Ere I hear thy cries, and thy captivity told of.
The main question, whether or no this version reproduces for him the movement and general effect of Homer better than other versions[[34]] of the same passage, I leave for the judgment of the scholar. But the particular points, in which the operation of my own rules is manifested, are as follows. In the second line I leave out the epithet of the Trojan women ἑλκεσιπέπλους, altogether. In the sixth line I put in five words ‘in spite of the future’, which are in the original by implication only, and are not there actually expressed. This I do, because Homer, as I have before said, is so remote from one who reads him in English, that the English translator must be even plainer, if possible, and more unambiguous than Homer himself; the connection of meaning must be even more distinctly marked in the translation than in the original. For in the Greek language itself there is something which brings one nearer to Homer, which gives one a clue to his thought, which makes a hint enough; but in the English language this sense of nearness, this clue, is gone; hints are insufficient, everything must be stated with full distinctness. In the ninth line Homer’s epithet for Priam is ἐυμμελίω,—‘armed with good ashen spear’, say the dictionaries; ‘ashen-speared’, translates Mr Newman, following his own rule to ‘retain every peculiarity of his original’,—I say, on the other hand, that ἐυμμελίω has not the effect of a ‘peculiarity’ in the original, while ‘ashen-speared’ has the effect of a ‘peculiarity’ in English; and ‘warlike’ is as marking an equivalent as I dare give for ἐυμμελίω, for fear of disturbing the balance of expression in Homer’s sentence. In the fourteenth line, again, I translate χαλκοχιτώνων by ‘brazen-coated’. Mr Newman, meaning to be perfectly literal, translates it by ‘brazen-cloaked’, an expression which comes to the reader oddly and unnaturally, while Homer’s word comes to him quite naturally; but I venture to go as near to a literal rendering as ‘brazen-coated’, because a ‘coat of brass’ is familiar to us all from the Bible, and familiar, too, as distinctly specified in connection with the wearer. Finally, let me further illustrate from the twentieth line the value which I attach, in a question of diction, to the authority of the Bible. The word ‘pre-eminent’ occurs in that line; I was a little in doubt whether that was not too bookish an expression to be used in rendering Homer, as I can imagine Mr Newman to have been a little in doubt whether his ‘responsively accosted’ for ἀμειβόμενος προσέφη, was not too bookish an expression. Let us both, I say, consult our Bibles: Mr Newman will nowhere find it in his Bible that David, for instance, ‘responsively accosted Goliath’; but I do find in mine that ‘the right hand of the Lord hath the pre-eminence’; and forthwith I use ‘pre-eminent’, without scruple. My Bibliolatry is perhaps excessive; and no doubt a true poetic feeling is the Homeric translator’s best guide in the use of words; but where this feeling does not exist, or is at fault, I think he cannot do better than take for a mechanical guide Cruden’s Concordance. To be sure, here as elsewhere, the consulter must know how to consult,—must know how very slight a variation of word or circumstance makes the difference between an authority in his favour, and an authority which gives him no countenance at all; for instance, the ‘Great simpleton!’ (for μέγα νήπιος) of Mr Newman, and the ‘Thou fool!’ of the Bible, are something alike; but ‘Thou fool!’ is very grand, and ‘Great simpleton!’ is an atrocity. So, too, Chapman’s ‘Poor wretched beasts’ is pitched many degrees too low; but Shakspeare’s ‘Poor venomous fool, Be angry and despatch!’ is in the grand style.
One more piece of translation and I have done. I will take the passage in which both Chapman and Mr Newman have already so much excited our astonishment, the passage at the end of the nineteenth book of the Iliad, the dialogue between Achilles and his horse Xanthus, after the death of Patroclus. Achilles begins:
‘Xanthus and Balius both, ye far-famed seed of Podarga!
See that ye bring your master home to the host of the Argives
In some other sort than your last, when the battle is ended;
And not leave him behind, a corpse on the plain, like Patroclus’.
Then, from beneath the yoke, the fleet horse Xanthus addressed him:
Sudden he bowed his head, and all his mane, as he bowed it,
Streamed to the ground by the yoke, escaping from under the collar;