Ah! unhappy pair! to Peleus[[36]] why did we give you,
To a mortal?
In p. [52], he with very gratuitous insult remarks, that ‘Poor wretched beasts’ is a little over-familiar; but this is no objection to it for the ballad-manner[[37]]: it is good enough ... for Mr Newman’s Iliad, ... etc.’ Yet I myself have not thought it good enough for my Iliad.
3. In p. [107], Mr Arnold gives his own translation of the discourse between Achilles and his horse; and prefaces it with the words, ‘I will take the passage in which both Chapman and Mr Newman have already so much excited our astonishment’. But he did not quote my translation of the noble part of the passage, consisting of 19 lines; he has merely quoted[[38]] the tail of it, 5 lines; which are altogether inferior. Of this a sufficient indication is, that Mr Gladstone has translated the 19 and omitted the 5. I shall below give my translation parallel to Mr Gladstone’s. The curious reader may compare it with Mr Arnold’s, if he choose.
4. In p. [102], Mr Arnold quotes from Chapman as a translation of ὅταν ποτ’ ὀλώλῃ Ιλιος ἱρὴ,
‘When sacred Troy shall shed her tow’rs for tears of overthrow’;
and adds: ‘What Mr Newman’s manner of rendering would be, you can by this time sufficiently imagine for yourselves’. Would be! Why does he set his readers to ‘imagine’, when in fewer words he could tell them what my version is? It stands thus:
A day, when sacred Ilium | for overthrow is destin’d,—
which may have faults unperceived by me, but is in my opinion far better than Mr Arnold’s, and certainly did not deserve to be censured side by side with Chapman’s absurdity. I must say plainly; a critic has no right to hide what I have written, and stimulate his readers to despise me by these indirect methods.
I proceed to my own metre. It is exhibited in this stanza of Campbell: