There is no question which version is the more energetic. Is Lord Derby’s nearer the original in being tamer? He has taken the “instinct with fiery life” from Chapman’s hint. The original has simply “restless,” or more familiarly “in a fidget.” There is nothing about “grappling to the death,” and “nor should I fear” is feeble where Chapman with his “long insatiately” is literal. We will give an example where Chapman has amplified his original (Book XVI. v. 426; Derby, 494; Chapman, 405):—
“Down jumped he from his chariot; down leapt his foe as light;
And as, on some far-looking rock, a cast of vultures fight,
Fly on each other, strike and truss, part, meet, and then stick by,
Tug both with crooked beaks and seres, cry, fight, and fight and cry,
So fiercely fought these angry kings.”[29]
Lord Derby’s version is nearer:—
“He said, and from his car, accoutred, sprang;
Patroclus saw and he too leaped to earth.
As on a lofty rock, with angry screams,
Hook-beaked, with talons curved, two vultures fight,
So with loud shouts these two to battle rushed.”
Chapman has made his first line out of two in Homer, but, granting the license, how rapid and springy is the verse! Lord Derby’s “withs” are not agreeable, his “shouts” is an ill-chosen word for a comparison with vultures, “talons curved” is feeble, and his verse is, as usual, mainly built up of little blocks of four syllables each. “To battle” also is vague. With whom? Homer says that they rushed each at other. We shall not discuss how much license is loyal in a translator, but, as we think his chief aim should be to give a feeling of that life and spirit which makes the immortality of his original, and is the very breath in the nostrils of all poetry, he has a right to adapt himself to the genius of his own language. If he would do justice to his author, he must make up in one passage for his unavoidable shortcomings in another. He may here and there take for granted certain exigencies of verse in his original which he feels in his own case. Even Dante, who boasted that no word had ever made him say what he did not wish, should have made an exception of rhyming ones, for these sometimes, even in so abundant a language as the Italian, have driven the most straightforward of poets into an awkward détour.
We give one more passage from Chapman:—
“And all in golden weeds
He clothed himself; the golden scourge most elegantly done
He took and mounted to his seat; and then the god begun
To drive his chariot through the waves. From whirl-pits every way
The whales exulted under him, and knew their king; the sea
For joy did open, and his horse so swift and lightly flew
The under axle-tree of brass no drop of water drew.”
Here the first half is sluggish and inadequate, but what surging vigor, what tumult of the sea, what swiftness, in the last! Here is Lord Derby’s attempt:—
“All clad in gold, the golden lash he grasped
Of curious work, and, mounting on his car,
Skimmed o’er the waves; from all the depths below
Gambolled around the monsters of the deep,
Acknowledging their king: the joyous sea
Parted her waves; swift flew the bounding steeds,
Nor was the brazen axle wet with spray.”
Chapman here is truer to his master, and the motion is in the verse itself. Lord Derby’s is description, and not picture. “Monsters of the deep” is an example of the hackneyed periphrases in which he abounds, like all men to whom language is a literary tradition, and not a living gift of the Muses. “Lash” is precisely the wrong word. Chapman is always great at sea. Here is another example from the Fourteenth Book:—