Note 39 — Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice A Reply to Matthew Arnold By Francis W. Newman

As a literary curiosity I append the sentence of a learned reviewer concerning this metre of Campbell. ‘It is a metre fit for introducing anything or translating anything; a metre that nothing can elevate, or degrade, or improve, or spoil; in which all subjects will sound alike. A theorem of Euclid, a leading article from the Times, a dialogue from the last new novel, could all be reduced to it with the slightest possible verbal alteration’. [Quite true of Greek hexameter or Shakspeare’s line. It is a virtue in the metres]. ‘To such a mill all would be grist that came near it, and in no grain that had once passed through it would human ingenuity ever detect again a characteristic quality’. This writer is a stout maintainer that English ballad metre is the right one for translating Homer: only, somehow, he shuts his eyes to the fact that Campbell’s is ballad metre! Sad to say, extravagant and absurd assertions, like these, though anonymous, can, by a parade of learning, do much damage to the sale of a book in verse.