On Translating Homer

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...

Here the only particular remark which I will make is, that in the fourth and eighth line the grammar is what I call a loose and idiomatic grammar. In writing a regular and liter...

I have sufficiently shown why I think all forms of our ballad-metre unsuited to Homer. It seems to me to be beyond question that, for epic poetry, only three metres can seriousl...

Shakspeare is not only idiomatic in his grammar or style, he is also idiomatic in his words or diction; and here too, his example is valuable for the translator of Homer. The tr...

Another word which has been ill-understood and ill-used, is _dapper_. Of the epithet dappergreav’d for ἐϋκνημὶς I certainly am not enamoured, but I have not yet found a better r...

Again; ‘to translate Homer suitably’, says Mr Newman, ‘we need a diction sufficiently antiquated to obtain pardon of the reader for its frequent homeliness’. ‘I am concerned’, h...

It has more than once been suggested to me that I should translate Homer. That is a task for which I have neither the time nor the courage; but the suggestion led me to regard y...

‘Laws are admirable things; but he who keeps his eye too closely fixed upon them, runs the risk of becoming’, let us say, a purist. Mr Spedding is probably mistaken in supposing...

And scarcely had she begun to wash Ere she was aware of the grisly gash Above his knee that lay. It was a wound from a wild boar’s tooth, All on Parnassus’ slope, Where he went...

His Lordship repeated the last word several times with a calm and determinate resignation; and, after a serious pause of some minutes, he desired to hear the Treaty read, to whi...

Mr Arnold will see in the Scholiast on Iliad 1, 250, precisely this order of analysis for μέροπες. It seems to me to give not a traditional but a grammatical explanation. Be tha...

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 a...

If by a happy combination any scholar could compose fifty _such_ English hexameters, as would convey a living likeness of the Virgilian metre, I should applaud it as valuable fo...

Mr Arnold further asserts, that Homer is never ‘garrulous’. Allowing that too many others agree with me, he attributes our error to giving too much weight to a sentence in Horac...

‘_Chestnut_ and _Spotted_! noble pair! farfamous brood of _Spry-foot_! In other guise now ponder ye your charioteer to rescue Back to the troop of Danaï, when we have done with...

But I must proceed to remark: Homer might have been as unintelligible to Pericles, as was the court poet of king Crœsus, and yet it might be highly improper to translate him int...

I, too, have passed her on the hills, Setting her little water-mills By spouts and fountains wild; Such small machinery as she turned, Ere she had wept, ere she had mourned, A y...