Part 3 — BRYANT’S TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD. [86]

BRYANT’S TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD. [86]

The appearance at this time and in this country of a first-rate translation of the Iliad is an event of much significance. Through the exaggerated praise which London critics bestow on our dialect poetry, there runs a quiet assumption that our culture is narrow and unsound. Our oaten pipe is well enough, but our lyre disjointed and unstrung. To such insinuations Mr. Bryant’s work is a complete and final rejoinder. We shall find it easy to show that he has made the best translation of Homer in our language, and with one exception the very best extant. In the face of such an achievement, it will henceforth be preposterous to sneer at American scholarship.

Winged words the Homeric poems may well be called, which, fledged in the dawn of time, have not yet faltered in their flight across the centuries. Their superiority as works of art is not more unquestionable than is their procreative power. They have ever been—to use Milton’s words—as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon’s teeth. The history of Greek letters, we might almost say, is the genesis of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Upon them Aristotle based his canons; from them the Attic tragedy drew her inspiration and her argument. To the same source the most delightful of Greek historians referred his style and his method, while the choir of lyric and erotic poets confessed their debt to him who “gave them birth, but higher sang.” The direct action of the Homeric poems upon the masters of the Latin literature has been compared to that of the sunlight, but their indirect influence through the medium of Athenian models was pervasive and quickening as the solar heat. The development of poetry among Western nations can be accurately measured by the thoroughness with which they have assimilated Homer. The Orlando and the Lusiad repeat the story of Ulysses. Even minor excellences of the Iliad are reproduced in the Jerusalem Delivered. Milton and Goethe have drawn copiously from the same stores. Nor is there a single modern poet of the first rank, with the exception of Shakespeare, whose obligations to Homer are not manifold and obvious.

It is true that the eighteenth century, which sought to shatter so many idols, chose to depreciate these poems. Embellished by Pope, dissected by Fontanelle, and patronized by Mme. Dacier, they fell, it must be confessed, upon evil times. It is a suggestive commentary upon the self-styled siècle du goût that the autocrat of letters could pronounce the Iliad “une poème qu’on admire, et qu’on ne lit pas.”[87] To the author of the Henriade, Homer was only a beau parleur. It is now many years since the stigma went home to roost. Perrault and La Motte Houdart, who knew him only in the rags and gyves of an obscure translation, point with a satisfied smirk to the “coarseness” and “barbarism” of Homer. One is reminded of those Philistine lords who flung their jests at Samson Agonistes while he leaned against the pillars in Gaza.

Of living English poets, the strongest and sweetest acknowledge gratefully in Homer a source of their melody and strength. The fragment of an epic which is perhaps the Laureate’s best work was presented by the author as “faint Homeric echoes.” From Homer, quite as truly as from Chaucer, has the Earthly Paradise caught its genial sunshine and bracing air. The world, we presume, would have lost nothing had Mr. Swinburne read Euripides less and the Iliad more. A timely reaction has set in against the morbid self-consciousness and the hankering after glitter and novelty which are sure precursors of decay. Of that reaction, Matthew Arnold, who in childhood was taught to reverence Homer, has been the prophet and protagonist. With the same movement the temper and discipline of Mr. Bryant’s mind place him in active sympathy. We do not doubt that it was the aim of his Iliad to elevate and purify the taste of his countrymen. The success which his translation has already achieved augurs for it not a little influence upon the national literature.

To the thoughtful artist, Schlegel could suggest nothing more useful than the study of casts from the antique. A faithful version of the Iliad opens whole galleries of casts. The sculptor Bouchardon, we are told, was discovered reading Homer in a translation, and that a sorry one. “Ah, monsieur!” he exclaimed, “depuis que j’ai lu ce livre, il me semble que les hommes ont quinze pieds de haut.”[88] We know what Keats beheld upon looking into Chapman’s Homer, and we know that the quarry from which he hewed Hyperion is not yet exhausted. Of the thousands who will now listen for the first time to the story of Achilles, it may well be that some will kindle at what they hear. They will know how to thank Mr. Bryant that those flames which blazed over Troy, leaping from headland to headland, have once more borne a message across the sea.

Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, repeated attempts have been made to translate the master-poems of the Greek and Latin literatures into English verse. We suppose it will be acknowledged that those attempts have for the most part failed. The truth is that translation as commonly practised in England cannot properly be called an art. There are no fundamental principles universally recognized as the conditions of its development. It is still hardly more than a trick, in which one succeeds better than another, but each proceeds upon a method of his own. Who has prefaced his work with such a definition of translation as criticism can admit to be exhaustive and final? We might have expected so much from Hobbes. We do not find it. Dryden’s cardinal idea, that translation is “a kind of drawing after the life,” has never been literally accepted by others. It did not uniformly govern himself. The face seen and the face drawn both appeal to the brain through the eye, whereas even those English translators who aim to infuse the identical thought, feeling, or fancy of their original have recourse to media of sensual metaphor, sometimes modified, sometimes distinct from those employed in their author’s language. On Sir George Cornewall Lewis’ view of translation we will not dwell, because we are not sure that we understand it, and at least cannot conceive the practical application of it. It is enough for us that he heartily commended as an instance of right treatment Hookham Frere’s Aristophanes, which is clever, fresh, and racy enough, but certainly not Attic. There is another theory, that we should ask ourselves what our author would have said had he been writing in English. One objection to this is, as Mr. Newman remarks, that no two men would agree in their answers to such a question. Homer, if an Englishman and writing in our tongue, would unquestionably have given a different turn and tinge to his verse from that which it takes in Greek. But are we not bound to make the province of translation, as discriminated from paraphrase, the reproduction of what an author did actually say? Certainly the aim of Homeric translators into our tongue should be, not of course to compass the effect produced upon an Athenian reading Homer in the age of Peisistratos or upon a consummate scholar capable, we will say, of thinking in Ionic Greek, but to make upon Englishmen or Americans of average culture an impression nearly identical with that which they derive from the Iliad itself. Achieve this, and they who are themselves not scholars will at least be assured that they are reading Homer, not Sotheby or Pope. Such an aim does not seem too ambitious, but it has never been attained, rarely approached, in English. A radical error runs through all our metrical versions of the classic poets. Literal accuracy is by some repudiated, attempted by others, and occasionally secured in detached passages, but is always subordinate to the attainment of harmonious numbers and agreeable diction. Whenever literal accuracy seems likely to conflict with these, it is sacrificed. Now, if it be true that such sacrifice is frequently inevitable, then a genuine translation of the Iliad is an impossibility. But this we are reluctant to admit. The matchless version of Voss has proved that it is possible to be at once literal and musical, to preserve in one Germanic language at least as much of the Homeric flavor as Germans of average culture can detect in the original. Perhaps one clue to his success is to be found in his employment of the hexameter. A profound artist, he could not fail to recognize the inextricable connection of rhythm and cæsura with the shape and play of thought. He saw that in some subtle sort the metre is the poem. We have not abandoned the hope of seeing the hexameter one day naturalized in English. Mr. Kingsley’s Andromeda showed a marked improvement on Evangeline, and what the Laureate might do in this way is sufficiently clear from his Ode to Milton, where he has grappled successfully with alcaics, undoubtedly the most intricate and difficult of dactylic measures. The distinction between quantitative and accentual metres has been pressed too far by men who have wanted patience to cope with those peculiarities which render our language somewhat intractable to dactylic verse.

Almost every familiar scheme of English metre has been applied to the reproduction of Homer. We have had Chapman’s fourteen-syllable line, the rhymed couplet of Pope and Sotheby, the unrhymed iambics of Cowper, Mr. Worsley’s Spenserian stanza, the ballad movement in seven beats of Mr. Newman, and many more. One or two of these are noble English poems, but as translations none can be compared with the work of Voss. We should have said, before the appearance of Mr. Bryant’s volumes, that a new version of the Iliad executed upon one of the old plans and in one of the old metres was not called for. The attempt of Lord Derby to vie with Cowper in blank-verse had proved singularly unfortunate. Failing to accredit the scholar, its publication belittled the statesman. It is not with such a performance that the conservative party can match Mr. Gladstone’s Homeric Age. We should not highly commend Mr. Bryant were we to say that he is every-way more successful than Lord Derby. He has, in our judgment, surpassed Cowper, and that was no easy task. The associations, indeed, connected with what is known as blank-verse, render it to an English ear somewhat unsuitable to a poem like the Iliad, which presents an infinite variety of incidents and situations quite as often trivial as dignified. Still, Cowper, although his muse, stooping to certain homely details, discovers a sort of prudishness which is highly amusing, is generally vigorous and noble where energy and majesty are required, and had hitherto been the least unsatisfactory of Homer’s English translators. In examining Mr. Bryant’s work we shall mainly confine ourselves—so far as English writers are concerned—to a collation of Cowper and Lord Derby. We have neither space nor inclination to quote from the rhymed versions. Faithfully to reproduce Homer in rhyme was declared by Pope to be impossible, and Mr. Worsley’s Odyssey, delightful as it is, has not availed to set aside the judgment.

It would be easy to misinterpret the views which have governed Mr. Bryant’s work by his application of Latin names to the Homeric deities, and the reason which he assigns in the preface for this practice. It is true that he is countenanced by Lord Derby, but we think we had a right to expect more from his scholarship. We cannot but deem them both in the wrong, and to our mind the error is serious and far-reaching. The denizens of Homer’s Olympus are in the strictest sense personal gods. Such superhuman attributes as they severally possess are sharply defined, the degree and scope of their authority, except, perhaps, in two instances, clearly marked. They live the life of men, eat, drink, love, quarrel. They exhibit the most passionate interest in the war which rages before Ilium. They are bitter and unscrupulous partisans, wheedle, lie, bargain, rebel, in the cause of their protégées. They forsake their dwellings to take part in the debates of mortals, mix in the fight, are pierced with spears, and the celestial ichor flows precisely like human blood. In short, they resemble rather the demigods of a later mythology, and are rarely invested with that awful sublimity and mystery which enshroud most of the elder Roman divinities. Even in the Theogony of Hesiod, the attributes of certain gods have undergone a degree of alteration which it is tax enough to bear in mind. To insist upon confounding Ares, Aphroditê, and Athenê with Mars, Venus, and Minerva, deities which, as enshrined in the literature purely and distinctively Latin, are as native and peculiar to Rome as her language, is to mystify the reader who knows anything of either. It appears to us as unreasonable to rename the gods as to miscall the heroes of the Iliad. Surely it is no apology for the confusion of things essentially distinct that the practice has been in some sort naturalized in our literature. So are the legendary chronicles of the kings of Rome, so are the distorted portraits of Shakespeare’s histories. A manifest error cannot plead undisturbed possession. Moreover, it is now many years since English scholars have labored to educate their countrymen up to something like discrimination between the Greek and Latin mythologies. Their task is well-nigh done. Lemprière’s Dictionary is at length obsolete, and the volumes of Grote are in the hands of every schoolboy. If the prevailing excellence of Mr. Bryant’s work had not disarmed us, we should be disposed to protest against the repetition of an error, as well as against the presumption of national ignorance, by which it is excused. It is certainly matter of regret that such an objection should lie on the threshold of a work in most respects so sound and scholarlike.

The new version begins well:

Seven hexameters in eight lines of blank-verse—certainly a remarkable instance of compression. Except ἡρωων, πασι (almost an expletive), and προ in προιαψεν (which, perhaps, is faintly suggested by “swept”), not a word of Homer is omitted, not a word is added. “Birds of air” is an accurate translation of οἰωνοισι. “Parted first as foes” is exceedingly close. There is but one error, διος is rendered “great.” To this word no moral attribute whatever is attached in the Homeric poems. It is equivalent to “high-born” or “noble” (as Cowper gives it) in the primitive sense of that word. Lord Derby makes it “godlike,” which is quite incorrect. If there be a fault in the lines just quoted, it is a certain coldness. They hardly lift us to the height of the great argument. But for conscientious fidelity to the original, these lines have not been approached in English, and are in this respect fully equal to Voss. Hear, for instance, Cowper, who requires an extra line:

This is pitched in the right key, although the finest line, the fourth, is perhaps too suggestively Miltonic. In his scholarship Cowper is loose. “Who” is grammatically wrong and æsthetically a blunder. It is not Achilles, but Achilles’ wrath that Homer means to sing. “Host,” “ravening,” “fierce,” “chief,” “Agamemnon,” are merely supernumeraries. “Illustrious” was inserted, we presume, for rhythmical reasons; it does not translate ἰφθιμους. “Stood” for ἐτελειετο is fine; Mr. Bryant fails to convey the notion of fulfilment, of inevitable accomplishment, which the word seems to carry. The antithesis between ψυχὰς and αὐτους, significant as regards the Homeric theory of a future life, is quite lost in Cowper, while it is cleverly projected in Mr. Bryant’s lines. “Premature” preserves the force of the preposition in προ-ιαψεν, which ought not to be overlooked.

It may be well now to quote Lord Derby. He needs ten lines:

This is hardly worth criticising in detail. First, why “Muse”? “Vengeance” is bad for μηνις. “Deadly” translates οὐλομένην well enough, but “deep and deadly” suggests the harrowing phraseology of the Ledger romance. “Viewless Shades” is possibly poetical, but Homer chooses to be geographical—he says Ἀις. “They on the battle plain unburied”; we cannot find this in the Greek, but it accounts for one extra line. “Ravening” and “carrion” raise Cowper’s expletive to the second power. “Sad day”! And so it was, but to call it so is almost maudlin. Ἐριζω does indeed mean to wrangle, but “wordy war” is petty and poetastic. “The mighty Agamemnon”! Homer is satisfied with Atrides. And now we will see if it be possible to give this magnificent prologue measure for measure, line for line, almost word for word. Hear Voss:

The figurative entbrannt for οὐλομένην is not to our taste. Bitteren is superfluous, and sendete imperfectly translates προιαψεν. Otherwise these lines are flawless.

We pass to the sixth book, to a passage which Pope and Chapman have done well, Sotheby on the whole better, where even Hobbes grows tender, where every translator has sought to do his best. The parting of Hector and Andromache is a scene (if we except the Alcestis) unique in classic literature. When we consider the state of society depicted in the Homeric poems, the figure of Andromache seems anomalous and inexplicable; or rather she almost constrains us to recast our notions of the social framework in which we find her set. In her the sexual passion is refined and sublimated to that noblest form of conjugal love which is thought to be peculiar to the civilized and christianized descendants from the chaste German stock. Through the historical ages of Greece, in the Roman Republic and Empire, we seek in vain a pendant to this portrait. The ideal would seem to have been lost. The painter who drew Alexander’s favorite could not have limned Andromache; he who sang Ariadne in Naxos would have failed to understand her. To recover the type, we must descend to a much later age—to Raphael and to Wordsworth. The sweetest words in our language—sweetheart, helpmate, wife—describe Andromache. She is not the wanton idol of a despot’s caprice, nor the dull victim of a convenient Athenian marriage, nor the selfish protégée of the cynical Roman law. She might have been bred in a Christian world and blessed an English home. We quote twenty lines from Mr. Bryant:

No man, we imagine, who examines the above lines will question the general accuracy of Mr. Bryant’s scholarship. They are at once the most succinct, literal, and beautiful reproduction of Homer’s words which has been achieved in English. As Americans, we are proud of them. Cowper, indeed, had finely rendered this passage, and it is possible that some persons unfamiliar with the Greek and habituated to the movement of the Paradise Lost may prefer his inverted construction and sonorous phrase. We will not quote him, however, but rather choose to pay Mr. Bryant the highest homage in our power by placing beside his lines the version of Voss:

We doubt if these lines can be surpassed except by the Greek itself. They echo the melody of Homer. Mr. Bryant, of course, relinquished the hope of competing with him in this respect when he adopted iambic verse. In point of compression, however, and literal accuracy, we shall find him not inferior. There are in both versions some imperfections. “Tender” (zarte) may perhaps stand for ἀταλαφρων although it represents but partially that exquisite epithet. Cowper omits this word altogether, and Lord Derby substitutes something of his own, “all unconscious.” To our mind Mr. Bryant’s “too young to speak” is most felicitous for νηπιον αὐτως. The word, however, in many passages of the Iliad shows no trace of relation to επος, and means simply “under age,” as Voss gives it. The force of the adverb is nicely preserved in the German. Both versions make ἁγαπητον “only” (einzigen). The line of the Odyssey (b. ii. 365) seems to us conclusive against the propriety of this translation. We prefer Cowper’s “darling.” And now we come to the famous simile, ἀλιγκιον ἀστερι καλῷ. Mr. Bryant, following Cowper, writes “beautiful as a star.” But Homer is far more picturesque than this. He shows us the bright cheeks and glancing eyes of Hector’s boy gleaming from his nurse’s bosom, as a star gleams. “A fair star”—Lord Derby would make it a planet, “morning star” he calls it. But stars that twinkle and glimmer are most alluring to the eye, are the fairest, and therefore Voss is right—schimmernden Sterne vergleichbar. Mr. Bryant is not successful in the next line. We cannot like “silent smile.” Can a smile be other than silent? Neither can Voss match Cowper’s

“The father silent eyed his babe, and smiled.”

“Pressed to his side” is vivid, where Cowper and Voss are tame; “clung to his hand”—the Greek is yet stronger, “grew on his hand.” Voss was certainly drowsy when he could render this “pressed kindly his hand.” Andromache’s touching first word is quite lost in the “Dear lord” of Lord Derby. Cowper’s “My noble Hector” is even worse. The truth is that Δαιμονιε is uttered by the young wife in tender reproach, and this is conveyed in good measure by “too brave,” but seltsamer Mann is perfect. “Tender child”—Cowper and Lord Derby write “helpless.” Voss’ stammelnden is based, we presume, on Il. 2, 238, where some command of speech more or less articulate seems to be conceded to νηπιαχοις. The next four lines of the new version are close and felicitous, but θαλπωρη is not so much “hope” as “comfort”; and “when thou art gone” hardly expresses the thought in ἐπει ἄν συ γε ποτμον ἐπισπῃς, whereas the German delivers it faithfully. We have reached finally a wonderful couplet which fairly throbs with passionate devotion. Here is the Greek:

Which we may venture to render thus:

Voss is exceedingly sweet:

Derby:

Cowper:

Bryant:

Lord Derby’s version is curiously bad. Strange that one striving to utter to modern ears words which in the Iliad seem to break from the heart should go out of his way for “sire” and “brethren”! And for “wedded love,” it is not only incorrect, but mawkish, and therefore in this place detestable. Cowper likewise is weak and false. “Parents” is intolerable; ποτνια and θαλερος are overlooked. And in exchange for those adjectives we have “all that I have lost” (pure Cowper). Mr. Bryant does very much better, but he is again somewhat cold; and coldness here is hardly pardonable. He was determined to give the last line literally; but to put παρακοιτης in the vocative, as Voss has done, makes the verse literal enough and more glowing. Both Voss and Mr. Bryant are wrong in ποτνια. The active participle (liebende) is out of the question, and even “dear” conveys an erroneous impression of the relations subsisting between mother and daughter in the Homeric age. Ποτνια predicates a sentiment of respect and reverence, and is often associated with the names of deities. For an exact analogue we must go back to English domestic life in the last century. We shall find it in what was then a household word—“honored mother.” We must do Lord Derby the justice to say that he had hit upon the translation in line 413. It is a pity that he did not repeat it here. Θαλερος has proved a stumbling-block to most translators. It is a beautiful word: and placed with exquisite propriety in the mouth of a young wife who gazes on the bravest face and noblest form in Ilium. Mr. Bryant’s “youthful” is not absolutely wrong, but it is rather the impression which youth and health make upon the eye, their visible glory, their “purple light,” which Homer makes in θαλερος. Blühende gives it exactly. We wish that with these perfect words Andromache might have vanished from literature. The later myths dishonor her. It seems a crime against nature to recount of this woman that

“Victoris heri tetigit captiva cubile,”

and that Hector’s widow bore children to the son of Achilles. Surely instinct would have taught her the tenet of a later philosophy: “We are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own.” Not in Euripides and Virgil, but rather in Racine, would we follow the fortunes of that Andromache whom we knew by the Scæan gate.

Let us glance next at the concluding lines of the eighth book. They have been translated by Tennyson, and it may be interesting to contrast his version. Mr. Bryant writes:

Tennyson renders the same passage thus:

Some may prefer the general effect of the Laureate’s lines, but our American version adheres quite as closely to the text. We are surprised, however, to find “warlike lines.” Mr. Tennyson’s alternative translation, “ridge of war” is an exact reproduction of the Greek, ἀνα πτολεμοιο γεφυρας. “Bridge,” which he first wrote, is post-Homeric. Lord Derby’s phrase is close enough, but wanting in pictorial power:

If one care to see what sad work may sometimes proceed from a true poet, here is Cowper’s version of these lines—ten words are required to misconstrue three:

The familiar simile of the moon and stars in the above passage is sharply and faithfully reproduced by Mr. Bryant, whereas Tennyson’s “look beautiful” for φαινετ' ἀριπρεπεα is both loose and weak. “All the winds are laid”; Cowper says “hushed.” Either is closer than Mr. Bryant’s phrase. Lord Derby’s translation of παντα δε τ' ειδεται ἀστρα is ambitious and clumsy—“Shines each particular star distinct.” The last six hexameters are given in seven lines of our version. Tennyson has compressed them into six, but with the sacrifice of Τρωων καιοντων, which the other neatly expressed by “Lit by the sons of Troy.” We could have dispensed with the Laureate’s “towers,” but are delighted to find ἐυθρονον preserved in “throned.”

To some readers our criticism may have seemed to dwell too nicely on details; but, if they will reflect a moment, they will perceive that this is itself a guarantee of sincerity. We propose to give grounds for our opinions, that others may accept them knowingly, or refute them, if they can. To flood with general praise or spatter with vague abuse belongs to the Cheapjacks of literature. Moreover, no American needs to be told that Mr. Bryant is a poet. Men do not ask whether his Iliad is a delightful poem, but whether it truthfully photographs Homer. That question, if we may judge from his performances, the average magazine critic has preferred to evade.

From the extracts already presented, it is manifest that our American translator has followed the text of his author with a scrupulous exactitude which required unusual self-command from a poet of original powers; yet he is often so truly and nobly poetical that many will overlook the superiority of his scholarship. Most countries of Western Europe have produced several translators of the Iliad. But in each language one has eventually obscured the rest, and thenceforward kept unchallenged a niche in the national literature. Some such pre-eminence among English versions belongs, in our judgment, to Mr. Bryant’s work. For conscientious adherence to the text, his version has no rival in our tongue, and ought, in justice, to be compared with Voss. In point of scholarship, Cowper had shown himself much stronger than Pope, but his translation beside Mr. Bryant’s Iliad seems to us a paraphrase. Both are masters of blank-verse, but Cowper is a pupil of Milton, while Mr. Bryant’s diction and rhythm are his own. The iambic pentameter is, in his hands, surprisingly plastic. We should not have supposed it capable of such happy adjustment to the shifting mood and varying pitch of the original; yet we cannot help a regret that this version was not executed in hexameters. We are quite sure that the achievement was possible to the author of this translation.

In such extracts as we have yet to make from Mr. Bryant’s work, we propose to compare him, not with his English rivals whom we hold him to have excelled, but with some of those translators who are most highly esteemed in other countries.

Few lines of the Iliad have been more frequently imitated than those which paint with the tints of Albano the girdle of Aphroditê. The incident which calls forth the description is well known. Determined to lull the vigilance of Zeus and rescue her darling Greeks, Herê flies to her toilet. The most truthful of poets puts no faith in beauty unadorned, and himself performs the part of tire-woman. It occurs, however, to Herê that her lord is already familiar with the resources of her wardrobe, and the fear of a cold or careless eye leads her to borrow of Aphroditê. She receives a talisman, but precisely what this was is—to men, at least—a riddle. It was an embroidered strap, so much is certain; but how used, and where? Belt or waist-girdle it was not, for that Herê had on. It was plainly a slender and dainty thing, or how could she hide it in her bosom? For our part, we believe it to have been a breast-band (Brustgürtel) worn just under the breast, although a French commentator with much heat pronounces this view an insult to the figure of the goddess. The one translator competent to decide so nice a question was Mme. Dacier. Unhappily she throws no light on it. Mr. Bryant turns the passage thus:

We must object to “zone.” Mr. Bryant has just given (Il. 14, 181) the same name to a broad, heavily-fringed belt which Herê is now wearing. But Homer makes a difference, calling that ζωνη and this ἱμας. Voss likewise is here somewhat careless, rendering both words by Gürtel. “Dalliance” translates a stubborn word, and projects the idea which lay at the root of ὀαριστυς. Let us turn to Voss:

How neatly ποικιλον and κεστον are compressed in buntgestickt! Wunderköstlichen is, of course, mere padding. Schmachtende likewise is superfluous. Neither can we altogether like “befool” for ἐκλεψε νοον. Mr. Bryant’s phrase is certainly more felicitous. On the whole, it must be conceded that Voss flickers in these lines.

When Mme. Dacier brought out her Iliad, it was affirmed on all hands that Homer could never, in the nature of things, be presented in French verse. From that verdict an appeal has from time to time been taken, but the decision has never been reversed. Mme. Dacier’s stiffness and the flippancy of La Motte are indeed equally intolerable. We decidedly prefer to any metrical version in French the prose translations of Bitaube and Dugas Montbel. Both are in the strictest sense belles-lettres works, and are generally accurate and spirited. Bitaube portrays the girdle thus: “En même temps elle détache sa ceinture riche d’une superbe broderie. Là se trouvent réunis les charmes les plus séduisants; là sont l’amour, les tendres désirs, les doux entretiens et ces accents persuasifs, qui dérobent en secret le cœur du plus sage.” There are some adjectives here for which Homer is not responsible.

Monti’s version is well known. It has been called the golden ring which links the Greek and Italian literatures, and is ranked with Caro’s Æneid. Beside La Morte d’Ettore it appears a meritorious work. No doubt the climax of false taste was reached when Cesarrotti, who had executed a good translation in prose, proceeded to metamorphose the Iliad into a strange monster which he called The Death of Hector. We will not quote Monti now, for in this place he is tame and redundant. Yet he has skilfully hit with favellio a secondary meaning of ὀαριστυς. The French have a word from the same root, babil; but we have nothing in English which so happily expresses the cooing of young lovers. Tasso’s reproduction of these lines is exquisite. He is depicting Armida’s girdle. It was fraught, he says, with—

After the short, swift strokes of Homer, this picture seems almost florid with concetti. But each poet meant to epitomize the charms he had beheld in life. The countrywomen of Tasso were skilled in lovers’ sleights, whereas the simple virgins of Homeric times had never heard of the gai scavoir. If we may trust Brantôme, who knew something of Italian manners in that age, the dames of Sienna were quite competent to instruct Aphroditê in the arts of fascination.

The range of Homeric similes is not limited to the phenomena of sky, river, and ocean, to the familiar experiences of the forge, the vineyard, and the chase. The lightning play of fancy and memory and the emotions of the heart are submitted to the same scrutiny, and portrayed with like felicity. “Rapid as thought” has become the tritest commonplace in every European language, but the guise which the simile originally wore in Homer is still novel and effective. Incensed at the trick which has just been cleverly executed, Zeus orders Herê back to Olympus. Then Mr. Bryant:

“Willingly” is supported by Voss’ willig, but has no correlative in the Greek. The context, moreover, shows that Herê departed in a pet, and her peevishness finds full vent when she reaches Olympus. Mr. Bryant omits to translate φρεσι πευκαλιμῃσι. For this phrase Voss gives spähenden Geiste, deriving the adjective from πευκη, by which, with Buttmann, he understands the pointed (not bitter) fir-tree. But if Schneider be right, these words are equivalent to πυκα φρονεοντων in the description of the girdle just quoted. The root would then be looked for in πυκνος, and the latter phrase might find an analogue, though not an exact one, in our “close schemers.” These details are worthy of notice, for Chapman, mistaking the primitive sense of this adjective, has utterly missed the point of the simile. The perversity of Hobbes is ludicrous. He condenses Homer after this fashion:

Voss and Mr. Bryant are in this place so much alike that we will not collate the German, but give instead Monti’s blank-verse:

Scorse and rianda are pictorial, and perhaps sufficiently literal. We like also suo segreto for “close mind.” Altogether the version is neat and animated, but less compact than Mr. Bryant’s. Both are quite as faithful as the prose of Bitaube and Montbel. The former writes: “Il dit, et Junon soumise à son époux s’élève des sommets d’Ida sur Olympe. Tel que le rapide essor de la pensée de l’homme lorsqu’ayant parcouru des pays d’une vaste étendue, et se rappelant en un moment tous les objets qui l’ont frappé, il dit en lui-même, j’étais ici, j’étais là.” It will be observed that Mr. Bryant’s “Here would I be, I would be there!” reproduces the optative εἰην. So does the Dorthin möcht ich, und dort of Voss. An alternative reading is ἠηv which Bitaube and Monti have preferred. The verb, however, should then be in the third person, not the first as they give it. The imperfect would impart to the thought a slightly different tinge, and make the traveller rather retrace in memory than revisit it in desire. If this reading be accepted, we might, perhaps, venture to present the passage in this form:

In the battle which opens in the twentieth book culminates the action of the poem. Achilles now enters the field, and Mr. Gladstone has justly remarked that we seem never to have heard of wars or warriors before. To frame his central figure, Homer summons from Olympus the whole hierarchy of heaven. Amid thunder and earthquake, the gods are seen rallying to either side. No part of the Iliad is pitched in a loftier key. Nowhere is a translator more strongly impelled to put forth all his powers. We quote Mr. Bryant:

We ought not, perhaps, to dislike the expansion of πατερ ἀνθρωπων τε θεων τε in the second line, for the epithets added are themselves hardly more than formulas. The next four lines exhibit Mr. Bryant’s best work. Their vigor and elegance are not extraneous, but wrought with patient fingers out of the text itself. “Leaped from his throne in terror” is a melancholy falling off. This indifferent line must stand for three Greek verbs which render with startling accuracy the staccato movement of fear. We give from Voss the three hexameters which depict the panic of Aïdoneus:

Nachtreich is not quite equal to “nether world,” but really these lines are incomparable. Beside them even the prose of Montbel seems a little wide of the text: “Dans ses retraites souterraines le roi des ombres Pluton frémit; épouvanté il s’élance de son trône, pousse un cri, de peur que le terrible Neptune entr’ouvrant la terre ne montre aux dieux et aux hommes ces demeures terribles en horreur même aux immortels.”

We are unable to speak without contempt of the Morte d’Ettore, but it is right to state that Cesarrotti’s prose translation of this passage is perhaps the closest extant. Monti’s verse will be found less literal:

Homer says nothing of intromessa luce. The words are no doubt transferred from Virgil’s paraphrase—

“Trepidentque immisso lumine Manes.”

Longinus, in his treatise On the Sublime, had quoted this passage of the Iliad, and Boileau in a translation of that work has reproduced it with considerable care. Boileau had positively condescended to defend Homer, but it is plain that his own theory of translation was that accepted by his age. La Motte has stated it in his ode. He tells Homer that he proposes

and deeming the unconscious energy of his author un peu sauvage engages to régler son ivresse. From Boileau no engagement was required. His Muse was too thoroughly the grande dame ever to forget herself, and even in Pythian convulsions retained a measure of decorum. We shall find his version at once droll and impressive. It is, so to speak, a Greek myth treated by Paul Veronese:

To us no book of the Iliad is more delightful than the twenty-fourth. There are many scenes in which we would willingly linger not alone for the tender pathos with which the poet has informed them, but also for the light they throw on the social ethics of the later as well as primitive Greek world. The figure of Achilles weeping through the long night the loss of the beloved Patroclus is the immortal type of that devoted friendship which illumines with a peculiar radiance the stream of Hellenic biography. In the incessant warfare of sympathy with selfishness, friendship between man and man seems to have played something of the master rôle which in modern times has been engrossed by the passion of love. Again, Helen in her lament over Hector’s corpse lets fall some bitter words that deserve to be weighed in connection with the peculiar attitude which Menelaus maintains throughout the poem. They would assist us to understand her strangely equivocal position, as well as the conception of the marriage relation which obtained in the Homeric age. We have space, however, but for a single extract. We will choose Priam’s prayer to Achilles. How often and with what careful hand these lines have been reproduced in English is well-known. In French there are no less than ten metrical versions, to say nothing of prose. To poets of every nation this passage has remained a bow of Ulysses which many have been eager to grasp, but none save Voss has hitherto had sinew enough to bend. The circumstances under which the prayer is made are inexpressively affecting. The fate of Troy has at length compelled the combat of Hector and Achilles. From the walls of the city Priam has beheld the fatal issue. The pride and prop of his old age, the bulwark of his kingdom, lies dead and dishonored in the hostile camp. Conducted by Hermes, Priam passes the sentinels, and gains the quarters of his foe. He enters, springs toward Pelides, clasps his knees, and kisses those “slaughter-dealing hands” which had slain so many of his sons. Then Mr. Bryant:

Had these lines been pointed at by the legend, we could well understand why Solon should have burned his epic. Let us not stay for criticism, but, with eyes fixed on the Greek, give our ears to Voss!

We hold that it lies not in the power of translation to surpass these lines of Voss. They are truly marvels in photography. To every Homeric line corresponds a German hexameter. In every verse the emphatic word stands where Homer placed it. The very pauses are for the most part preserved. The translator has not retrenched a word. He has scarcely added one. He has certainly not added an idea. On the nice propriety of his diction, and his perfect sympathy with the feeling of the Greek, we need not dwell. In these respects Mr. Bryant must be ranked next to him—with an interval, perhaps, but next. His “dreary verge of closing life” skilfully interprets an ambiguous phrase which Voss has chosen to retain. Again, unseliger Mann is somewhat cold, whereas “my lot is hard” has caught, so to speak, the genuine accents of heartbreak. “And every day he hopes that his dear son,” etc. Readers of the Holy Dying will recall the touching picture of a drowned sailor rolled upon his floating bed of waves, while at home his father “weeps with joy to think how happy he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his father’s arms.”

Voltaire has somewhere asserted that Homer never drew a tear. Yet even he could not behold this scene unmoved, and himself entered the lists as a translator. His version of this passage embodies the principles which he maintained ought to govern translators of Homer. It forms a curious chapter in the history of taste. Achilles turning discovers Priam, “ce vieillard vénérable,”

These lines are not altogether without merit, but no man, we suppose, who possesses what has been termed a historical conscience will allow them to be poetic. The elements of the scene are there, but they are worked up in accordance with the tricks and traditions of the Comédie Française. To the eye of Voltaire, Priam was simply an antitype of the père noble, and must assume the attitude and demeanor appropriate to that rôle. In short, the verses are conceived in the spirit of his age, and exhibit his best manner. But read them after the Greek, and what fresh point they impart to the familiar words, “In old times men wrote like orators, but now like rhetoricians.”

From Voltaire to Monti is a long stride toward Homer’s Olympus. The Italian has infused much sweetness into this passage. And it is a native, not a grafted, sweetness. Writing in blank-verse, he neither needs nor claims the license of French translators; yet we sometimes miss Mr. Bryant’s terseness and simplicity; as in the initial lines:

To appreciate this version one needs only to glance at Cesarrotti’s. Priam’s first three words—Μνησαι πατρος σοιο!—comprise the most effective exordium in literature. They are true projectiles shot from soul to soul. Let us see if they are easily recognized in the Morte d’Ettore:

Is it possible to place artist and word-monger in sharper antithesis? The success of his mission—perhaps his life—depends upon the first impression. Conceive royal Priam whining forth “Pity, pity!” like some professional beggar mumbling his worn-out lies. Homer said simply, “Think of thy father, Achilles!” The words, like the stroke of Moses’ rod, split the stubborn heart, and pity gushed forth in tears.

It must be admitted that Mr. Bryant’s lines are not always invested with the impassioned fervor and glowing life which have rescued the works of his English predecessors from oblivion. But it will often be found that where they were most spirited they were least Homeric. It is inevitable that a conscientious workman who resolves to copy his model in the minutest details will produce at times a mosaic rather than a casting—his materials will seem pieced and not fused. But we are sure that the sweetness of Mr. Bryant’s verse will delight the general reader, while scholars will appreciate his self-control. Animation is desirable, but fidelity is indispensable; and they who truly love the Iliad will prefer Homer in marble to Pope and Chapman in the flesh.

Over all translators of the Iliad, we confess that Voss is paramount; but no other version with which we are acquainted will bear a sustained comparison with Mr. Bryant’s. The latter’s obligations to Voss are undoubtedly great; but he has well-nigh cancelled the debt, for the next worker in the field will owe much to him. It may be that translation is not the highest function of genius; yet where it is nobly fulfilled it deserves and commands our gratitude. Nor is this all. It is something more than a figure of speech—the fine figure of Politian’s—by which Homer, assisting in the person of Ganymede at the banquet of the gods, is made to distribute to his best lovers some portion of his own ambrosia.