Deseruit pede Pœna claudo[[28]].
The thought itself of these lines is familiar enough to Homer and Hesiod; but neither Homer nor Hesiod, in expressing it, could possibly have so complicated its expression as Horace complicates it, and purposely complicates it, by his use of the word deseruit. I say that this complicated evolution of the thought necessarily complicates the movement and rhythm of a poet; and that the Miltonic blank verse, of course the first model of blank verse which suggests itself to an English translator of Homer, bears the strongest marks of such complication, and is therefore entirely unfit to render Homer.
If blank verse is used in translating Homer, it must be a blank verse of which English poetry, naturally swayed much by Milton’s treatment of this metre, offers at present hardly any examples. It must not be Cowper’s blank verse, who has studied Milton’s pregnant manner with such effect, that, having to say of Mr Throckmorton that he spares his avenue, although it is the fashion with other people to cut down theirs, he says that Benevolus ‘reprieves the obsolete prolixity of shade’. It must not be Mr Tennyson’s blank verse.
For all experience is an arch, wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose distance fades
For ever and for ever, as we gaze.
It is no blame to the thought of those lines, which belongs to another order of ideas than Homer’s, but it is true, that Homer would certainly have said of them, ‘It is to consider too curiously to consider so’. It is no blame to their rhythm, which belongs to another order of movement than Homer’s, but it is true that these three lines by themselves take up nearly as much time as a whole book of the Iliad. No; the blank verse used in rendering Homer must be a blank verse of which perhaps the best specimens are to be found in some of the most rapid passages of Shakspeare’s plays,—a blank verse which does not dovetail its lines into one another, and which habitually ends its lines with monosyllables. Such a blank verse might no doubt be very rapid in its movement, and might perfectly adapt itself to a thought plainly and directly evolved; and it would be interesting to see it well applied to Homer. But the translator who determines to use it, must not conceal from himself that in order to pour Homer into the mould of this metre, he will have entirely to break him up and melt him down, with the hope of then successfully composing him afresh; and this is a process which is full of risks. It may, no doubt, be the real Homer that issues new from it; it is not certain beforehand that it cannot be the real Homer, as it is certain that from the mould of Pope’s couplet or Cowper’s Miltonic verse it cannot be the real Homer that will issue; still, the chances of disappointment are great. The result of such an attempt to renovate the old poet may be an Æson; but it may also, and more probably will be a Pelias.
When I say this, I point to the metre which seems to me to give the translator the best chance of preserving the general effect of Homer,—that third metre which I have not yet expressly named, the hexameter. I know all that is said against the use of hexameters in English poetry; but it comes only to this, that, among us, they have not yet been used on any considerable scale with success. Solvitur ambulando: this is an objection which can best be met by producing good English hexameters. And there is no reason in the nature of the English language why it should not adapt itself to hexameters as well as the German language does; nay, the English language, from its greater rapidity, is in itself better suited than the German for them. The hexameter, whether alone or with the pentameter, possesses a movement, an expression, which no metre hitherto in common use amongst us possesses, and which I am convinced English poetry, as our mental wants multiply, will not always be content to forgo. Applied to Homer, this metre affords to the translator the immense support of keeping him more nearly than any other metre to Homer’s movement; and, since a poet’s movement makes so large a part of his general effect, and to reproduce this general effect is at once the translator’s indispensable business and so difficult for him, it is a great thing to have this part of your model’s general effect already given you in your metre, instead of having to get it entirely for yourself.
These are general considerations; but there are also one or two particular considerations which confirm me in the opinion that for translating Homer into English verse the hexameter should be used. The most successful attempt hitherto made at rendering Homer into English, the attempt in which Homer’s general effect has been best retained, is an attempt made in the hexameter measure. It is a version of the famous lines in the third book of the Iliad, which end with that mention of Castor and Pollux from which Mr Ruskin extracts the sentimental consolation already noticed by me. The author is the accomplished Provost of Eton, Dr Hawtrey; and this performance of his must be my excuse for having taken the liberty to single him out for mention, as one of the natural judges of a translation of Homer, along with Professor Thompson and Professor Jowett, whose connection with Greek literature is official. The passage is short[[29]]; and Dr Hawtrey’s version of it is suffused with a pensive grace which is, perhaps, rather more Virgilian than Homeric; still it is the one version of any part of the Iliad which in some degree reproduces for me the original effect of Homer: it is the best, and it is in hexameters.
This is one of the particular considerations that incline me to prefer the hexameter, for translating Homer, to our established metres. There is another. Most of you, probably, have some knowledge of a poem by Mr Clough, The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich, a long-vacation pastoral, in hexameters. The general merits of that poem I am not going to discuss: it is a serio-comic poem, and, therefore, of essentially different nature from the Iliad. Still in two things it is, more than any other English poem which I can call to mind, like the Iliad: in the rapidity of its movement, and the plainness and directness of its style. The thought of this poem is often curious and subtle, and that is not Homeric; the diction is often grotesque, and that is not Homeric. Still by its rapidity of movement, and plain and direct manner of presenting the thought however curious in itself, this poem, which, being as I say a serio-comic poem, has a right to be grotesque, is grotesque truly, not, like Mr Newman’s version of the Iliad, falsely. Mr Clough’s odd epithets, ‘The grave man nicknamed Adam’, ‘The hairy Aldrich’, and so on, grow vitally and appear naturally in their place; while Mr Newman’s ‘dapper-greaved Achaians’, and ‘motley-helmed Hector’, have all the air of being mechanically elaborated and artificially stuck in. Mr Clough’s hexameters are excessively, needlessly rough; still owing to the native rapidity of this measure, and to the directness of style which so well allies itself with it, his composition produces a sense in the reader which Homer’s composition also produces, and which Homer’s translator ought to re-produce,—the sense of having, within short limits of time, a large portion of human life presented to him, instead of a small portion.