Part 9

The Homeric verse has a rhythmical advantage over mine in less rigidity of cæsura. Though the Hexameter was made out of two Doric lines, yet no division of sense, no pause of the voice or thought, is exacted between them. The chasm between two English verses is deeper. Perhaps, on the side of syntax, a _four + three_ English metre drives harder towards monotony than Homer’s own verse. For other reasons, it lies under a like disadvantage, compared with Milton’s metre. The secondary cæsuras possible in the four feet are of course less numerous than those in the five feet, and the three-foot verse has still less variety. To my taste, it is far more pleasing that the short line recur less regularly; just as the parœmiac of Greek anapæsts is less pleasant in the Aristophanic tetrameter, than when it comes frequent but not expected. This is a main reason why I prefer Scott’s free metre to my own; yet, without rhyme, I have not found how to use his freedom. Mr Arnold wrongly supposes me to have overlooked his main and just objections to rhyming Homer; viz. that so many Homeric lines are intrinsically made for isolation. In p. ix of my Preface I called it a fatal embarrassment. But the objection applies in its full strength only against Pope’s rhymes, not against Walter Scott’s.

Mr Gladstone has now laid before the public his own specimens of Homeric translation. Their dates range from 1836 to 1859. It is possible that he has as strong a distaste as Mr Arnold for my version; for he totally ignores the archaic, the rugged, the boisterous element in Homer. But as to metre, he gives me his full suffrage. He has lines with four accents, with three, and a few with two; not one with five. On the whole, his metre, his cadences, his varying rhymes, are those of Scott. He has more trochaic lines than I approve. He is truthful to Homer on many sides; and (such is the delicate grace and variety admitted by the rhyme) his verses are more pleasing than mine. I do not hesitate to say, that if _all_ Homer could be put before the public in the same style equally well with his best pieces, a translation executed on my principles could not live in the market at its side; and certainly I should spare my labour. I add, that I myself prefer the former piece which I quote to my own, even while I see his defects: for I hold that his graces, at which I cannot afford to aim, more than make up for his losses. After this confession, I frankly contrast his rendering of the two noblest passages with mine, that the reader may see, what Mr Arnold does not show, my weak and strong sides.

GLADSTONE, Iliad 4, 422

As when the billow gathers fast With slow and sullen roar Beneath the keen northwestern blast Against the sounding shore: First far at sea it rears its crest, Then bursts upon the beach, Or[40] with proud arch and swelling breast, Where headlands outward reach, It smites their strength, and bellowing flings Its silver foam afar; So, stern and thick, the Danaan kings And soldiers marched to war. Each leader gave his men the word; Each warrior deep in silence heard. So mute they march’d, thou could’st not ken They were a mass of speaking men: And as they strode in martial might, Their flickering arms shot back the light. But as at even the folded sheep Of some rich master stand, Ten thousand thick their place they keep, And bide the milkman’s hand, And more and more they bleat, the more They hear their lamblings cry; So, from the Trojan host, uproar And din rose loud and high. They were a many-voicèd throng: Discordant accents there, That sound from many a differing tongue, Their differing race declare. These, Mars had kindled for the fight; Those, starry-ey’d Athenè’s might, And savage Terror and Affright, And Strife, insatiate of wars, The sister and the mate of Mars: Strife, that, a pigmy at her birth, By gathering rumour fed, Soon plants her feet upon the earth, And in the heav’n her head.

I add my own rendering of the same; somewhat corrected, but only in the direction of my own principles and against Arnold’s.

As when the surges of the deep, by Western blore uphoven, Against the ever-booming strand dash up in roll successive; A head of waters swelleth first aloof; then under harried By the rough bottom, roars aloud; till, hollow at the summit, Sputtering the briny foam abroad, the huge crest tumbleth over: So then the lines of Danaï, successive and unceasing, In battle’s close array mov’d on. To his own troops each leader Gave order: dumbly went the rest (nor mightèst thou discover, So vast a train of people held a voice within their bosom), In silence their commanders fearing: all the ranks wellmarshall’d Were clad in crafty panoply, which glitter’d on their bodies. Meantime, as sheep within the yard of some great cattle-master, While the white milk is drain’d from them, stand round in number countless, And, grievèd by their lambs’ complaint, respond with bleat incessant; So then along their ample host arose the Troian hurly. For neither common words spake théy, nor kindred accent utter’d; But mingled was the tongue of men from divers places summon’d. By Arès these were urgèd on, those by grey-ey’d Athenè, By Fear, by Panic, and by Strife immeasurably eager, The sister and companion[41] of hero-slaying Arès, Who truly doth at first her crest but humble rear; thereafter, Planting upon the ground her feet, her head in heaven fixeth.

GLADSTONE, Iliad 19, 403

Hanging low his auburn head, Sweeping with his mane the ground, From beneath his collar shed, Xanthus, hark! a voice hath found, Xanthus of the flashing feet: Whitearm’d Herè gave the sound. ‘Lord Achilles, strong and fleet! Trust us, we will bear thee home; Yet cometh nigh thy day of doom: No doom of ours, but doom that stands By God and mighty Fate’s commands. ’Twas not that we were slow or slack Patroclus lay a corpse, his back All stript of arms by Trojan hands. The prince of gods, whom Leto bare, Leto with the flowing hair, He forward fighting did the deed, And gave to Hector glory’s meed. In toil for thee, we will not shun Against e’en Zephyr’s breath to run, Swiftest of winds: but all in vain: By God and man shalt thou be slain.’ He spake: and here, his words among, Erinnys bound his faltering tongue.

Beginning with Achilles’ speech, I render the passage parallel to Gladstone thus.

‘_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 battle: Nor leave him dead upon the field, as late ye left Patroclus’. But him the dapplefooted steed under the yoke accosted; (And droop’d his auburn head aside straightway; and through the collar, His full mane, streaming to the ground, over the yoke was scatter’d: Him Juno, whitearm’d goddess, then with voice Of man endowèd): ‘Now and again we verily will save and more than save thee, Dreadful Achilles! yet for thee the deadly day approacheth. Not ours the guilt; but mighty God and stubborn Fate are guilty. Not by the slowness of our feet or dulness of our spirit The Troians did thy armour strip from shoulders of Patroclus; But the exalted god, for whom brighthair’d Latona travail’d, Slew him amid the foremost rank and glory gave to Hector. Now we, in coursing, pace would keep even with breeze of Zephyr, Which speediest they say to be: but for thyself ’tis fated By hand of hero and of God in mighty strife to perish So much he spake: thereat his voice the Furies stopp’d for ever.

Now if any fool ask, Why does not Mr Gladstone translate _all_ Homer? any fool can reply with me, Because he is Chancellor of the Exchequer. A man who has talents and acquirements adequate to translate Homer _well_ into _rhyme_, is almost certain to have other far more urgent calls for the exercise of such talents.

So much of metre. At length I come to the topic of Diction, where Mr Arnold and I are at variance not only as to taste, but as to the main facts of Greek literature. I had called Homer’s style quaint and garrulous; and said that he rises and falls with his subject, being prosaic when it is tame, and low when it is mean. I added no proof; for I did not dream that it was needed. Mr Arnold not only absolutely denies all this, and denies it without proof; but adds, that these assertions prove my incompetence, and account for my total and conspicuous failure. His whole attack upon my diction is grounded on a passage which I must quote at length; for it is so confused in logic, that I may otherwise be thought to garble it, pp. 36, 37.

‘Mr Newman 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, 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 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 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’.

If Mr Arnold were to lay before none but Oxford students assertions concerning Greek literature so startlingly erroneous as are here contained, it would not concern me to refute or protest against them. The young men who read Homer and Sophocles and Thucydides, nay, the boys who read Homer and Xenophon, would know his statements to be against the most notorious and elementary fact: and the Professors, whom he quotes, would only lose credit, if they sanctioned the use he makes of their names. But when he publishes the book for the unlearned in Greek, among whom I must include a great number of editors of magazines, I find Mr Arnold to do a public wrong to literature, and a private wrong to my book. If I am silent, such editors may easily believe that I have made an enormous blunder in treating the dialect of Homer as antiquated. If those who are ostensibly scholars, thus assail my version, and the great majority of magazines and reviews ignore it, its existence can never become known to the public; or it will exist not to be read, but to be despised without being opened; and it must perish as many meritorious books perish. I but lately picked up, new, and for a fraction of its price, at a second-hand stall, a translation of the Iliad by T. S. Brandreth, Esq. (Pickering, London), into Cowper’s metre, which is, as I judge, immensely superior to Cowper. Its date is 1846: I had never heard of it. It seems to have perished uncriticized, unreproved, unwept, unknown. I do not wish my progeny to die of neglect, though I am willing that it should be slain in battle. However, just because I address myself to the public _unlearned_ in Greek, and because Mr Arnold lays before _them_ a new, paradoxical, monstrously erroneous representation of facts, with the avowed object of staying the plague of my Homer; I am forced to reply to him.

Knowingly or unknowingly, he leads his readers to confuse four different questions: 1. whether Homer is thoroughly intelligible to modern scholars; 2. whether Homer was antiquated to the Athenians of Themistocles and Pericles; 3. whether he was thoroughly understood by them; 4. whether he is, absolutely, an antique poet.

I feel it rather odd, that Mr Arnold begins by complimenting me with ‘genuine learning’, and proceeds to appeal from me to the ‘living scholar’. (What if I were bluntly to reply: ‘Well! I am the living scholar’?) After starting the question, how Homer’s style appeared to Sophocles, he suddenly enters a plea, under form of a concession [‘I confess’!], as a pretence for carrying the cause into a new court, that of the Provost of Eton and two Professors, into which court I have no admission; and then, of his own will, pronounces a sentence in the name of these learned men. Whether they are pleased with this parading of their name in behalf of paradoxical error, I may well doubt: and until they indorse it themselves, I shall treat Mr Arnold’s process as a piece of forgery. But, be this as it may, I cannot allow him to ‘confess’ for me against me: let him confess for himself that he does not know, and not for me, who know perfectly well, whether Homer seemed quaint or antiquated to Sophocles. Of course he did, as every beginner must know. Why, if I were to write _mon_ for _man_, _londis_ for _lands_, _nesties_ for _nests_, _libbard_ for _leopard_, _muchel_ for _much_, _nap_ for _snap_, _green-wood shaw_ for _greenwood shade_, Mr Arnold would call me antiquated, although every word would be intelligible. Can he possibly be ignorant, that this exhibits but the smallest part of the chasm which separates the Homeric dialect not merely from the Attic prose, but from Æschylus when he borrows most from Homer? Every sentence of Homer was more or less antiquated to Sophocles, who could no more help feeling at every instant the foreign and antiquated character of the poetry, than an Englishman can help feeling the same in reading Burns’ poems. Would _mon_, _londis_, _libbard_, _withouten_, _muchel_ be antiquated or foreign, and are Πηληϊάδαο for Πηλείδου, ὁσσάτιος for ὅσος, ἤϋτε for ὡς, στήῃ for στῇ, τεκέεσσι for τέκνοις, τοῖσδεσσι for τοῖσδε, πολέες for πολλοὶ, μεσοηγὺς for μεταξὺ, αἶα for γῆ, εἴβω for λείβω, and five hundred others, less antiquated or less foreign? Homer has archaisms in every variety; some rather recent to the Athenians, and carrying their minds back only to Solon, as βασιλῆος for βασίλεως; others harsher, yet varying as dialect still, as ξεῖνος for ξένος, τίε for ἐτίμα, ἀνθεμόεις for ἀνθηρὸς, κέκλυθι for κλύε or ἄκουσον, θαμὺς for θαμινὸς or συχνὸς, ναιετάοντες for ναίοντες or οἰκοῦντες: others varying in the root, like a new language, as ἄφενος for πλοῦτος, ἰότης for βούλημα, τῆ for δέξαι, under which head are heaps of strange words, as ἀκὴν, χώομαι, βιὸς, κῆλα, μέμβλωκε, γέντο, πέπον, etc. etc. Finally comes a goodly lot of words which to this day are most uncertain in sense. My learned colleague Mr Malden has printed a paper on Homeric words, misunderstood by the later poets. Buttmann has written an octavo volume (I have the English translation, _containing 548 pages_) to discuss 106 ill-explained Homeric words. Some of these Sophocles may have understood, though we do not; but even if so, they were not the less antiquated to him. If there has been any perfect traditional understanding of Homer, we should not need to deal with so many words by elaborate argument. On the face of the Iliad alone every learner must know how many difficult adjectives occur: I write down on the spur of the moment and without reference, κρήγυον, ἀργὸς, ἀδινὸς, ἄητος, αἴητος, νώροψ, ἦνοψ, εἰλίποδες, ἕλιξ, ἑλικῶπες, ἔλλοπες, μέροπες, ἠλίβατος, ἠλέκτωρ, αἰγίλιψ, σιγαλόεις, ἰόμωρος, ἐγχεσίμωρος, πέπονες, ἠθεῖος. If Mr Arnold thought himself wiser than all the world of Greek scholars, he would not appeal to them, but would surely enlighten us all: he would tell me, for instance, what ἔλλοπες means, which Liddell and Scott do not pretend to understand; or ἠθεῖος, of which they give three different explanations. But he does not write as claiming an independent opinion, when he flatly opposes me and sets me down; he does but use surreptitiously the name of the ‘living scholar’ against me.

But I have only begun to describe the marked chasm often separating Homer’s dialect from everything Attic. It has a wide diversity of grammatical inflections, far beyond such vowel changes of dialect as answer to our provincial pronunciations. This begins with new case-endings to the nouns; in -θι, -θεν, -δε, -φι, proceeds to very peculiar pronominal forms, and then to strange or irregular verbal inflections, infinitives in -μεν, -μεναι, imperfects in -εσκε, presents in -αθω, and an immensity of strange adverbs and conjunctions. In Thiersch’s Greek Grammar, after the Accidence of common Greek is added as supplement an Homeric Grammar: and in it the Homeric Noun and Verb occupy (in the English Translation) 206 octavo pages. Who ever heard of a Spenserian Grammar? How many pages could be needed to explain Chaucer’s grammatical deviations from modern English? The bare fact of Thiersch having written so copious a grammar will enable even the unlearned to understand the monstrous misrepresentation of Homer’s dialect, on which Mr Arnold has based his condemnation of my Homeric diction. Not wishing to face the plain and undeniable facts which I have here recounted, Mr Arnold makes a ‘confession’ that we know nothing about them! and then appeals to three learned men whether Homer is antiquated to _them_; and expounds this to mean, _intelligible to them_! Well: if they have learned _modern_ Greek, of course they may understand it; but Attic Greek alone will not teach it to them. Neither will it teach them _Homer’s_ Greek. The difference of the two is in some directions so vast, that they may deserve to be called two languages as much as Portuguese and Spanish.

Much as I have written, a large side of the argument remains still untouched. The orthography of Homer was revolutionized in adapting it to Hellenic use, and in the process not only were the grammatical forms tampered with, but at least one consonant was suppressed. I am sure Mr Arnold has heard of the Digamma, though he does not see it in the current Homeric text. By the re-establishment of this letter, no small addition would be made to the ‘oddity’ of the sound to the ears of Sophocles. That the unlearned in Greek may understand this, I add, that what with us is written _eoika_, _oikon_, _oinos_, _hekas_, _eorga_, _eeipe_, _eleli_χθη, were with the poet _wewoika_, _wīkon_, _wīnos_, _wekas_ (or _swekas_?), _weworga_, _eweipe_, _eweli_χθη[42]; and so with very many other words, in which either the metre or the grammatical formation helps us to detect a lost consonant, and the analogy of other dialects or languages assures us that it is _w_ which has been lost. Nor is this all; but in certain words _sw_ seems to have vanished. What in our text is _hoi_, _heos_, _hekuros_, were probably _woi_ and _swoi_, _weos_ and _sweos_, _swekuros_. Moreover the received spelling of many other words is corrupt: for instance, _deos_, _deidoika_, _eddeisen_, _periddeisas_, _addees_. The true root must have had the form _dwe_ or _dre_ or _dhe_. That the consonant lost was really _w_, is asserted by Benfey from the Sanscrit _dvish_. Hence the true forms are _dweos_, _dedwoika_, _edweisen_, etc.... Next, the initial _l_ of Homer had in some words a stronger pronunciation, whether λλ or χλ, as in λλιταὶ, λλίσσομαι, λλωτὸς, λλιτανεύω. I have met with the opinion that the consonant lost in _anax_ is not _w_ but _k_; and that Homer’s _kanax_ is connected with English _king_. The relations of _wergon_, _weworga_, _wrexai_, to English _work_ and _wrought_ must strike everyone; but I do not here press the phenomena of the Homeric _r_ (although it became _br_ in strong Æolism), because they do not differ from those in Attic. The Attic forms εἴληφα, εἴλεγμαι for λέληφα, etc., point to a time when the initial λ of the roots was a double letter. A root λλαβ would explain Homer’s ἔλλαβε. If λλ[43] approached to its Welsh sound, that is, to χλ, it is not wonderful that such a pronunciation as οφρᾰ λλαβωμεν was possible: but it is singular that the ὕδατι χλιαρῷ of Attic is written λιαρῷ in our Homeric text, though the metre needs a double consonant. Such phenomena as χλιαρὸς and λιαρὸς, εἴβω and λειβω, ἴα and μία, εἴμαρμαι and ἔμμορε, αἶα and γαῖα, γέντο for ἕλετο, ἰωκὴ and ἴωξις with διώκω, need to be reconsidered in connection. The εἰς ἅλα ἇλτο of our Homer was perhaps εἰς ἅλα σάλλτο: when λλ was changed into λ, they compensated by circumflexing the vowel. I might add the query, Is it so certain that his θεαων was θ_eāwōn_, and not θ_eārōn_, analogous to Latin _dearum_? But dropping here everything that has the slightest uncertainty, the mere restoration of the _w_ where it is most necessary, makes a startling addition to the antiquated sound of the Homeric text. The reciters of Homer in Athens must have dropped the _w_, since it is never written. Nor indeed would Sophocles have introduced in his _Trachiniæ_, ἁ δέ οἱ φίλα δάμαρ ... leaving a hiatus most offensive to the Attics, in mere imitation of Homer, if he had been accustomed to hear from the reciters, _de woi_ or _de swoi_. In other words also, as in οὐλόμενος for ὀλόμενος, later poets have slavishly followed Homer into irregularities suggested by his peculiar metre. Whether Homer’s ᾱθανατος, αμμορος ... rose out of ανθάνατος, ἄνμορος ... is wholly unimportant when we remember his Ᾱπόλλωνος.

But this leads to remark on the acuteness of Mr Arnold’s ear. I need not ask whether he recites the Α differently in Ἆρες, Ἄρες, and in, Ᾰπόλλων Ᾱπολλωνος. He will not allow anything antiquated in Homer; and therefore it is certain that he recites,

αιδοιος τε μοι εσσι, φιλε εκυρε, δεινος τε and—ουδε εοικε—

as they are printed, and admires the rhythm. When he endures with exemplary patience such hiatuses, such dactyls as ἑεκυ, ουδεε, such a spondee as ρε δει, I can hardly wonder at his complacency in his own spondees “Between,” “To a.” He finds nothing wrong in και πεδια λωτευντα or πολλα λισσομενη. But Homer sang,

φιλε swεκυρε δwεινος τε—ουδε wεwοικε— και πεδια λλωτευντα ... πολλα λλισσομενη.