To a mortal? but ye are without old age and immortal.
Was it that ye, with man, might have your thousands of sorrows?
For than man, indeed, there breathes no wretcheder creature,
Of all living things, that on earth are breathing and moving’.
Here I will observe that the use of ‘own’, in the second line for the last syllable of a dactyl, and the use of ‘To a’, in the fourth, for a complete spondee, though they do not, I think, actually spoil the run of the hexameter, are yet undoubtedly instances of that over-reliance on accent, and too free disregard of quantity, which Lord Redesdale visits with just reprehension[[33]].
I now take two longer passages in order to try my method more fully; but I still keep to passages which have already come under our notice. I quoted Chapman’s version of some passages in the speech of Hector at his parting with Andromache. One astounding conceit will probably still be in your remembrance,
When sacred Troy shall shed her tow’rs for tears of overthrow,
as a translation of ὅτ’ ἄν ποτ’ ὀλώλῃ Ἴλιος ἰρή. I will quote a few lines which will give you, also, the key-note to the Anglo-Augustan manner of rendering this passage and to the Miltonic manner of rendering it. What Mr Newman’s manner of rendering it would be, you can by this time sufficiently imagine for yourselves. Mr Wright,—to quote for once from his meritorious version instead of Cowper’s, whose strong and weak points are those of Mr Wright also,—Mr Wright begins his version of this passage thus:
All these thy anxious cares are also mine,
Partner beloved; but how could I endure