Note 53 — Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice A Reply to Matthew Arnold By Francis W. Newman (continued 2)

I do not see that Mr Arnold has any right to reproach me, because he does not know Spenser’s word ‘bragly’ (which I may have used twice in the Iliad), or Dryden’s word ‘plump’, for a mass. The former is so near in sound to brag and braw, that an Englishman who is once told that it means ‘proudly fine’, ought thenceforward to find it very intelligible: the latter is a noble modification of the vulgar lump. That he can carp as he does against these words and against bulkin (= young bullock) as unintelligible, is a testimony how little I have imposed of difficulty on my readers. Those who know lambkin cannot find bulkin very hard. Since writing the above, I see a learned writer in the Philological Museum illustrates ἴλη by the old English phrase ‘a plump of spears’.