Against Achilles, up flew all, and all the bodies slain
In all his deeps, of which the heaps made bridges to his waves
He belch’d out, roaring like a bull. The unslain yet he saves
In his black whirl-pits, vast and deep. A horrid billow stood
About Achilles. On his shield the violence of the Flood
Beat so, it drove him back, and took his feet up, his fair palm
Enforc’d to catch into his stay a broad and lofty elm,
Whose roots he tossed up with his hold, and tore up all the shore.”
When any of us can make as spirited a translation as that, I think we can stand a scolding from the teachers for not being literal. George Chapman lived a very long life, and did other things worthily; wrote a mass of dramas[101]—but not of the very best; they belong to the class of plays those people talk of who want to talk of things nobody has read. I think better and richer things are before us.