“And as, when with unwieldy waves the great sea forefeels winds
That both ways murmur, and no way her certain current finds,
But pants and swells confusedly, here goes, and there will stay,
Till on it air casts one firm wind, and then it rolls away.”
Observe how the somewhat ponderous movement of the first verse assists the meaning of the words.
He is great, too, in single phrases and lines:—
“And as, from top of some steep hill, the Lightener strips a cloud
And lets a great sky out of Heaven, in whose delightsome light
All prominent foreheads, forests, towers, and temples cheer the sight.’
(Book XVI. v. 286.)
The lion “lets his rough brows down so low they hide his eyes”; the flames “wrastle” in the woods; “rude feet dim the day with a fog of dust;” and so in a hundred other instances.
For an example of his more restrained vigor, take the speech of Sarpedon in the Twelfth Book of the Iliad, and for poetic beauty, the whole story of Ulysses and Nausikaa in the Odyssey. It was here that Keats made himself Grecian and learned to versify.
Mr. Hooper has done his work of editing well. But he has sometimes misapprehended his author, and distorted his meaning by faulty punctuation. In one of the passages already cited, Mr. Hooper’s text stands thus: “Lest I be prejudiced with opinion, to dissent of ignorance, or singularity.” All the commas which darken the sense should be removed. Chapman meant to say, “Lest I be condemned beforehand by people thinking I dissent out of ignorance or singularity.” (Iliad Vol. I. p. 23.) So on the next page the want of a hyphen makes nonsense: “And saw the round coming [round-coming] of this silver bow of our Phoebus,” that is, the crescent coming to the full circle. In the translations, too, the pointing needs reformation now and then, but shows, on the whole, a praiseworthy fidelity. We will give a few examples of what we believe to be errors on the part of Mr. Hooper, who, by the way, is weakest on points which concern the language of Chapman’s day. We follow the order of the text as most convenient.
“Bid” (Il. i.) is explained to mean “threaten, challenge,” where “offer” would be the right word.
“And cast
The offal of all to the deep.” (Il. i. 309.)
Surely a slip of Chapman’s pen. He must have intended to write “Of all the offal,” a transversion common with him and needed here to avoid a punning jingle.