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.