quaint in Sarpedon to address Glaucus as co TreVov : but in comparing, whether in Greek or in English, Ajax to an ass whom boys are belabouring, I do not see that there is of necessity anything quaint at all. Again ; because I said that eld, lief, in sooth, and other words, are, as Mr. Newman uses them in certain places, bad words, he imagines that I must mean to stamp these words with an absolute reprobation ; and because I said that * my Bibliolatry is excessive,' he imagines that I brand all words as icrnoble which are not in the Bible. Nothing of the kind: there are no such absolute rules to be laid down in these matters. The Bible vocabulary is to be used as an assistance, not as an authority. Of the words which, placed where Mr. Newman places 14 ON TKANSLATIXG HOMER: them, I have called bad words, every one may be excellent in some other place. Take e?c?, for in- stance : when Shakspeare, reproaching man with the dependence in which his youth is passed, says : all thy blessed youtli Becomes as aged, and dotli beg the alms Of palsied eld . . . it seems to me that eld comes in excellently there, in a passage of curious meditation ; but when Mr. Newman renders uy-qpco r aSavccTca tb by ' from Eld and Death exempted,' it seems to me he infuses a tinge of quaintness into the transparent simplicity of Homer's expression, and so I call eld a bad word in that place. Once more. Mr. Newman lays it down as a general rule that 'many of Homer's energetic descriptions are expressed in coarse physical words.' He goes on: 'I give one illustration — T^coej irpourv- ■^av aoXXsss. Cowper, misled by the ignis fatuus of " stateliness," renders it absurdly : The powers of Ilium gave the first assault Embattled close ; but it is, strictly, " The Trojans knocked foriuard (or, thumped, butted forward) in close pack.''^ The verb is too coarse for later polished prose, and even the adjective is very strong (packed together). I believe, that " forward in pack the Trojans pitch'd," would not be really unfaithful to the Homeric I\ST WORDS. 15 colour ; and I maintain, that " forAvarcl in mass the Trojans pitch'd," would be an irreprovable render- ing.' He actually gives us all that as if it were a piece of scientific deduction ; and as if, at the end, he had arrived at an incontrovertible conclusion. But, in truth, one cannot settle these matters quite in this way. Mr. Newman's general ride may be true or false (I dislike to meddle with general rules), but every part in what follows must stand or fall by itself, and its soundness or unsoundness has nothing at all to do with the truth or falsehood of Mr. Newman's general rule. He first gives, as a strict rendering of the Greek, * The Trojans knocked forward (or, thumped, butted forward), in close pack.' I need not say that, as a * strict rendering of the G-reek,' this is good, — all Mr. Newman's * strict renderings of the Greek' are sure to be, as such, good; but *in close pack,' for uoKkUs, seems to me to be what Mr. Newman's renderings are not always, — an excellent 'poetical rendering of the Greek ; a thousand times better, certainl}", than Cowper's ' embattled close.' Well, but Mr. New- man goes on : * I believe, that " forward in pack the Trojans pitch'd," would not be really unfaithful to the Homeric colour.' Here, I say, the Homeric colour is half washed out of Mr. Newman's happy rendering of uoKXhs; while in *pitch'd' for 7rpouTy4/ay, the hteral fidelity of the first rendering is gone, while certainly no Homeric colour has come in its 16 OX TRANSLATING HOMER: place. Finally, Mr. Newman concludes : ' I main- tain that "forward in mass the Trojans pitch'd," would be an irreprovable rendering.' Here, in what Mr. Newman fancies his final moment of triumph, Homeric colour and literal fidelity have alike aban- doned him altogether ; the last stage of his transla- tion is much worse than the second, and immeasur- ably worse than the first. All this to show that a looser, easier method than Mr. Newman's must be taken, if we are to arrive at any good result in these questions. I now go on to follow Mr. Newman a little further, not at all as wishing to dispute with him, but as seeking (and this is the true fruit we may gather from criticisms upon us) to gain hints from him for the establish- ment of some useful truth about our subject, even when I think him wrong. I still retain, I confess, my conviction that Homer's characteristic qualities are rapidity of movement, plainness of words and style, simplicity and directness of ideas, and, above all, nobleness, the grand manner. Whenever Mr. Newman drops a word, awakens a train of thought, which leads me to see any of these characteristics more clearly, I am grateful to him ; and one or two suggestions of this kind which he affords, are all that now, — having expressed my sorrow that he should have misconceived my feelings towards him, and pointed out what I think the vice of his method of criticism, — I have to notice in his Reply. LAST AVORDS. 17 Such a suggestion I find in Mr. Newman's remarks on my assertion that the trauskitor of Homer must not adopt a quaint and antiquated style in rendering him, because the impression Avhich Homer makes upon the living scholar is not that of a poet quaint and antiquated, hut that of a poet perfectly simple, perfectly intelligible. I added that we cannot, I confess, really know how Homer seemed to Sophocles, but that it is impossible to me to believe that he seemed to him quaint and anti- quated. Mr. NeAvman asserts, on the other hand, that I am absurdly wrong here ; that Homer seemed ' out and out' quaint and antiquated to the Athenians ; that ' every sentence of him was more or less antiquated to Sophocles, who could no more help feeling at every instant the foreign and antiquated character of the poetry, than an Englishman can help feeling the same in reading Burns's poems.' And not only does Mr. Newman say this, but he has managed thoroughly to convince some of his readers of it. 'Homer's Greek,' says one of them, 'certainly seemed antiquated to the historical times of Greece. Mr. Newman, taking a far broader historical and philological view than Mr. Arnold, stoutly main- tains that it did seem so.' And another says : * Doubtless Homer's dialect and diction were as hard and obscure to a later Attic Greek, as Chaucer to an Englishman of our day.' Mr. Newman goes on to say, that not only was c 18 OX TR.\XSLATING HOMER: Homer antiquated relatively to Pericles, but he is antiquated to the living scholar ; and, indeed, is in himself * absolutely antique, being the poet of a barbarian age.' He tells us of his 'inexhaustible quaintnesses,' of his ' very eccentric diction ;' and he infers, of course, that he is perfectly right in render- ing him in a quaint and antiquated style. Now this question, — whether or no Homer seemed quaint and antiquated to Soi^hocles, — I call a delightful question to raise. It is not a barren verbal dispute ; it is a question ' drenched in matter,' to use an expression of Bacon; a question full of flesh and blood, and of which the scrutiny, though I still think we cannot settle it absolutely, may yet give us a directly useful result. To scrutinise it may lead us to see more clearly what sort of a style a modern translator of Homer ought to adopt. Homer's verses were some of the first words which a young Athenian heard. He heard them from his mother or his nurse before he went to school ; and at school, when he went there, he was constantly occu- pied with them. So much did he hear of them that Socrates proposes, in the interests of morality, to have selections from Homer made, and placed in the hands of mothers and nurses, in his model republic ; in order that, of an author with whom they were sure to be so perpetually conversant, the young might learn only those parts which might do them good. His language was as familiar to Sophocles, LAST WORDS. 19 we may be quite sure, as the language of the Kih\e is to us. Nay, more. Homer's language was not, of course, in the time of Sophocles, the spoken or written language of ordinary life, any more than the lan- guage of the Bible, any more than the language of poetry, is with us ; but for one great species of composition, — epic poetry, — it was still the current language ; it was the language in Avhich every one who made that sort of poetry composed. Every one at Athens who dabbled in epic poetry, not only understood Homer's language, — he possessed it. He possessed it as every one who dabbles in poetry with us, possesses what may be called the poetical vocabu- lary, as distinguished from the vocabulary of com- mon speech and of modern prose : I mean, such expressions as perchance for 'pevha'ps, spake for spoke, aye for ever, don for put on, charmed for chaiTii'd, and thousands of others. I might go to Burns and Chaucer, and taking words and passages from them, ask if they afforded any parallel to a language so familiar and so pos- sessed. But this I will not do, for Mr, Newman himself supplies me with what he thinks a fair parallel, in its effect upon us, to the language of Homer in its effect upon Sophocles. He says that such words as mon, londis, libhard, ivithouten, muchel, give us a tolerable but incomplete notion of this parallel ; and he finally exhibits the parallel C 2 20 ON TKiXSLATING HOMER : in all its clearness, by this poetical specimen : Dat mon, quliicli haiildetli Kjnigis-af Londis yn feo, niyer (I tell 'e) feereth aiiglit ; sith hee Doth hauld hys londis yrer. Now, does Mr. Newman really think that Sopho- cles could, as he says, ' no more help feeling at every instant the foreign and antiquated character of Homer, than an Englishman can help feeling the same in hearing ' these lines ? Is he quite sure of it? He says he is ; he will not allow of any doubt or hesitation in the matter. I had confessed we could not really know how Homer seemed to Sophocles; — * Let Mr. Arnold confess for himself,' cries Mr. Newman, ' and not for me, who know perfectly well.' And this is what he knows ! Mr. Newman says, however, that I 'play falla- ciously on the words familiar and unfamiliar ;' that ' Homer's words may have been familiar to the Athenians {i. e. often heard) even when they were either not understood by them, or else, being under- stood, were yet felt and known to be utterly foreign. Let my renderings,' he continues, ' be heard, as Pope or even Cowper has been heard, and no one will be " surprised." ' But the whole question is here. The translator nmst not assume that to have taken place which has not taken place, although, perhaps, he may wish it to have taken place, — namely, that his diction is LAST WORDS. 21 become an established possession of the minds of men, and therefore is, in its proper place, familiar to them, will not * surprise' them. If Homer's language was fomiliar, — that is, often heard, — then to this language w'ords like londls and llbbavd, which are not familiar, offer, for the translator's purpose, no parallel. For some purpose of the philologer they may offer a parallel to it; for the translator's purpose they offer none. The question is not, whether a diction is antiquated for current speech, but whether it is antiqTiated for that par- ticular purpose for which it is employed. A diction that is antiquated for common speech and common prose, may very well not be antiquated for poetry or certain special kinds of prose. * Per adventure there shall be ten found there,' is not antiquated for Biblical prose, though for conversation or for a newspaper it is antiquated. ' The trumpet spake not to the armed throng,' is not antiquated for poetr}^, although we should not write in a letter, ' he spake to me,' or say, 'the British soldier is anned with the Enfield rifle.' But when language is antiquated for that particular purpose for which it is employed, — as numbers of Chaucer's words, for instance, are antiquated for poetry, — such language is a bad representative of language which, like Homer's, was never antiquated for that particular purpose for which it was employed. I imagine that nrjAr/ia^fw for Ur,Xz(tov, in Homer, no more sounded antiquated c 3 22 ON" TRANSLATING HOMER: to Sophocles than armed for armkl, in Milton, sounds antiquated to us ; but Mr. Newman's withouten and muchel do sound to us antiquated, even for poetry, and therefore they do not correspond in their effect upon us with Homer's words in their effect upon Sophocles. When Chaucer, who uses such words, is to pass current amongst us, to be familiar to us, as Homer was familiar to the Athenians, he has to be modernised, as Wordsworth and others set to work to modernise him ; but an Athenian no more needed to have Homer modernised, than we need to have the Bible modernised, or Wordsworth himself. Therefore, when Mr. Newman's words hragly, hulkin, and the rest, are an established possession of our minds, as Homer's words were an established possession of an Athenian's mind, he may use them ; but not till then. Chaucer's words, the words of Burns, great poets as these were, are yet not thus an established possession of an Englishman's mind, and therefore they must not be used in rendering Homer into English. Mr. Newman has been misled just by doing that which his admirer praises him for doing, by taking a ' far broader historical and philological view than ' mine. Precisely because he has done this, and has applied the ' philological view ' where it was not applicable, but where the ' poetical view ' alone was rightly applicable, he has fallen into error. It is the same with him in his remarks on the LAST WORDS. 28 difficulty and obscurity of Homer. Homer, I say, is perfectly plain in speech, simple, and intelligible. And I infer from this that his translator, too, ought to be perfectly plain in speech, simple, and intelli- gible ; ought not to say, for instance, in rendering OuTE /ce ere (TTeWoifxi fJ-axw ^^ KuSidvupav . . . * Nor liefly thee would I advance to man-ennobling battle,' — and things of that kind. Mr. Newman hands me a list of some twenty hard words, invokes Buttman, Mr. Maiden, and M. Benfey, and asks me if I think myself wiser than all the world of Greek scholars, and if I am ready to supply the deficiencies of Liddell and Scott's Lexicon I But here, again, JNIr. Newman errs by not perceiving that the question is one not of scholarship, but of a poetical translation of Homer. This, I say, should be perfectly simple and intelligible. He replies by telling me that a^jvoy, e]Xmo^B9, and (TiyaKosis are hard words. Well, but what does he infer from that? That the poetical translator, in his rendering of them, is to give us a sense of the difficulties of the scholar, and so is to make his translation obscure ? If he does not mean that, how, by bringing forward these hard words, does he touch the question whether an English ver- sion of Homer should be plain or not plain? If Homer's poetry, as poetr}^, is in its general effect on the poetical reader perfectly simple and intelligible, the uncertainty of the scholar about the true mean- ing of certain words can never change this general C 4 24 ON TRANSLATING HOMER : effect. Eather will the poetry of Homer make us forget his philology, than his philology make us forget his poetry. It may even be affirmed that every one who reads Homer perpetually for the sake of enjoy- ing his poetry (and no one who does not so read him will ever translate him well), comes at last to form a perfectly clear sense in his own mind for every important word in Homer, such as alivos, or YjXlSciTo^, whatever the scholar's doubts about the word may be. And this sense is present to his mind with perfect clearness and fulness, whenever the word recurs, although as a scholar he may know that he cannot be sure whether this sense is the right one or not. But poetically he feels clearly about the word, although philologically he may not. The scholar in him may hesitate, like the father in She- ridan's play; but the reader of poetry in him is, like the governor, fixed. The same thing happens to us with our o^vn language. How many words occur in the Bible, for instance, to which thousands of hearers do not feel sure they attach the precise real meaning ; but they make out a meaning for them out of what materials they have at hand ; and the words, heard over and over again, come to convey this meaning with a certainty which poetically is adequate, though not philologically. How many have attached a clear and poetically adequate sense to * the beam ' and ' the mote,^ though not precisely the right one ! How clearly, again, have readers got a LAST WORDS. 25 sense from Milton's words, * grate on their scrannel pipes,' who yet might have been puzzled to write a commentary on the word scrannel for the dictionary! So we get a clear sense from udivos as an epithet for grief, after often meeting with it and finding out all we can about it, even though that all be philolo- gically insufficient: so we get a clear sense from el\i~ TToSss- as an epithet for cows. And this his clear poetical sense about the words, not his philological uncertainties about them, is what the translator has to convey. Words like hragly and hulhin offer no parallel to these words; because the reader, from his entire want of familiarity with the words brarjiy and hulkin, has no clear sense of them poetically. Perplexed by his knowledge of the philological aspect of Homer's language, encumbered by his own learning, Mr. Newman, I say, misses the poetical aspect, misses that with which alone we are here concerned. ' Homer is odd,' he persists, fixing his eyes on his own philological analysis of ij-cuw^, and ^spo^s, and KkXXottoSj'cov, and not on these words in their synthetic character; — just as Professor Max Miiller, going a little farther back, and fixing his attention on the elementary value of the word^uyaTrjg", might say Homer was ' odd ' for using that word ; — ' if the whole Greek nation, by long familiarity, had become inobservant of Homer's oddities,' — of the oddities of this * noble barbarian,' as Mr. Newman elsewhere calls him, this * noble barbarian ' with the 26 OX TEANSLATIXG HOMER : * lively eye of the savage,' — *that would be no fault of mine. That would not justify Mr. Arnold's blame of me for rendering the words correctly.' Correctly — ah, but what is correctness in this case ? This correctness of his is the very rock on which Mr. Newman has split. He is so correct that at last he finds peculiarity everywhere. The true knowledge of Homer becomes at last, in his eyes, a knowledge of Homer's ' peculiarities, pleasant and unpleasant.' Learned men know these ' peculiarities,' and Homer is to be translated because the unlearned are im- patient to know them too. * That,' he exclaims, ' is just why people want to read an English Homer, — to knoiv all Ms oddities, just as learned men do.'' Here I am obliged to shake my head, and to declare that, in spite of all my respect for Mr. Newman, I cannot go these lengths with him. He talks of my * monomaniac fancy that there is nothing quaint or antique in Homer.' Terrible learning, — I cannot help in my turn exclaiming, — terrible learning, which discovers so much ! Here, then, I take my leave of INIr. Newman, retaining my opinion that his version of Homer is spoiled by his making Homer odd and ignoble ; but having, I hope, sufficient love for literature to be able to canvass works without thinking of persons, and to hold this or that production cheap, while retaining a sincere respect, on other grounds, for its author. In fulfilment of my promise to take this oppor- LAST TTORDS. 27 tiinity for giving the translator of Homer a little further advice, I proceed to notice one or two other criticisms which I find, in like manner, suggestive; which give us an opportunity, that is, of seeing more clearly, as we look into them, the true principles on which translation of Homer should rest. This is all I seek in criticisms ; and perhaps (as I have already said) it is only as one seeks a positive result of this kind, that one can get any fruit from them. Seeking a negative result from them, — personal altercation and wrangling, — one gets no fruit; seek- ing a positive result, — the elucidation and esta- blishment of one's ideas, — one may get much. Even bad criticisms may thus be made suggestive and fruitful. I declared, in a former lecture on this subject, my conviction that criticism is not the strong point of our national literature. Well, even the bad criticisms on our present topic which I meet with, serve to illustrate this conviction for me. And thus one is enabled, even in reading remarks which for Homeric criticism, for their immediate subject, have no value, — which are far too personal in spirit, far too immoderate in temper, and far too heavy-handed in style, for the delicate matter they have to treat, — still to gain light and confir- mation for a serious idea, and to follow the Ba- conian injunction, semper aliquid addiscere, always to be adding to one's stock of observation and knowledge. Yes, even when we have to do with writers who, — to quote the words of an exquisite 28 OX TRAXSLATIXG HOMER: critic, the master of us all in criticism, M. Sainte Beuve, — remind us, when they handle such subjects as our present, of * Eomans of the fourth or fifth cen- tury, coming to hold forth, all at random, in African style, on papers found in the desk of Augustus, Msecenas, or Pollio,' — even then we may instruct our- selves if we regard ideas and not persons ; even then we may enable ourselves to say, with the same critic describing the effect made upon him by D'Argenson's Memoirs : ' My taste is revolted, but I learn some- thing ; — Je suis choque, mais je suis instruiV But let us pass to criticisms which are suggestive directly and not thus indirectly only ; criticisms by examining which we may be brought nearer to what immediately interests us, — the right way of trans- lating Homer. I said that Homer did not rise and sink with his subject, was never to be called prosaic and low. This gives surprise to many persons, who object that parts of the Iliad are certainly pitched lower than others, and who remind me of a number of absolutely level passages in Homer. But I never denied that a subject must rise and sink, that it must have its ele- vated and its level regions ; all I deny is, that a poet can be said to rise and sink when all that he, as a poet, can do, is perfectly well done ; when he is per- fectly sound and good, that is, perfect as a poet, in the level regions of his subject as well as in its elevated regions. Indeed, what distinguishes the LAST ^YORDS. 29 greatest masters of poetry from all others is, that they are perfectly sound and poetical in these level regions of their subject ; in these regions which are the great difficulty of all poets but the very greatest, which they never quite know what to do with. A poet may sink in these regions by being falsely grand as well as by being low ; he sinks, in short, whenever he does not treat his matter, what- ever it is, in a perfectly good and poetic way. But, so long as he treats it in this way, he cannot be said to slnJi, whatever his matter may do. A passage of the simplest narrative is quoted to me from Homer :* ioTpvvev 5e tKaarov iiroix<^iJ.fvos iirtfCTatv, M6cr0A.T)f T(, rKavK6v re, MeOoyra t€, ©eptriAox'J'' re . . . and I am asked, whether Homer does not sink there ; whether he * can have intended such lines as those for poetry ? ' My answer is : Those lines are very good poetry indeed, poetry of the best class, in that place. But when Wordsworth, having to narrate a very plain matter, tries not to sink in narrating it, tries, in short, to be what is falsely called poetical, he does sink, although he sinks by being pompous, not by being low. Onward we drove beneath the Castle ; caught, While crossing ]\Iagd;ilen Bridge, a glimpse of Cam, And at the Hoop alighted, famous inn. That last line shows excellently how a poet may sink with his subject by resolving not to sink with it. A * Iliad, xvii. 216. 30 O^ TRANSLATING HOMEE : page or two further on, the subject rises to grandeur, and then Wordsworth is nobly worthy of it : The autechapel, where the statue stood Of Newton with his prism and sUent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Yoyagiug through strange seas of thought, alone. But the supreme poet is he who is thoroughly sound and poetical, alike when his subject is grand, and when it is plain: "^ith him the subject may sink, but never the poet. But a Dutch painter does not rise and sink with his subject, — Defoe, in Moll Flanders, does not rise and sink with his subject, — in so far as an artist cannot be said to sink who is sound in his treatment of his subject, however plain it is : yet Defoe, yet a Dutch painter, may in one sense be said to sink with their subject, because, though sound in their treatment of it, they are not poetical, — poetical in the true, not the false sense of the word ; because, in fact, they are not in the grand style. Homer can in no sense be said to sink with his subject, because his soundness has something more than literal natural- ness about it ; because his soundness is the soundness of Homer, of a great epic poet ; because, in fact, he is in the grand style. So he sheds over the simplest matter he touches the charm of his grand manner ; he makes everything noble. Nothing has raised more questioning among my critics than these words, — noble, the grand style. People complain that I LAST WORDS. 31 do not define these words sufficiently, that I do not tell them enough about them. ' The grand style, — but what is the grand style?' — they cry; some witli an inclination to believe in it, but puzzled ; others mockingly and mth incredulity. Alas ! the grand style is the last matter in the world for verbal definition to deal mth adequately. One may say of it as is said of faith : ' One must feel it in order to know what it is.' But, as of faith, so too one may say of nobleness, of the grand style : ' Woe to those who know it not ! ' Yet this expression, though in- definable, has a charm ; one is the better for consider- ing it ; bonum est, nos hie esse ; nay, one loves to try to explain it, though one knows that one must speak imperfectly. For those, then, who ask the question, — \ATiat is the grand style ? — with sincerity, I will try to make some answer, inadequate as it must be. For those who ask it mockingly I have no answer, except to repeat to them, A\^th compassionate sorrow, the Oospel words: Moriemini in xieccatis vestris, — Ye shall die in your sins. But let me, at any rate, have the pleasure of again giving, before I begin to try and define the grand style, a specimen of what it is : Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, iiuchanged To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues . , . There is the grand style in perfection ; and any one 32 OX TRAXSLATIXG HOMER: who has a sense for it, will feel it a thousand times better from repeating those lines than from hearing anything I can say about it. Let us try, however, what can be said, controlling what we say by examples. I think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, tuhen a noble nature, 'poetically gifted, treats luith simplicity or with severity a serious subject. I think this defini- tion will be found to cover all instances of the grand style in poetry which present themselves. I think it will be found to exclude all poetry which is not in the grand style. And I think it contains no terms which are obscure, which themselves need defining. Even those who do not understand what is meant by calling poetry noble, will understand, I imagine, what is meant by speaking of a noble nature in a man. But the noble or powerful nature, — the bedeu- tendes individuum of Groethe, — is not enough. For instance, Mi\ Newman has zeal for learning, zeal for thinking, zeal for liberty, and all these things are noble, they ennoble a man ; but he has not the poetical gift: there must be the poetical gift, the 'divine faculty,' also. And, besides all this, the subject must be a serious one (for it is only by a kind of license that we can speak of the grand style in comedy) ; and it must be treated ivith simplicity or severity. Here is the great difficulty : the poets of the world have been many ; there has been want- ing neither abundance of poetical gift nor abundance LAST WORDS. 33 of noble natures ; but a poetical gift so happy, in a noble nature so circumstanced and trained, that the result is a continuous style, perfect in simplicity or perfect in severity, has been extremely rare. One poet has had the gifts of nature and faculty in im- equalled fulness, without the circumstances and training which make this sustained perfection of style possible. Of other poets, some have caught this perfect strain now and then, in short pieces or single lines, but have not been able to maintain it through considerable works ; others have composed all their productions in a style which, by comparison with the best, one must call secondary. The best model of the grand style simple is Homer; perhaps the best model of the grand style severe is Milton. But Dante is remarkable for affording admirable examples of both styles ; he has the grand style which arises from simplicity, and he has the grand style which arises from severity ; and from him I will illustrate them both. In a former lecture I pointed out what that severity of poetical style is, which comes from saying a, thing with a kind of intense compression, or in an allusive, brief, almost haughty way, as if the poet's mind were charged with so many and such grave matters, that he would not deign to treat any one of them ex- plicitly. Of this severity the last line of the fol- lowing stanza of the Purgatory is a good example. Dante has been telling Forese that Virgil had guided D 34 ON" TEAXSLATIXG HOMER : him ttrough Hell, and he goes on : * Indi m' ban tratto sii gli suoi conforti, Salendo e rigirando la Montagna Che drizza vol che il mondofcce torti. ' Thence hath his comforting aid led me up, climbing and circling the Mountain ivhich straightens you whom the world made crooked.'' These last words, ' la Montagna che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti,'' — 'the Mountain ivhich straightens yoic ivhom the world made crooked^ — for the Mountain of Purga- tory, I call an excellent specimen of the grand style in severity, where the poet's mind is too full charged to suffer him to speak more explicitly. But the very next stanza is a beautiful specimen of the grand style in simplicity, where a noble nature and a poet- ical gift unite to utter a thing with the most limpid plainness and clearness : f Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna Ch' io sai'6 la, dove fia Eeatrice ; Quivi convien che senza lui rimagua. ' So long,' Dante continues, ' so long he (Virgil) saith he will bear me company, until I shall be there where Beatrice is ; there it behoves that mth- out him I remain.' But the noble simplicity of that in the Italian no words of mine can render. Both these styles, the simple and the severe, are truly grand ; the severe seems, perhaps, the grandest, so long as we attend most to the great personality, * Furgatory, xsiii. 124. f U^id., sxiii. 127. L.1ST WORDS. 35 to the noble nature, in the poet its author; the simple seems the grandest when we attend most to the exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But the simple is no doubt to be preferred. It is the more magical: in the other there is something intel- lectual, something which gives scope for a play of thought which may exist where the poetical gift is either Avanting or present in only inferior degree : the severe is much more imitable, and this a little spoils its charm. A kind of semblance of this style keeps Young going, one may say, through all the nine parts of that most indifferent production, the Night Thoughts. But the grand style in simplicity is inimitable : alwv a(T^a\i]s ovK eyevr' ovt' AiaKiSa irapa nr]\ei, oijTe Trap' avTidiCfi KdbfiCf) • Xeyotnai yMv fiporSiv v\Pov vTTfpraTov oi o'X*^''> o' '''^ '^'^^ xP^'^^-i^'^^'^'^^ IxeATTo/j.epai' iv vpei Moiaciv, Kol tv emaTrv\oiS aiov Qt]§ms. . . .* There is a limpidness in that, a want of salient points to seize and transfer, which makes imitation impossible, except by a genius akin to the genius which produced it. Greek simplicity and Greek grace are inimitable; but it is said that the Iliad may still be ballad-poetry * ' A secure time fell to the lot neither of Peleus the son of ^acus, nor of the god-like Cadmus ; howbeit these are said io hare Iiad, of all mortals, the supreme of happiness, who lieard the golden- snooded Muses sing, one of them on the mountain (Pelion), the other in seven-gated Thebes.' O 2 36 ON TRANSLATING HOMER: while infinitely superior to all other ballads, and that, in my specimens of English ballad-poetry, I have been unfair. Well, no doubt there are better things in English ballad-poetry than Now Christ thee save, thou proud porter . . . but the real strength of a chain, they say, is the streng-th of its weakest link ; and what I was trying to show you was, that the English ballad-style is not an instrument of enough compass and force to cor- respond to the Grreek hexameter ; that, owing to an inherent weakness in it as an epic style, it easily runs into one of two faults, — either it is prosaic and humdrum, or, trying to avoid that fault, and to make itself lively {se faire vif), it becomes pert and jaunty. To show that, the passage about King Adland's porter serves very well. But these degra- dations are not proper to a true epic instrument, such as the Grreek hexameter. You may say, if you like, when you find Homer's verse, even in describing the plainest matter, neither humdrum nor jaunty, that this is because he is so incomparably better a poet than other balladists, because he is Homer. But take the whole range of Greek epic poetry, — take the later poets, the poets of the last ages of this poetry, many of them most indifferent, — Coluthus, Tryphiodorus, Quintus of Smyrna, Nonnus. Never will you find in this instrument of the hexameter, even in their hands. L.VST AVORDS. 37 the vices of the ballad-style iu the weak moments of this last: everywhere the hexameter, — a noble, a truly epical instrument, — rather resists the weak- ness of its employer than lends itself to it. Quintus of Smyrna is a poet of merit, but certainly not a poet of a high order ; with him, too, epic poetry, whether in the character of its prosody or in that of its diction, is no longer the epic poetry of earlier and better times, nor epic poetry as again restored by Nonnus : but even in Quintus of Smyrna, I say, the hexameter is still the hexameter ; it is a style which the ballad-style, even in the hands of better poets, cannot rival. And in the hands of inferior poets, the ballad-style sinks to vices of which the hexameter, even in the hands of a Tryphiodorus, never can become guilty. But a critic, whom it is impossible to read with- out pleasure, and the disguise of whose initials I am sure I may be allowed to penetrate, — Mr. Spedding, — says that he 'denies altogether that the metrical movement of the English hexameter has any resem- blance to that of the Greek.' Of course, in that case, if the two metres in no respect correspond, praise accorded to the Greek hexameter as an epical instrument will not extend to the English. Mr. Spedding seeks to establish his proposition by point- ing out that the system of accentuation differs in the Enfrlish and in the Yirgilian hexameter ; that in the first, the accent and the long syllable (or what has d3 38 ON" TEA^SLATING HOMER: to do duty as such) coincide, in the second they do not. He says that we cannot be so sure of the accent with which Grreek verse should be read as of that with which Latin should; but that the lines of Homer in which the accent and the long syllable coincide as in the English hexameter, are certainly very rare. He suggests a type of English hexameter in agreement with the Virgilian model, and formed on the supposition that * quantity is as distinguish- able in English as in Latin or Greek by any ear that will attend to it.' Of the truth of this supposi- tion he entertains no doubt. The new hexameter will, Mr. Spedding thinks, at least have the merit of resembling, in its metrical movement, the clas- sical hexameter, which merit the ordinary English hexameter has not. But even with this improved hexameter he is not satisfied ; and he goes on, first to suggest other metres for rendering Homer, and finally to suggest that rendering Homer is impossible. A scholar to whom all who admire Lucretius owe a large debt of gratitude, — Mr. Munro, — has replied to Mr. Spedding. Mr. Munro declares that *the accent of the old Greeks and Eomans resembled our accent only in name, in reality was essentially different ; ' that ' om- English reading of Homer and Virgil has in itself no meaning;' and that * accent has nothing to do with the Virgilian hexameter.' If this be so, of course the merit which Mr. Spedding at- tributes to his own hexameter, of really corresponding LAST ^VOKDS. 39 with the Virgiliau hexameter, has no existence. Again ; in contradiction to Mr. Spedding's assertion that lines in which (in our reading of them) the accent and the long syllable coincide,* as in the or- dinary English hexameter, are *rare even in Homer,' Mr. Munro declares that snch lines, * instead of being rare, are among the very commonest types of Homeric rhythm.' Mr. Spedding asserts that * quantity is as distinguishable in English as in Latin or Greek by any ear that will attend to it ; ' but Mr. Munro replies, that in English ' neither his ear nor his reason recognises any real distinction of quantity except that which is produced by accentuated and unaccentuated syllables.' He therefore arrives at the conclusion, that in constructing English hexameters, * quantity must be utterly discarded; and longer or shorter unaccentuated syllables can have no meaning, except so far as they may be made to produce sweeter or harsher soimds in the hands of a master.' It is not for me to interpose between two such combatants; and indeed my way lies, not up the high-road where they are contending, but along a by- path. With the absolute truth of their general pro- positions respecting accent and quantity, I have nothing to do ; it is most interesting and instructive to me to hear such propositions discussed, when it is Mr. Munro or Mr. Spedding who discusses them ; but * Lilies such as tlie first of the Odyssey : "Avdpa fxoi evviire, Movaa, iroKvTpoirov, %s /uoAo iroWi . , . » 4 40 ON TRANSLATING HOMER : I have strictly limited myself in these lectures to the humble function of giving practical advice to the translator of Homer. He, I still think, must not follow so confidently, as makers of English hexame- ters have hitherto followed, Mr. Munro's maxim, — quantity may he utterly discarded. He must not, like Mr. Longfellow, make seventeen a dactyl in spite of all the length of its last syllable, even though he can plead that in counting we lay the accent on the first syllable of this word. He may be far from at- taining Mr. Spedding's nicety of ear ; — may be unable to feel that * while quantity is a dactyl, quiddity is a tribrach,' and that ' rapidly is a word to which we find no parallel in Latin ; ' — but I think he must bring himself to distinguish, with Mr. Spedding, between ' ^/t'o'erwearied eyelid,' and ' the wearied eyelid,' as being, the one a correct ending for an hexameter, the other an ending with a false quantity in it ; instead of finding, with Mr. Munro, that this distinction ' conveys to his mind no intelligible idea.' He must temper his belief in Mr. Munro's dictum, — quan- tity must he utterly discarded, — by mixing with it a belief in this other dictum of the same author, — tico or more consonants take longer time in enunciating than one.* * Substantially, liowever, in tlie question at issue between Mr. Munro and Mr. Spedding, I agree with Mr. Munro. By the italicised words in the following sentence, ' The rhythm of the Virgiliaii hexameter depends entirely on ccpsttra, j^ause, and a due arrangement of WQrds,' he has touched, it seems to me, in the constitution of this LAST WORDS. 41 Criticism is so apt in general to be vague and im- palpable, that when it gives us a solid and definite possession, such as is Mr. Spedding's parallel of the Virgilian and the English hexameter with their dif- ference of accentuation distinctly marked, we cannot be too grateful to it. It is in the Avay in which ]Mr. Spedding proceeds to press his conclusions from the parallel which he has drawn out, that his criticism seems to me to come a little short. Here even he, I think, shows (if he will allow me to say so) a little of that want of pliancy and suppleness so common among critics, but so dangerous to their criticism ; he is a little too absolute in imposing his metrical laws, he too much forgets the excellent maxim of Menander, so applicable to Literary criticism : Ka\hv ot v6fjL0i. (TcpSSp^ elffiv 6 5' opuu rohs vd/xovs Xiav aKpifiiis, (TvKo(pdvrris (Tapro deo\ 5€iXo7cn PpoTo7cnv, ^difiv axvvfJLei/ovs ' avTol Be t' oKTjSe'es elcriv . + ■ + and of these the tone is given, far better than by anything of the balladists, by such things as the lo no piangeva : si dentro impietrai : Piangevan elli ... § of Dante ; or the FaH'n Cherub ! to be weak is miserable . . . of Milton. * 'And I have endured,— tbe like whereof no soul upon the earth hath yet endured, — to carry to my lips the hand of him who slew my child.' — Hiad, sxiv. 505. t ' Nay and thou too, old man, in times past wert, as we hear, happy.' — Hiad, xxiv. 543. In the original this line, for mingled pathos and dignity, is perhaps without a rival even in Homer. J ' For so have the gods spun our destiny to us wretched mortals, — that we should live in sorrow ; but they themselves are without trouble.' — Iliad, xxiv. 525. g ' / wept not : so of stone grew I witliin : — the^ wept.' — Hell, xxxiii. 49 (Carlyle's Translation, slightly altered). LAST WOEDS. 65 I suppose I must, before I conclude, say a word or two about my owti hexameters ; and yet really, on such a topic, I am almost ashamed to trouble you. From those perishable objects I feel, I can truly say, a most Oriental detachment. You your- selves are witnesses how little importance, when I offered them to you, I claimed for them, — how humble a function I desisrned them to fill. I offered them, not as specimens of a competing translation of Homer, but as illustrations of certain canons w^hich I had been trying to establish for Homer's poetry. I said that these canons they might very well illustrate by failing as well as by succeeding : if they illustrate them in any manner, I am satisfied. I was thinkinor of the future translator of Homer, and trying to let him see as clearly as possible what I meant by the combination of characteristics which I assigned to Homer's poetry, — by saying that this poetry was at once rapid in movement, plain in words and style, simple and direct in its ideas, and noble in manner. I do not suppose that my own hexameters are rapid in movement, plain in words and style, simple and direct in their ideas, and noble in manner; but I am in hopes that a translator, reading them with a genuine interest in his subject, and without the shghtest grain of personal feeling, may see more clearly, as he reads them, what I mean by saying that Homer's poetry is all these. I am in hopes that he may be able to seize more dis- F 66 ON TEANSLATING HOMEE : tinctly, when he has before him my So shone forth, in front of Troy, by the bed of the Xanthus . . . or my Ah, unhappy pair, to Peleus why did we give you . . . or my So he spake, and drove with a cry his steeds into battle . . . the exact points which I wish him to avoid in Cowper's So numeroiis seem'd those fires the banks between . . . or in Pope's Unhappy coursers of immortal strain . . . or in Mr. Newman's He spake, and yelling, held a-front his single-hoofed horses. At the same time there may be innumerable points in mine which he ought to avoid also. Of the merit of his own compositions no composer can be admitted the judge. But thus humbly useful to the future translator I still hope my hexameters may prove ; and he it is, above all, whom one has to regard. The general public carries away little from discussions of this kind, except some vague notion that one advocates Eno-lish hexameters, or that one has attacked Mr. Newman. On the mind of an adversary one never makes the faintest impression. Mr. Newman reads all one can say about diction, and his last word on the subject is, that he ' regards it as a question about L.\ST WORDS. 67 to open hereafter, whether a translator of Homer ought not to adopt the old dissyllabic landis, houndis, hartis ' (for lands, hounds, harts), and also ' the final en of the plural of verbs (we dancen, they singen, etc.),' which 'still subsists in Lancashire.' A certain critic reads all one can say about style, and at the end of it arrives at the inference that, ' after all, there is some style grander than the grand style itself, since Shakspeare has not the grand manner, and yet has the supremacy over Milton' ; another critic reads all one can say about rhythm, and the result is, that he thinks Scott's rhythm, in the de- scription of the death of Marmion, all the better for being saccade, because the dying ejaculations of Marmion were likely to be 'jerky.' How vain to rise up early, and to take rest late, from any zeal for proving to Mr. Newman that he must not, in trans- lating Homer, say houndis and dancen; or to the first of the two critics above-quoted, that one poet may be a greater poetical force than another, and yet have a more unequal style ; or to the second, that the best art, having to represent the death of a hero, does not set about imitating his dying noises I Such critics, however, provide for an opponent's \dvacity the charming excuse offered by Kivarol for his, Avhen he was reproached with giving offence by it: — 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'no one considers how much pain every man of taste has had to suffer, before he ever inflicts any.' F 2 G8 ON TRANSLATING HOMER: It is for the future translator that one must work. The successful translator of Homer will have (or he cannot succeed) that true sense for his subject, and that disinterested love of it, which are, both of them, so rare in literature, and so precious ; he will not be led off by any false scent ; he will have an eye for the real matter, and, where he thinks he may find any indication of this, no hint will be too slight for him, no shade will be too fine, no imperfections will turn him aside, — he will go before his adviser's thought, and help it out with his own. This is the sort of student that a critic of Homer should always have in his thoughts; but students of this sort are indeed rare. And how, then, can I help being reminded what a student of this sort we have just lost in Mr. Clough, whose name I have already mentioned in these lec- tures ? He, too, was busy with Homer ; but it is not on that account that I now speak of him. Nor do I speak of him in order to call attention to his quali- ties and powers in general, admirable as these were. I mention him because, in so eminent a degree, he possessed these two invaluable literary qualities, — a true sense for his object of study, and a single- hearted care for it. He had both ; but he had the second even more eminently than the first. He greatly developed the first through means of the second. In the study of art, poetry, or philosophy, he had the most undivided and disinterested love for LAST WORDS. G9 his object in itself, the greatest aversion to mixing up with it anything accidental or personaL His interest was in literature itself; and it was this which gave so rare a stamp to his character, Avhich kept him so free from all taint of littleness. In the saturnalia of ignoble personal passions, of which the struggle for literary success, in old and crowded communities, offers so sad a spectacle, he never mingled. He had not yet traduced his friends, nor flattered his enemies, nor disparaged what he ad- mired, nor praised what he despised. Those who knew him well had the conviction that, even with time, these literary arts would never be his. His poem, of which I before spoke, has some admirable Homeric qualities ; — out-of-doors freshness, life, naturalness, buoyant rapidity. Some of the ex- pressions in that poem, — 'Dangerous Cornevreckan . . . Where roads are unknoivn to Loch Nevish,^ — come back now to my ear with the true Homeric ring. But that in him of which \ think oftenest, is the Homeric simplicity of his literary life. tONDOir PKIIfTED BT SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. KEW-STBEET SQTJAEB i lEClum' MOMER Jl KNOX 11 iommmmmmmm^>