COWPER'S HOMER.
Translators of poetry may be arranged into two classes: those who, without invention, but an ardent ambition for its honours, with powers of embellishment, harmony of diction, and elegance of taste, attempt to graft their own scions on a solid stem; and those who, from real or imagined sympathy with the production of another, unable to perceive excellence through any other medium but that of their idol, renounce all individual consequence, swear to his words, and rank themselves under his banner. The first sacrifice their model to themselves and their age; the second sacrifice both to their darling original. Of both kinds of translation, the muses of this country have produced specimens: Mr. Pope ranks foremost in the former; whether that of Mr. Cowper claims the same eminence in the latter class, we are now to inquire.
Though the ultimate end of poetry be to please, and the best include both instruction and pleasure at once, it will easily be perceived that the laws which are to rule two species of translation so different, cannot be the same. The laws which the first imposes, are of its own creation and choice; the laws of the second resemble somewhat those which a master prescribes to his servant;—they have little to gratify vanity, they are related to resignation,—they are fidelity and simplicity, with as much harmony and vivacity as is compatible with both; for the translator of Homer, indeed, the difficulty will not be—how much he shall sacrifice of these two last requisites, but how much he shall be able to obtain, or to preserve.
By fidelity, some will understand the mere substitution of one language for another, with the entire sacrifice of idiom and metre, which belongs only to the literal translation of school-books. Fidelity, as Mr. C. himself has with equal happiness and precision defined it in his preface, is that quality which neither omits nor adds any thing to an author's stock. "I have invented nothing,' says he; "I have omitted nothing." When we consider the magnificent end of epic poetry,—to write for all times and all races,—to treat of what will always exist and always be understood, the puny laws of local decorum and fluctuating fashions by which the omission or modification of certain habits and customs, natural but obsolete, is prescribed, cannot come into consideration. Such laws may bind the meaner race of writers. He who translates Homer knows, that when Patroclus administers at table, or Achilles slays the sheep himself for Priam, a chief and a prince honour the chieftains and king who visit them, and disdain to leave to meaner hands these pledges of hospitality; and he translates faithfully and minutely, nor fears that any will sneer at such a custom, but those who sneer at the principle that established it. He neither "attempts to soften or refine away" the energy of passages relative to the theology of primitive ages, or fraught with allegoric images of the phenomena of nature, though they might provoke the smile of the effeminate, and of the sophists of his day. This is the first and most essential part of the fidelity prescribed to a translator; and this Mr. C. has so far scrupulously observed, that he must be allowed to have given us more of Homer, and added less of his own, than all his predecessors; and this he has done with that simplicity, that purity of manner, which we consider as the second requisite of translation.
By simplicity, we mean, what flows from the heart; and there is no instance of any translator known to us, who has so entirely transfused the primitive spirit of an ancient work into a modern language; whose own individual habits and bent, if we may be allowed the expression, seem to be so totally annihilated, or to have coalesced so imperceptibly with his model. He is so lost in the contemplation of his author's narrative, that, in reading, we no more think of him than we do of Homer, when he hurls us along by the torrent of his plan: no quaintness, no antithesis, no epigrammatic flourish, beckons our attention from its track, bids us admire or rather indignantly spurn the intruding dexterity of the writer. To have leisure to think of the author when we read, or of the artist when we behold, proves that the work of either is of an inferior class: we have neither time to inquire after Homer's birth-place or rank, when Andromache departs from her husband, nor stoop to look for the inscription of the artist's name, when we stand before the Apollo.
Considering next the harmony of numbers prescribed to the translator of a poet, Mr. C. himself allows that he has many a line 'with an ugly hitch in its gait;' and perhaps to those he acknowledges as such, and the copious list of others called forth in battle array against him, no trifling file of equally feeble, harsh, or halting ones might be added. Still we do not hesitate to give it as our opinion, founded on a careful perusal of the whole, that the style and the flow of his numbers are in general consonance with the spirit of the poem. In particular lines, he may be inferior to many; we even venture to say, that he has as often adopted or imitated the discords of Milton, as his flow of verse. The English Jupiter perhaps shakes his ambrosial curls not with the full majesty of the Greek; the plaintive tones of Andromache do not perhaps melt, or the reverberated bursts of Hector's voice break, on our ear with their native melody or strength; the stone of modern Sisyphus oppresses not with equal weight, or rebounds with equal rapidity as that of old; the hoarseness of Northern language bound in pebbly monosyllables, and almost always destitute of decided quantities, must frequently baffle the most vigorous attempt, if even no allowance were made for the terror that invests a celebrated passage, and dashes the courage of the translator with anxiety and fear. Still, if Mr. C. be not always equally successful in the detail, his work possesses that harmony which consists in the variety of well-poised periods,—periods that may be pursued without satiety, and dismiss the ear uncloyed by that monotony which attends the roundest and most fortunate rhyme, the rhyme of Dryden himself.
The chief trespass of our translator's style,—and it will be found to imply a trespass against his fidelity and simplicity,—is no doubt the intemperate use of inversion, ungraceful in itself, contrary to the idiom of his language, and, what is still worse, subversive of perspicuity, than which no quality distinguishes Homer more from all other writers: for Homer, though fraught with every element of wisdom, even in the opinion of a critic[16] to no heresy more adverse than that of acknowledging faultless merit, whether ancient or modern,—Homer, with all this fund of useful doctrine, remains to this day the most perspicuous of poets, the writer least perplexed with ambiguity of style. His tale is so clearly told, that even now, as of yore, he is or may be the companion of every age, and almost every capacity, at almost every hour. This perspicuity is perhaps not to be attained by the scantiness of modern grammar; it is perhaps not to be fully expected from the inferior powers of the most attentive translator, wearied with labour, and fancying that to be clear to others which is luminous to him: but this we cannot allow to be pleaded every where in excuse of our translator's ambiguities, after the ample testimony he bore in his preface to the perspicuity of his author. Such palliation, indeed, will not be offered by him who tells us, that not one line before us escaped his attention. We decline entering into particulars on this head, partly because Mr. C. cannot be ignorant of the passages alluded to, partly because sufficient, and even exuberant, pains have been taken by others to point them out to the public.
But if the translator often deviate from his model in so essential a requisite, he scrupulously adheres to another of much less consequence,—the observance of those customary epithets with which Homer distinguishes his gods and heroes from each other. As most of these are frequently no more than harmonious expletives of the verse, often serve only as a ceremonious introduction to his speakers, we are of opinion, that he might at least have sometimes varied them with advantage to his verse, and for the greater gratification of his reader. He who thought it a venial licence to deviate in the first line of his work from the text, who cries—'woe to the land of dwarfs,'[17]—who makes his hero often 'the swiftest of the swift,' tinges the locks of Menelaus with 'amber,' and varies Eumæus from plain swineherd to 'the illustrious steward or noble pastor of the sties,' he surely might have saved us from the 'archer-god,' 'the cloud-assembler Jove,' the 'city-spoiler chief,' the 'cloud-assembler deity,' &c. &c. &c. or, in mercy to our debauched ears, have meditated combinations more consonant to verse and language. Their casual omission would not have proved a greater infidelity than that which made him disregard names and epithets, expressly repeated in the original, of which that of Asius the Hyrtacide in the catalogue[18] is a striking instance.
Homer is ample, and the translator studies to be so, and generally with success; but Homer is likewise concise, where Mr. C. is often verbose, and where, by more careful meditation, or more frequent turning of line and period, he might have approached his master. Homer finishes; but, like Nature, without losing the whole in the parts. The observations which the translator offers on this in the Preface we are tempted to transcribe. Pref. p. xv.
"The passages which will be least noticed, and possibly not at all, except by those who shall wish to find me at a fault, are those which have cost me abundantly the most labour. It is difficult to kill a sheep with dignity in a modern language, to flay and to prepare it for the table, detailing every circumstance of the process. Difficult also, without sinking below the level of poetry, to harness mules to a waggon, particularizing every article of their furniture, straps, rings, staples, and even the tying of the knots that kept all together. Homer, who writes always to the eye, with all his sublimity and grandeur, has the minuteness of a Flemish painter."
To this remark, founded on truth, we could have wished Mr. C. had added the reason why Homer contrived to be minute without being tedious,—to appear finished without growing languid,—to accumulate details without losing the whole; defects which have invariably attended the descriptions of his finished followers, from Virgil and Apollonius, down to Ariosto, and from him to the poets of our days, Milton alone excepted. It is, because he never suffered the descriptions that branched out of his subject to become too heavy for the trunk that supported them; because he never admitted any image calculated to reflect more honour on his knowledge than on his judgment; because he did not seek, but find, not serve, but rule detail, absorbed by his great end; and chiefly, because he, and he alone, contrived to create the image he described, limb by limb, part by part, before our eyes, connecting it with his plot, and making it the offspring of action and time, the two great mediums of poetry. The chariot of Juno is to be described:[19] it is not brought forth as from a repository, tamely to wait before the celestial portico, and subjected to finical examination, the action all the while dormant: on the spur of the moment, Hebe is ordered to put its various parts together before our eyes; the goddess arranges her coursers, mounts, shakes the golden reins, and flies off with Minerva, and our anticipating expectation, to the battle. Agamemnon is to appear in panoply:[20] we are not introduced to enumerate greaves, helmet, sword, belt, corslet, spear; they become important by the action only that applies them to the hero's limbs. We are admitted to the toilet of Juno:[21] no idle étalage of ornaments ready laid out, of boxes, capsules, and cosmetics; the ringlets rise under her fingers, the pendants wave in her ears, the zone embraces her breast, perfumes rise in clouds round her body, her vest is animated with charms. Achilles is to be the great object of our attention: his shield a wonder:[22] heaven, earth, sea, gods, and men, are to occupy its orb; yet, even here he deviates not from his great rule, we see its august texture rise beneath the hammer of Vulcan, and the action proceeds with the strokes of the celestial artist. Where description must have stagnated or suspended action, it is confined to a word, 'the sable ship,' 'the hollow ship;' or despatched with a compound, 'the red-prowed ship,' 'the shadow-stretching spear.' If the instrument be too important to be passed over lightly, he, with a dexterity next to miraculous, makes it contribute to raise the character of the owner. The bow of Pandarus is traced[23] to the enormous horns of the mountain ram, and its acquisition proves the sly intrepidity of the archer, who bends it now. The sceptre of Agamemnon[24] becomes the pedigree of its wearer: it is the elaborate work of Vulcan for Jupiter, his gift to Hermes, his present to Pelops, the inheritance of Atreus, the shepherd-staff of Thyestes, the badge of command for Agamemnon. Thus Homer describes; this is the mystery, without which the most exquisite description becomes an excrescence, and only clogs and wearies the indignant and disappointed reader. Poetic imitation, we repeat it, is progressive, and less occupied with the surface of the object than its action; hence all comparisons between the poet's and the painter's manners, ought to be made with an eye to the respective end and limits of either art: nor can these observations be deemed superfluous, except by those who are most in want of them, the descriptive tribe, who imagine they paint what they only perplex, and fondly dream of enriching the realms of fancy by silly excursions into the province of the florist, chemist, or painter of still life.
Proceeding now to lay before the reader specimens of the translation itself, we shall select passages which, by their contrast, may enable him to estimate the variety of our author's powers, to poise his blemishes and beauties, and to form an idea of what he is to expect from a perusal of the whole. To exhibit only the splendid, would have been insidious; it would have been unfair to expose languor alone;—we have pursued a middle course; and when he has consulted the volumes themselves, the reader, we trust, will pronounce us equally impartial to the author and himself.
Juno, entering her apartment to array herself for her visit to Jupiter on Gargarus, is thus described—Iliad, B. XIV. p. 365.
"She sought her chamber; Vulcan, her own son,
That chamber built. He framed the solid doors,
And to the posts fast closed them with a key
Mysterious, which, herself except, in heav'n
None understood. Entering, she secured
The splendid portal. First, she laved all o'er
Her beauteous body with ambrosial lymph,
Then, polish'd it with richest oil divine
Of boundless fragrance; oil that, in the courts
Eternal only shaken, through the skies
Breathed odours, and through all the distant earth.
Her whole fair body with those sweets bedew'd,
She pass'd the comb through her ambrosial hair,
And braided her bright locks, streaming profuse
From her immortal brows; with golden studs
She made her gorgeous mantle fast before,
Ethereal texture, labour of the hands
Of Pallas, beautified with various art,
And braced it with a zone fringed all round
An hundred fold; her pendents triple-gemm'd
Luminous, graceful, in her ears she hung,
And cov'ring all her glories with a veil,
Sun-bright, new-woven, bound to her fair feet
Her sandals elegant. Thus, full attired
In all her ornaments, she issued forth,
And beck'ning Venus from the other pow'rs
Of Heav'n apart, the Goddess thus bespake:
'Daughter, beloved! Shall I obtain my suit?
Or wilt thou thwart me, angry that I aid
The Grecians, while thine aid is given to Troy?'
"To whom Jove's daughter, Venus, thus replied.
'What would majestic Juno, daughter dread
Of Saturn, sire of Jove? I feel a mind
Disposed to gratify thee, if thou ask
Things possible, and possible to me.'
"Then thus, with wiles veiling her deep design,
Imperial Juno. 'Give me those desires,
That love-enkindling power by which thou sway'st
Immortal hearts, and mortal, all alike.
For to the green Earth's utmost bounds I go,
To visit there the parent of the Gods,
Oceanus, and Tethys his espoused,
Mother of all. They kindly from the hands
Of Rhea took, and with parental care
Sustain'd and cherish'd me, what time from heav'n
The Thund'rer howl'd down Saturn, and beneath
The earth fast bound him and the barren Deep.
Them, go I now to visit, and their feuds
Innumerable to compose; for long
They have from conjugal embrace abstain'd
Through mutual wrath; whom by persuasive speech
Might I restore into each other's arms,
They would for ever love me and revere.
"Her, foam-born Venus then, Goddess of smiles,
Thus answer'd. 'Thy request, who in the arms
Of Jove reposest the Omnipotent,
Nor just it were, nor seemly, to refuse.'
"So saying, the cincture from her breast she loos'd
Embroider'd, various, her all-charming zone.
It was an ambush of sweet snares, replete
With love, desire, soft intercourse of hearts,
And music of resistless whisper'd sounds
That from the wisest steal their best resolves;
She placed it in her hands and thus she said.
'Take this—this girdle fraught with ev'ry charm.
Hide this within thy bosom, and return,
Whate'er thy purpose, mistress of it all.'
She spake; imperial Juno smiled, and still
Smiling complacent, bosom'd safe the zone."
Euphorbus falls thus under the spear of Menelaus: Iliad, B. XVII. p. 452. v. 60.
"Sounding he fell; loud rang his batter'd arms.
His locks, which even the Graces might have own'd,
Blood-sullied, and his ringlets wound about
With twine of gold and silver, swept the dust.
As the luxuriant olive, by a swain
Rear'd in some solitude where rills abound,
Puts forth her buds, and, fann'd by genial airs
On all sides, hangs her boughs with whitest flow'rs,
But by a sudden whirlwind from its trench
Uptorn, it lies extended on the field,
Such, Panthus' warlike son, Euphorbus seem'd,
By Menelaus, son of Atreus, slain
Suddenly, and of all his arms despoil'd.
But as the lion on the mountains bred,
Glorious in strength, when he hath seiz'd the best
And fairest of the herd, with savage fangs
First breaks her neck, then laps the bloody paunch
Torn wide; meantime, around him, but remote,
Dogs stand and swains clamouring, yet by fear
Repress'd, annoy him not or dare approach;
So there, all wanted courage to oppose
The force of Menelaus, glorious chief."
The beauty of this passage will no doubt prompt Mr. C. to revise the words descriptive of the olive's gender. He cannot possibly have had an eye to the passage in the XIth B. of the Odyssey, relating to the spirit of Tiresias; the licence there, and the beauty obtained by it, are founded on very different principles.
With the following ample scene between Achilles, Lycaon, and Asteropæus, we conclude our extracts from the Iliad, B. XXI. p. 553. v. 119.
"Such supplication the illustrious son
Of Priam made, but answer harsh received.
'Fool! speak'st of ransom? Name it not to me.
For till my friend his miserable fate
Accomplish'd, I was somewhat giv'n to spare,
And num'rous; whom I seized alive, I sold;
But now, of all the Trojans whom the Gods
Deliver to me, none shall death escape,
'Specially of the house of Priam, none.
Die, therefore, even thou, my friend! What mean
Thy tears, unreasonably shed, and vain?
Died not Patroclus, braver far than thou?
And look on me—see'st not to what an height
My stature tow'rs, and what a bulk I boast?
A king begat me, and a Goddess bore.
What then! A death by violence awaits
Me also, and at morn, or eve, or noon
I perish, whensoe'er the destin'd spear
Shall reach me, or the arrow from the nerve.'
"He ceased, and where the suppliant kneel, he died.
Quitting the spear, with both hands spread abroad
He sat; but swift Achilles with his sword
'Twixt neck and key-bone smote him, and his blade
Of double edge sank all into the wound.
He prone extended on the champion lay,
Bedewing with his sable blood the glebe,
'Till, by the foot, Achilles cast him far
Into the stream, and as he floated down,
Thus in wing'd accents, glorying exclaim'd.
'Lie there, and feed the fishes, which shall lick
Thy blood secure. Thy mother ne'er shall place
Thee on thy bier, nor on thy body weep,
But swift Scamander on his giddy tide
Shall bear thee to the bosom of the sea.
There, many a fish shall through the crystal flood
Ascending to the rippled surface, find
Lycaon's pamper'd flesh delicious fare.
Die Trojans! till we reach your city, you
Fleeing, and slaughtering, I. This pleasant stream
Of dimpling silver, which ye worship oft
With victim bulls, and sate with living steeds
His rapid whirlpools, shall avail you nought,
But ye shall die, die terribly till all
Shall have requited me with just amends
For my Patroclus, and for other Greeks
Slain at the ships, while I declined the war.'
"He ended, at whose words still more incensed
Scamander means devised, thenceforth, to check
Achilles, and avert the doom of Troy.
Meantime the son of Peleus, his huge spear
Grasping, assail'd Asteropæus, son
Of Pelegon, on fire to take his life.
Fair Peribœa, daughter eldest-born
Of Acessamenus, his father bore
To broad-stream'd Axius, who had clasp'd the nymph
In his embrace. On him Achilles sprang.
He, newly risen from the river, stood
Arm'd with two lances opposite, for him
Xanthus embolden'd, at the deaths incensed
Of many a youth whom, mercy none vouchsafed,
Achilles had in all his current slain.
And now, small distance interposed, they faced
Each other, when Achilles thus began.
'Who art and whence, who dar'st encounter me?
Hapless, the sires whose sons my force defy.'
"To whom the noble son of Pelegon,
Pelides, mighty chief. 'Why hast thou ask'd
My derivation? From the land I come
Of mellow-soil'd Pæonia, far remote,
Chief-leader of Pæonia's host spear-arm'd;
This day hath also the eleventh ris'n
Since I at Troy arriv'd. For my descent,
It is from Axius' river, wide-diffused,
From Axius, fairest stream that waters earth,
Sire of bold Pelegon, whom men report
My sire. Let this suffice. Now fight, Achilles!'
"So spake he threat'ning, and Achilles rais'd
Dauntless the Pelian ash. At once two spears
The hero bold, Asteropæus threw,
With both hands apt for battle. One his shield
Struck but pierced not, impeded by the gold,
Gift of a God; the other as it flew
Grazed his right elbow; sprang the sable blood;
But, overflying him, the spear in earth
Stood planted deep, still hung'ring for the prey.
Then, full at the Pæonian Peleus' son
Hurl'd forth his weapon with unsparing force,
But vain; he struck the sloping river-bank,
And mid-length deep stood plunged the ashen beam.
Then, with his faulchion drawn, Achilles flew
To smite him; he in vain, meantime, essay'd
To pluck the rooted spear forth from the bank;
Thrice with full force he shook the beam, and thrice,
Although reluctant, left it; at his fourth
Last effort, bending it, he sought to break
The ashen spear-beam of Æacides,
But perish'd by his keen-edg'd faulchion first;
For on the belly, at his navel's side,
He smote him; to the ground effused fell all
His bowels, Death's dim shadows veil'd his eyes,
Achilles ardent on his bosom fix'd
His foot, despoil'd him, and exulting cried.
'Lie there; though river-sprung thou find'st it hard
To cope with sons of Jove omnipotent.
Thou said'st, a mighty river is my sire—
But my descent from mightier Jove I boast;
My father, whom the myrmidons obey,
Is son of Æacus, and he, of Jove.
As Jove all streams excels that seek the sea,
So, Jove's descendants nobler are than theirs.
Behold a River at thy side—Let Him
Afford thee, if he can, some succour—No,
He may not fight against Saturnian Jove.
Therefore, not kingly Achelous,
Nor yet the strength of Ocean's vast profound,
Although from him all rivers and all seas,
All fountains, and all wells proceed, may boast
Comparison with Jove, but even He
Astonish'd trembles at his fiery bolt,
And his dread thunders rattling in the sky."
On opening the Odyssey, we present the reader with the interview of Ulysses and his mother in the Shades, and the description of Tyro's amour with Neptune.—Odyss. B. XI. p. 254.
"She said; I ardent wish'd to clasp the shade
Of my departed mother; thrice I sprang
Toward her, by desire impetuous urged,
And thrice she flitted from between my arms,
Light as a passing shadow or a dream.
Then, pierced by keener grief, in accents wing'd
With filial earnestness, I thus replied:—
'My mother, why elud'st thou my attempt
To clasp thee, that ev'n here, in Pluto's realm,
We might to full satiety indulge
Our grief, enfolded in each other's arms?
Hath Proserpine, alas! only dispatch'd
A shadow to me, to augment my woe?'
"Then, instant, thus the venerable form.
'Ah, son! thou most afflicted of mankind!
On thee, Jove's daughter, Proserpine, obtrudes
No airy semblance vain; but such the state
And nature is of mortals once deceased.
For they nor muscle have, nor flesh, nor bone;
All those, (the spirit from the body once
Divorced) the violence of fire consumes,
And, like a dream, the soul flies swift away.
But haste thou back to light, and, taught thyself
These sacred truths, hereafter teach thy spouse.'
"Thus mutual we conferr'd. Then, thither came,
Encouraged forth by royal Proserpine,
Shades female num'rous, all who consorts, erst,
Or daughters were of mighty chiefs renown'd.
About the sable blood frequent they swarm'd,
But I consid'ring sat, how I might each
Interrogate, and thus resolv'd. My sword
Forth drawing from beside my sturdy thigh,
Firm I prohibited the ghosts to drink
The blood together; they successive came;
Each told her own distress; I question'd all.
"There, first, the high-born Tyro I beheld;
She claim'd Salmoneus as her sire, and wife
Was once of Cretheus, son of Æolus,
Enamour'd of Enipeus, stream divine.
Loveliest of all that water earth, beside
His limpid current she was wont to stray,
When Ocean's God (Enipeus' form assumed)
Within the eddy-whirling river's mouth
Embraced her; there, while the o'er-arching flood,
Uplifted mountainous, conceal'd the God
And his fair human bride, her virgin zone
He loos'd, and o'er her eyes sweet sleep diffused.
His am'rous purpose satisfied, he grasp'd
Her hand, affectionate, and thus he said.
'Rejoice in this, my love, and when the year
Shall tend to consummation of its course,
Thou shalt produce illustrious twins, for love
Immortal never is unfruitful love.
Rear them with all a mother's care; meantime,
Hence to thy home. Be silent. Name it not,
For I am Neptune, shaker of the shores.'
"So saying, he plunged into the billowy deep.
She, pregnant grown, Pelias and Neleus bore,
Both valiant ministers of mighty Jove."
The visit of Hermes to Calypso and her abode, are thus described.—Odyss. B. V. p. 110.
"He ended, nor the Argicide refused,
Messenger of the skies; his sandals fair,
Ambrosial, golden, to his feet he bound,
Which o'er the moist wave, rapid as the wind,
Bear him, and o'er th' illimitable earth,
Then took his rod, with which, at will, all eyes
He closes soft, or opes them wide again.
So arm'd, forth flew the valiant Argicide.
Alighting on Pieria, down he stoop'd
To ocean, and the billows lightly skimm'd
In form a sea-mew, such as in the bays
Tremendous of the barren deep her food
Seeking dips oft in brine her ample wing.
In such disguise, o'er many a wave he rode,
But reaching, now, that isle remote, forsook
The azure deep, and at the spacious grot
Where dwelt the amber-tressed nymph arrived,
Found her within. A fire on all the hearth
Blazed sprightly, and, afar-diffused, the scent
Of smooth split cedar and of cyprus-wood.
Odorous, burning, cheer'd the happy isle.
She, busied at the loom, and plying fast
Her golden shuttle, with melodious voice
Sat chaunting there; a grove on either side,
Alder and poplar, and the redolent branch
Wide-spread of cypress, skirted dark the cave.
There many a bird of broadest pinion built
Secure her nest, the owl, the kite, and daw
Long-tongued, frequenter of the sandy shores.
A garden-vine luxuriant on all sides
Mantled the spacious cavern, cluster-hung
Profuse; four fountains of serenest lymph
Their sinuous course pursuing side by side,
Stray'd all around, and ev'ry where appear'd
Meadows of softest verdure, purpled o'er
With violets; it was a scene to fill
A God from heav'n with wonder and delight.
Hermes, heav'n's messenger, admiring stood
That sight, and having all survey'd, at length
Enter'd the grotto; nor the lovely nymph
Him knew not soon as seen, for not unknown
Each to the other the immortals are,
How far soever sep'rate their abodes.
Yet found he not within the mighty chief
Ulysses; he sat weeping on the shore,
Forlorn, for there his custom was with groans
Of sad regret t' afflict his breaking heart,
Looking continual o'er the barren deep.
Then thus Calypso, nymph divine, the God
Question'd from her resplendent throne august."
With the subsequent passage of Ulysses' stratagem in the cave of Polypheme, we shall dismiss the Odyssey, and add a few observations.—Odyss. B. IX. p. 207.
"'Cyclops! thou hast my noble name inquired,
Which I will tell thee. Give me, in return,
The promised boon, some hospitable pledge.
My name is[25] Outis; Outis I am call'd,
At home, abroad, wherever I am known.'
"So I; to whom he, savage, thus replied:
'Outis, when I have eaten all his friends,
Shall be my last regale. Be that thy boon.'
"He spake, and, downward sway'd, fell resupine,
With his huge neck aslant. All conqu'ring sleep
Soon seized him. From his gullet gush'd the wine
With human morsels mingled, many a blast
Sonorous issuing from his glutted maw.
Then, thrusting far the spike of olive-wood
Into the embers glowing on the hearth,
I heated it, and cheer'd my friends the while,
Lest any should, through fear, shrink from his part.
But when that stake of olive-wood, though green,
Should soon have flamed, for it was glowing hot,
I bore it to his side. Then all my aids
Around me gather'd, and the Gods infused
Heroic fortitude into our hearts.
They, seizing the hot stake rasp'd to a point,
Bored his eye with it, and myself, advanced
To a superior stand, twirl'd it about.
As when a shipwright with his wimble bores
Tough oaken timber, placed on either side
Below, his fellow artists strain the thong
Alternate, and the restless iron spins;
So grasping hard the stake pointed with fire,
We twirl'd it in his eye; the bubbling blood
Boil'd round about the brand; his pupil sent
A scalding vapour forth that singed his brow,
And all his eye-roots crackled in the flame.
As when the smith an hatchet or large axe
Temp'ring with skill, plunges the hissing blade
Deep in cold water, (whence the strength of steel,)
So hiss'd his eye around the olive-wood.
The howling monster with his outcry fill'd
The hollow rock, and I, with all my aids,
Fled terrified. He, plucking forth the spike
From his burnt socket, mad with anguish, cast
The implement, all bloody, far away.
Then, bellowing, he sounded forth the name
Of ev'ry Cyclops dwelling in the caves
Around him, on the wind-swept mountain tops;
They, at his cry flocking from ev'ry part,
Circled his den, and of his ail enquired.
'What grievous hurt hath caused thee, Polypheme!
Thus yelling, to alarm the peaceful ear
Of Night, and break our slumbers? Fear'st thou lest
Some mortal man drive off thy flocks? or fear'st
Thyself to die by cunning or by force?'
"Them answer'd, then, Polypheme from his cave,
'Oh, friends! I die, and Outis gives the blow.'
"To whom with accents wing'd his friends without.
'If no[26] man harm thee, but thou art alone,
And sickness feel'st, it is the stroke of Jove,
And thou must bear it; yet invoke for aid
Thy father Neptune, sov'reign of the floods.'
"So saying, they went, and in my heart I laugh'd;
That by the fiction only of a name,
Slight stratagem! I had deceived them all."
If translation be chiefly written for those who cannot read the original, it is, we apprehend, self-evident, that Polypheme's charging Outis with an attempt on his life, and the departure of his associates in consequence of this information, must remain a problem to those who do not understand the Greek. To them, Outis is the name of somebody, and why that should pacify the giants who came to assist the Cyclops, appears unsatisfactory, if not inconceivable. Clarke, when he adduces the passage from the Acta Eruditorum, which censures Gyphanius for having translated Outis, nemo, would have done well if he had adduced other reasons in support of his opinion (if indeed he coincided in opinion with that passage) than grammatical futilities. The separation of ου-δε can be no reason why the brethren of Polypheme should depart; his destruction remained a call equally urgent for their assistance, whether it was carrying on by fraud or force. In Homer, whenever a man is asked after his name, he replies, they call me so, or my mother has given me such a name; and this is always in the accusative. Ulysses, to deceive Polypheme, consults probability, and the customary reply to a question after a name, and therefore calls him Outin, not Outina, to escape the suspicion of the Cyclops; but well surmised, or Homer at least for him, that his enemy would pronounce his name in the nominative, if he should be asked who was his destroyer. If the deception be puerile, it is to be considered, that no sense can be obtained without it; and on whom is it practised? on something worse than a solitary barbarian not trained up in social craft; it is exerted on a monster of mixed nature, unacquainted with other ideas than the immediate ones of self-preservation, brutal force, and greedy appetite. The whole fiction is indeed one of those which Longinus calls dreams, but the dreams of Jupiter; and the improbabilities of the component parts vanish in the pathos, and the restless anguish of curiosity which overwhelms us in the conduct of the tale.[27]
That the translation of the word Κραταυς, in the celebrated passage of Sisyphus, should have met with indulgence from those who insist on the preservation of Outis, may not be matter of surprise, because, as Mr. C. observes, 'it is now perhaps impossible to ascertain with precision what Homer meant by the word κραταυς, which he only uses here and in the next book, where it is the name of Scylla's dam.' We give it up too, though not willingly, because the ancients appear to have been as ignorant of the being so called as ourselves; some of whom, by cutting the word into two, attempted to make it rather an attribute of the stone itself, than the effect of some external power: but from him, we are more surprised at the observation on the word 'ἀναιδης,' in the same passage, as 'also of very doubtful explication.' Is it not the constant practice of Homer to diffuse energy by animating the inanimate? has he forgotten the maddening lances, the greedy arrows, the roaring shores, the groaning earth, the winged words, the cruel brass, and a thousand other metaphors from life? and if these occurred not to his memory, the observation of Aristotle on the passage in question, as quoted by Clarke, might have removed all doubts about the true sense of the word ἀναιδης, when applied to a rock.
Mr. Cowper, in his interpretation of many words and expressions of dubious explication, has generally chosen that sense which seemed most to contribute to the perspicuity of the passage: thus in Iliad, iv. v. 306, seq. when Nestor instructs his troops before the battle, he has, in our opinion, adopted the best and only sense, though rejected by Clarke, with more subtilty than reason. Thus he has substituted the word 'monster' for the epithet ἀμαιμακετος, Iliad, xvi. 329, with sufficient propriety, whether that word be expressive of enormity of dimension, or untameableness of disposition; in both which senses it occurs in Pindar.[28] We might enlarge on the terms ἀμητροχιτωνας; τροπαι Ἠελιοιο; ορσοθυρη, and a variety of others equally disputed or obscure; but as they will be sufficiently recognized by the scholar, whilst the unlearned reader is enabled to pass smoothly over them, we shall just observe, that the interpretation of the proverbial passage in Odyss. viii. v. 351,
Δειλαι τοι δειλων γε και ἐγγυαι ἐγγυαασθαι
'Lame suitor, lame security,'
is the happiest instance of the superiority of plain sense over learning merely intricate.
When, in Odyss. iv. v. 73, Telemachus describes the mansion of Menelaus, Mr. C., with all the translators, renders Ἠλεκτρον 'amber,' contrary to the explanation of Pliny, who defines electrum to be gold, containing a fifth part of silver, and quotes the Homeric passage.[29] Amber ornaments, we believe, are not mentioned by Homer in the singular. Thus, in Odyss. xviii. 294-5, the golden necklace presented by Eurymachus, is called Ἠλεκτροισιν ἐερμενον, inlaid with amber drops.
Homer, Odyss. xi. v. 579, seq., places two vultures by the sides of Tityus, who entered his entrails, and tore his liver by turns, and adds, to enhance the terror of the image,
ὁ δ' οὐκ ἀπαμυνετο χερσι,
'he had not hands to rescue him;' entranced, no doubt, or chained to the ground. This Mr. C. translates—
"——Two vultures on his liver prey'd,
Scooping his entrails; nor suffic'd his hands
To fray them thence."——
Why not, if he had a hand for each vulture, unless we suppose him chained or entranced?
Odyss. xix. 389, Ulysses removes from the light of the hearth into the shade, lest the nurse, who had already discovered a striking resemblance in his shape, voice, and limbs, to those of her lost master, by handling his thigh, and seeing all at once the scar on it, should be convinced that he could be no other, and betray him. This Mr. C. translates thus: p. 453.
"Ulysses (for beside the hearth he sat)
Turn'd quick his face into the shade, alarm'd
Lest, handling him, she should at once remark
His scar, and all his stratagem unveil."
He who, unacquainted with the rest, should read these lines, would either conclude that the nurse had not looked at the face before, or that the scar was in the face. Minerva had taken care that Ulysses should not be discovered by his countenance, making identity vanish into mere resemblance; but as the scar in such a place, without a miracle, could belong only to Ulysses, he attempted to elude the farther guesses of the nurse, by having his thigh washed in the dark.
Odyss. viii. 400, Euryalus, eager to appease Ulysses for the affront offered to him, addressed Alcinous his chief—
Τον δ' αυτ' Ἐυρυαλος ἀπαμειβετο, φωνησεν τε
Ἀλκινοε κρειοι.——
But Mr. C. turns Alcinous into his father;
"When thus Euryalus his sire addressed."
The sons of Alcinous were Laodamus, Halius, and Clytoneus.
When Mr. C., Odyss. xi. v. 317, seq. tells us that Alcmena bore Megara to Creon, he says surely what Homer has not said,[30] who mentions Megara as the daughter of Creon, and one of the women Ulysses saw, and not as the sister and wife of Hercules together.
But enough. Of similar observations, perhaps more might be added. These at least will show the attention with which we have compared copy and original. If, among the emendations of a future edition, they be not passed over as cavils, or treated as nugatory, our purpose will be fully answered. It would be difficult to determine in which of the two poems Mr. C. has succeeded best. We however incline to decide in favour of the Odyssey. The prevalent mixture of social intercourse, domestic manners, and rural images, with the scenes of terror and sublimity, as upon the whole it renders that poem more pleasing, though not more interesting than the Iliad, and what we would call a poem for all hours, appears to us to have been more adapted to the mild tones of our translator, than the uninterrupted sublimity and pathos of the Iliad. In parting from both, we congratulate the author on the production, and the public on the acquisition of so much excellence. We contemplate the whole in its mass as an immense fabric reared for some noble purpose: on too near an approach, not perhaps of equal beauty, with parts left rough that might have been smoothed to neatness, and others only neat that might have been polished into elegance; blemishes that vanish at a proper distance: by uniform grandeur of style, the whole strikes with awe and delight, attracts now the eyes of the race who saw it rise, and, secure of duration from the firmness of its base and the solidity of its materials, will command the admiration of posterity.
CHAPTER VI.
Fuseli's proficiency in Italian History, Literature, and the Fine Arts, exemplified in his Criticism on Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici.
The following review of Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici, will shew Fuseli's critical knowledge of Italian history.