By this the storm grew loud apace:
The waterwraith was shrieking,
And in the scowl of heav’n each face
Grew dark as they were speaking.
Whether I use this metre well or ill, I maintain that it is essentially a noble metre, a popular metre, a metre of great capacity. It is essentially the national ballad metre, for the double rhyme is an accident. Of course it can be applied to low, as well as to high subjects; else it would not be popular: it would not be ‘of a like moral genius’ to the Homeric metre, which was available equally for the comic poem Margites, for the precepts of Pythagoras, for the pious prosaic hymn of Cleanthes, for the driest prose of a naval catalogue[[39]], in short, for all early thought. Mr Arnold appears to forget, though he cannot be ignorant, that prose-composition is later than Homer, and that in the epical days every initial effort at prose history was carried on in Homeric doggerel by the Cyclic poets, who traced the history of Troy ab ovo in consecutive chronology. I say, he is merely inadvertent, he cannot be ignorant, that the Homeric metre, like my metre, subserves prosaic thought with the utmost facility; but I hold it to be, not indavertence, but blindness, when he does not see that Homer’s τὸν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος is a line of as thoroughly unaffected oratio pedestris as any verse of Pythagoras or Horace’s Satires. But on diction I defer to speak, till I have finished the topic of metre.
I do not say that any measure is faultless. Every measure has its foible: mine has that fault which every uniform line must have; it is liable to monotony. This is evaded of course, as in the hexameter or rather as in Milton’s line, first, by varying the cæsura, secondly, by varying certain feet, within narrow and well understood limits, thirdly, by irregularity in the strength of accents, fourthly, by varying the weight of the unaccented syllables also. All these things are needed, for the mere sake of breaking uniformity. I will not here assert that Homer’s many marvellous freedoms, such as ἑκηβόλου Ἀπόλλωνος, were dictated by this aim, like those in the Paradise Lost; but I do say, that it is most unjust, most unintelligent, in critics, to produce single lines from me, and criticize them as rough or weak, instead of examining them and presenting them as part of a mass. How would Shakspeare stand this sort of test? nay, or Milton? The metrical laws of a long poem cannot be the same as of a sonnet: single verses are organic elements of a great whole. A crag must not be cut like a gem. Mr Arnold should remember Aristotle’s maxim, that popular eloquence (and such is Homer’s) should be broad, rough and highly coloured, like scene painting, not polished into delicacy like miniature. But I speak now of metre, not yet of diction. In any long and popular poem it is a mistake to wish every line to conform severely to a few types; but to claim this of a translator of Homer is a doubly unintelligent exaction, when Homer’s own liberties transgress all bounds; many of them being feebly disguised by later double spellings, as εἵως, εἷος, invented for his special accommodation.
The Homeric verse has a rhythmical advantage over mine in less rigidity of cæsura. Though the Hexameter was made out of two Doric lines, yet no division of sense, no pause of the voice or thought, is exacted between them. The chasm between two English verses is deeper. Perhaps, on the side of syntax, a four + three English metre drives harder towards monotony than Homer’s own verse. For other reasons, it lies under a like disadvantage, compared with Milton’s metre. The secondary cæsuras possible in the four feet are of course less numerous than those in the five feet, and the three-foot verse has still less variety. To my taste, it is far more pleasing that the short line recur less regularly; just as the parœmiac of Greek anapæsts is less pleasant in the Aristophanic tetrameter, than when it comes frequent but not expected. This is a main reason why I prefer Scott’s free metre to my own; yet, without rhyme, I have not found how to use his freedom. Mr Arnold wrongly supposes me to have overlooked his main and just objections to rhyming Homer; viz. that so many Homeric lines are intrinsically made for isolation. In p. ix of my Preface I called it a fatal embarrassment. But the objection applies in its full strength only against Pope’s rhymes, not against Walter Scott’s.
Mr Gladstone has now laid before the public his own specimens of Homeric translation. Their dates range from 1836 to 1859. It is possible that he has as strong a distaste as Mr Arnold for my version; for he totally ignores the archaic, the rugged, the boisterous element in Homer. But as to metre, he gives me his full suffrage. He has lines with four accents, with three, and a few with two; not one with five. On the whole, his metre, his cadences, his varying rhymes, are those of Scott. He has more trochaic lines than I approve. He is truthful to Homer on many sides; and (such is the delicate grace and variety admitted by the rhyme) his verses are more pleasing than mine. I do not hesitate to say, that if all Homer could be put before the public in the same style equally well with his best pieces, a translation executed on my principles could not live in the market at its side; and certainly I should spare my labour. I add, that I myself prefer the former piece which I quote to my own, even while I see his defects: for I hold that his graces, at which I cannot afford to aim, more than make up for his losses. After this confession, I frankly contrast his rendering of the two noblest passages with mine, that the reader may see, what Mr Arnold does not show, my weak and strong sides.
Gladstone, Iliad 4, 422
As when the billow gathers fast