Part 3

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’, he says again, ‘with the artistic problem of attaining a plausible aspect of moderate antiquity, while remaining easily intelligible’. And again, he speaks of ‘the more antiquated style suited to this subject’. Quaint! antiquated!—but to whom? Sir Thomas Browne is quaint, and the diction of Chaucer is antiquated: does Mr Newman suppose that Homer seemed quaint to Sophocles, when he read him, as Sir Thomas Browne seems quaint to us, when we read him? or that Homer’s diction seemed antiquated to Sophocles, as Chaucer’s diction seems antiquated to us? But we cannot really know, I confess, how Homer seemed to Sophocles: well then, to those who can tell us how he seems to them, to the living scholar, to our only present witness on this matter,—does Homer make on the Provost of Eton, when he reads him, the impression of a poet quaint and antiquated? does he make this impression on Professor Thompson or Professor Jowett. When Shakspeare says, ‘The princes _orgulous_’, meaning ‘the proud princes’, we say, ‘This is antiquated’; when he says of the Trojan gates, that they

With massy staples And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts _Sperr_ up the sons of Troy,

we say, ‘This is both quaint and antiquated’. But does Homer ever compose in a language which produces on the scholar at all the same impression as this language which I have quoted from Shakspeare? Never once. Shakspeare is quaint and antiquated in the lines which I have just quoted; but Shakspeare—need I say it?—can compose, when he likes, when he is at his best, in a language perfectly simple, perfectly intelligible; in a language which, in spite of the two centuries and a half which part its author from us, stops us or surprises us as little as the language of a contemporary. And Homer has not Shakspeare’s variations: Homer always composes as Shakspeare composes at his best; Homer is always simple and intelligible, as Shakspeare is often; Homer is never quaint and antiquated, as Shakspeare is sometimes.

When Mr Newman says that Homer is garrulous, he seems, perhaps, to depart less widely from the common opinion than when he calls him quaint; for is there not Horace’s authority for asserting that ‘the good Homer sometimes nods’, _bonus dormitat Homerus_? and a great many people have come, from the currency of this well-known criticism, to represent Homer to themselves as a diffuse old man, with the full-stocked mind, but also with the occasional slips and weaknesses of old age. Horace has said better things than his ‘bonus dormitat Homerus’; but he never meant by this, as I need not remind anyone who knows the passage, that Homer was garrulous, or anything of the kind. Instead, however, of either discussing what Horace meant, or discussing Homer’s garrulity as a general question, I prefer to bring to my mind some style which is garrulous, and to ask myself, to ask you, whether anything at all of the impression made by that style is ever made by the style of Homer. The mediæval romancers, for instance, are garrulous; the following, to take out of a thousand instances the first which comes to hand, is in a garrulous manner. It is from the romance of Richard Cœur de Lion.

Of my tale be not a-wondered! The French says he slew an hundred (Whereof is made this English saw) Or he rested him any thraw. Him followed many an English knight That eagerly holp him for to fight

and so on. Now the manner of that composition I call garrulous; everyone will feel it to be garrulous; everyone will understand what is meant when it is called garrulous. Then I ask the scholar,—does Homer’s manner ever make upon you, I do not say, the same impression of its garrulity as that passage, but does it make, ever for one moment, an impression in the slightest way resembling, in the remotest degree akin to, the impression made by that passage of the mediæval poet? I have no fear of the answer.

I follow the same method with Mr Newman’s two other epithets, _prosaic_ and _low_. ‘Homer rises and sinks with his subject’, says Mr Newman; ‘is prosaic when it is tame, is low when it is mean’. First I say, Homer is never, in any sense, to be with truth called prosaic; he is never to be called low. He does not rise and sink with his subject; on the contrary, his manner invests his subject, whatever his subject be, with nobleness. Then I look for an author of whom it may with truth be said, that he ‘rises and sinks with his subject, is prosaic when it is tame, is low when it is mean’. Defoe is eminently such an author; of Defoe’s manner it may with perfect precision be said, that it follows his matter; his lifelike composition takes its character from the facts which it conveys, not from the nobleness of the composer. In _Moll Flanders_ and _Colonel Jack_, Defoe is undoubtedly prosaic when his subject is tame, low when his subject is mean. Does Homer’s manner in the _Iliad_, I ask the scholar, ever make upon him an impression at all like the impression made by Defoe’s manner in _Moll Flanders_ and _Colonel Jack_? Does it not, on the contrary, leave him with an impression of nobleness, even when it deals with Thersites or with Irus?

Well then, Homer is neither quaint, nor garrulous, nor prosaic, nor mean: and Mr Newman, in seeing him so, sees him differently from those who are to judge Mr Newman’s rendering of him. By pointing out how a wrong conception of Homer affects Mr Newman’s translation, I hope to place in still clearer light those four cardinal truths which I pronounce essential for him who would have a right conception of Homer: that Homer is rapid, that he is plain and direct in word and style, that he is plain and direct in his ideas, and that he is noble.

Mr Newman says that in fixing on a style for suitably rendering Homer, as he conceives him, he ‘alights on the delicate line which separates the _quaint_ from the _grotesque_’. ‘I ought to be quaint’, he says, ‘I ought not to be grotesque’. This is a most unfortunate sentence. Mr Newman is grotesque, which he himself says he ought not to be; and he ought not to be quaint, which he himself says he ought to be.

‘No two persons will agree’, says Mr Newman, ‘as to where the quaint ends and the grotesque begins’; and perhaps this is true. But, in order to avoid all ambiguity in the use of the two words, it is enough to say, that most persons would call an expression which produced on them a very strong sense of its incongruity, and which violently surprised them, _grotesque_; and an expression, which produced on them a slighter sense of its incongruity, and which more gently surprised them, _quaint_. Using the two words in this manner, I say, that when Mr Newman translates Helen’s words to Hector in the sixth book,

Δᾶερ ἐμεῖο, κυνὸς κακομηχάνου, ὀκρυοέσσης[10],

O, brother thou of me, who am a mischief-working vixen, A numbing horror,

he is grotesque; that is, he expresses himself in a manner which produces on us a very strong sense of its incongruity, and which violently surprises us. I say, again, that when Mr Newman translates the common line,

Τὴν δ’ ἠμείβετ’ ἔπειτα μέγας κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ,

Great Hector of the motley helm then spake to her responsive,

or the common expression, ἐϋκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοί, ‘dapper-greaved Achaians’, he is quaint; that is, he expresses himself in a manner which produces on us a slighter sense of incongruity, and which more gently surprises us. But violent and gentle surprise are alike far from the scholar’s spirit when he reads in Homer κυνὸς κακομηχάνου, or κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ, or, ἐϋκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοί. These expressions no more seem odd to him than the simplest expressions in English. He is not more checked by any feeling of strangeness, strong or weak, when he reads them, than when he reads in an English book ‘the painted savage’, or, ‘the phlegmatic Dutchman’. Mr Newman’s renderings of them must, therefore, be wrong expressions in a translation of Homer, because they excite in the scholar, their only competent judge, a feeling quite alien to that excited in him by what they profess to render.

Mr Newman, by expressions of this kind, is false to his original in two ways. He is false to him inasmuch as he is ignoble; for a noble air, and a grotesque air, the air of the address,

Δᾶερ ἐμεῖο, κυνὸς κακομηχάνου, ὀκρυοέσσης,

and the air of the address,

O, brother thou of me, who am a mischief-working vixen, A numbing horror,

are just contrary the one to the other: and he is false to him inasmuch as he is odd; for an odd diction like Mr Newman’s, and a perfectly plain natural diction like Homer’s,—‘dapper-greaved Achaians’ and ἐϋκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοί,—are also just contrary the one to the other. Where, indeed, Mr Newman got his diction, with whom he can have lived, what can be his test of antiquity and rarity for words, are questions which I ask myself with bewilderment. He has prefixed to his translation a list of what he calls ‘the more antiquated or rarer words’ which he has used. In this list appear, on the one hand, such words as _doughty_, _grisly_, _lusty_, _noisome_, _ravin_, which are familiar, one would think, to all the world; on the other hand such words as _bragly_, meaning, Mr Newman tells us, ‘proudly fine’; _bulkin_, ‘a calf’; _plump_, a ‘mass’; and so on. ‘I am concerned’, says Mr Newman, ‘with the artistic problem of attaining a plausible aspect of moderate antiquity, while remaining easily intelligible’. But it seems to me that _lusty_ is not antiquated: and that _bragly_ is not a word readily understood. That this word, indeed, and _bulkin_, may have ‘a plausible aspect of moderate antiquity’, I admit; but that they are ‘easily intelligible’, I deny.

Mr Newman’s syntax has, I say it with pleasure, a much more Homeric cast than his vocabulary; his syntax, the mode in which his thought is evolved, although not the actual words in which it is expressed, seems to me right in its general character, and the best feature of his version. It is not artificial or rhetorical like Cowper’s syntax or Pope’s: it is simple, direct, and natural, and so far it is like Homer’s. It fails, however, just where, from the inherent fault of Mr Newman’s conception of Homer, one might expect it to fail,—it fails in nobleness. It presents the thought in a way which is something more than unconstrained,—over-familiar; something more than easy,—free and easy. In this respect it is like the movement of Mr Newman’s version, like his rhythm, for this, too, fails, in spite of some qualities, by not being noble enough; this, while it avoids the faults of being slow and elaborate, falls into a fault in the opposite direction, and is slip-shod. Homer presents his thought naturally; but when Mr Newman has,

A thousand fires along the plain, _I say_, that night were burning,

he presents his thought familiarly; in a style which may be the genuine style of ballad-poetry, but which is not the style of Homer. Homer moves freely; but when Mr Newman has,

Infatuate! O that thou wert lord to some other army[11],

he gives himself too much freedom; he leaves us too much to do for his rhythm ourselves, instead of giving to us a rhythm like Homer’s, easy indeed, but mastering our ear with a fulness of power which is irresistible.

I said that a certain style might be the genuine style of ballad-poetry, but yet not the style of Homer. The analogy of the ballad is ever present to Mr Newman’s thoughts in considering Homer; and perhaps nothing has more caused his faults than this analogy,—this popular, but, it is time to say, this erroneous analogy. ‘The moral qualities of Homer’s style’, says Mr Newman, ‘being like to those of the English ballad, we need a metre of the same genius. Only those metres, which by the very possession of these qualities are liable to degenerate into _doggerel_, are suitable to reproduce the ancient epic’. ‘The style of Homer’, he says, in a passage which I have before quoted, ‘is direct, popular, forcible, quaint, flowing, garrulous: in all these respects it is similar to the old English ballad’. Mr Newman, I need not say, is by no means alone in this opinion. ‘The most really and truly Homeric of all the creations of the English muse is’, says Mr Newman’s critic in the _National Review_, ‘the ballad-poetry of ancient times; and the association between metre and subject is one that it would be true wisdom to preserve’. ‘It is confessed’, says Chapman’s last editor, Mr Hooper, ‘that the fourteen-syllable verse’ (that is, a ballad-verse) ‘is peculiarly fitting for Homeric translation’. And the editor of Dr Maginn’s clever and popular _Homeric Ballads_ assumes it as one of his author’s greatest and most undisputable merits, that he was ‘the first who consciously realised to himself the truth that Greek ballads can be really represented in English only by a similar measure’.

This proposition that Homer’s poetry is _ballad-poetry_, analogous to the well-known ballad-poetry of the English and other nations, has a certain small portion of truth in it, and at one time probably served a useful purpose, when it was employed to discredit the artificial and literary manner in which Pope and his school rendered Homer. But it has been so extravagantly over-used, the mistake which it was useful in combating has so entirely lost the public favour, that it is now much more important to insist on the large part of error contained in it, than to extol its small part of truth. It is time to say plainly that, whatever the admirers of our old ballads may think, the supreme form of epic poetry, the genuine Homeric mould, is not the form of the Ballad of Lord Bateman. I have myself shown the broad difference between Milton’s manner and Homer’s; but, after a course of Mr Newman and Dr Maginn, I turn round in desperation upon them and upon the balladists who have misled them, and I exclaim: ‘Compared with you, Milton is Homer’s double; there is, whatever you may think, ten thousand times more of the real strain of Homer in

Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides, And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old,

than in

Now Christ thee save, thou proud portèr, Now Christ thee save and see[12],

or in

While the tinker did dine, he had plenty of wine[13].

For Homer is not only rapid in movement, simple in style, plain in language, natural in thought; he is also, and above all, _noble_. I have advised the translator not to go into the vexed question of Homer’s identity. Yet I will just remind him that the grand argument—or rather, not argument, for the matter affords no data for arguing, but the grand source from which conviction, as we read the _Iliad_, keeps pressing in upon us, that there is one poet of the _Iliad_, one Homer—is precisely this nobleness of the poet, this grand manner; we feel that the analogy drawn from other joint compositions does not hold good here, because those works do not bear, like the _Iliad_, the magic stamp of a master; and the moment you have _anything_ less than a masterwork, the co-operation or consolidation of several poets becomes possible, for talent is not uncommon; the moment you have _much_ less than a masterwork, they become easy, for mediocrity is everywhere. I can imagine fifty Bradies joined with as many Tates to make the New Version of the Psalms. I can imagine several poets having contributed to any one of the old English ballads in Percy’s collection. I can imagine several poets, possessing, like Chapman, the Elizabethan vigour and the Elizabethan mannerism, united with Chapman to produce his version of the _Iliad_. I can imagine several poets, with the literary knack of the twelfth century, united to produce the _Nibelungen Lay_ in the form in which we have it,—a work which the Germans, in their joy at discovering a national epic of their own, have rated vastly higher than it deserves. And lastly, though Mr Newman’s translation of Homer bears the strong mark of his own idiosyncrasy, yet I can imagine Mr Newman and a school of adepts trained by him in his art of poetry, jointly producing that work, so that Aristarchus himself should have difficulty in pronouncing which line was the master’s, and which a pupil’s. But I cannot imagine several poets, or one poet, joined with Dante in the composition of his _Inferno_, though many poets have taken for their subject a descent into Hell. Many artists, again, have represented Moses; but there is only one Moses of Michael Angelo. So the insurmountable obstacle to believing the _Iliad_ a consolidated work of several poets is this: that the work of great masters is unique; and the _Iliad_ has a great master’s genuine stamp, and that stamp is _the grand style_.

Poets who cannot work in the grand style instinctively seek a style in which their comparative inferiority may feel itself at ease, a manner which may be, so to speak, indulgent to their inequalities. The ballad-style offers to an epic poet, quite unable to fill the canvas of Homer, or Dante, or Milton, a canvas which he is capable of filling. The ballad-measure is quite able to give due effect to the vigour and spirit which its employer, when at his very best, may be able to exhibit; and, when he is not at his best, when he is a little trivial, or a little dull, it will not betray him, it will not bring out his weakness into broad relief. This is a convenience; but it is a convenience which the ballad-style purchases by resigning all pretensions to the highest, to the grand manner. It is true of its movement, as it is _not_ true of Homer’s, that it is ‘liable to degenerate into doggerel’. It is true of its ‘moral qualities’, as it is _not_ true of Homer’s, that ‘quaintness’ and ‘garrulity’ are among them. It is true of its employers, as it is _not_ true of Homer, that they ‘rise and sink with their subject, are prosaic when it is tame, are low when it is mean’. For this reason the ballad-style and the ballad-measure are eminently _in_appropriate to render Homer. Homer’s manner and movement are always both noble and powerful: the ballad-manner and movement are often either jaunty and smart, so not noble; or jog-trot and hum-drum, so not powerful.

The _Nibelungen Lay_ affords a good illustration of the qualities of the ballad-manner. Based on grand traditions, which had found expression in a grand lyric poetry, the German epic poem of the _Nibelungen Lay_, though it is interesting, and though it has good passages, is itself anything rather than a grand poem. It is a poem of which the composer is, to speak the truth, a very ordinary mortal, and often, therefore, like other ordinary mortals, very prosy. It is in a measure which eminently adapts itself to this commonplace personality of its composer, which has much the movement of the well-known measures of Tate and Brady, and can jog on, for hundreds of lines at a time, with a level ease which reminds one of Sheridan’s saying that easy writing may be often such hard reading. But, instead of occupying myself with the _Nibelungen Lay_, I prefer to look at the ballad-style as directly applied to Homer, in Chapman’s version and Mr Newman’s, and in the _Homeric Ballads_ of Dr. Maginn.

First I take Chapman. I have already shown that Chapman’s conceits are un-Homeric, and that his rhyme is un-Homeric; I will now show how his manner and movement are un-Homeric. Chapman’s diction, I have said, is generally good; but it must be called good with this reserve, that, though it has Homer’s plainness and directness, it often offends him who knows Homer, by wanting Homer’s nobleness. In a passage which I have already quoted, the address of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, where Homer has,

ἆ δειλώ, τι σφῶϊ δόμεν Πηλῆϊ ἄνακτι θνητῷ; ὑμεῖς δ’ ἐστὸν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε! ἦ ἵνα δυστήνοισι μετ’ ἀνδράσιν ἄλγε’ ἔχητον[14];

Chapman has,

_Poor wretched beasts_, said he, Why gave we you to a mortal king, when immortality And incapacity of age so dignifies your states? Was it to haste[15] the miseries poured out on human fates?

There are many faults in this rendering of Chapman’s, but what I particularly wish to notice in it is the expression ‘Poor wretched beasts’ for ἆ δειλώ. This expression just illustrates the difference between the ballad-manner and Homer’s. The ballad-manner—Chapman’s manner—is, I say, pitched sensibly lower than Homer’s. The ballad-manner requires that an expression shall be plain and natural, and then it asks no more. Homer’s manner requires that an expression shall be plain and natural, but it also requires that it shall be noble. Ἆ δειλώ is as plain, as simple as ‘Poor wretched beasts’; but it is also noble, which ‘Poor wretched beasts’ is not. ‘Poor wretched beasts’ is, in truth, a little over-familiar, but this is no objection to it for the ballad-manner; it is good enough for the old English ballad, good enough for the _Nibelungen Lay_, good enough for Chapman’s _Iliad_, good enough for Mr Newman’s _Iliad_, good enough for Dr Maginn’s _Homeric Ballads_; but it is not good enough for Homer.

To feel that Chapman’s measure, though natural, is not Homeric; that, though tolerably rapid, it has not Homer’s rapidity; that it has a jogging rapidity rather than a flowing rapidity; and a movement familiar rather than nobly easy, one has only, I think, to read half a dozen lines in any part of his version. I prefer to keep as much as possible to passages which I have already noticed, so I will quote the conclusion of the nineteenth book, where Achilles answers his horse Xanthus, who has prophesied his death to him[16].

Achilles, far in rage, Thus answered him:—It fits not thee thus proudly to presage My overthrow. I know myself it is my fate to fall Thus far from Phthia; yet that fate shall fail to vent her gall Till mine vent thousands.—These words said, he fell to horrid deeds, Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-hoofed steeds.

For what regards the manner of this passage, the words ‘Achilles Thus answered him’, and ‘I know myself it is my fate to fall Thus far from Phthia’, are in Homer’s manner, and all the rest is out of it. But for what regards its movement, who, after being jolted by Chapman through such verse as this,

These words said, he fell to horrid deeds, Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-hoofed steeds,

who does not feel the vital difference of the movement of Homer,

ἦ ῥα, καὶ ἐν πρώτοις ἰάχων ἔχε μώνυχας ἵππο υς?

To pass from Chapman to Dr Maginn. His _Homeric Ballads_ are vigorous and genuine poems in their own way; they are not one continual falsetto, like the pinch-beck _Roman Ballads_ of Lord Macaulay; but just because they are ballads in their manner and movement, just because, to use the words of his applauding editor, Dr Maginn has ‘consciously realised to himself the truth that Greek ballads can be really represented in English only by a similar manner’,—just for this very reason they are not at all Homeric, they have not the least in the world the manner of Homer. There is a celebrated incident in the nineteenth book of the _Odyssey_, the recognition by the old nurse Eurycleia of a scar on the leg of her master Ulysses, who has entered his own hall as an unknown wanderer, and whose feet she has been set to wash. ‘Then she came near’, says Homer, ‘and began to wash her master; and straightway she recognised a scar which he had got in former days from the white tusk of a wild boar, when he went to Parnassus unto Autolycus and the sons of Autolycus, his mother’s father and brethren’[17]. This, ‘really represented’ by Dr Maginn, in ‘a measure similar’ to Homer’s, becomes: