A critic who objects to this, has to learn English from my translation. Does he imagine that Dainty can mean nothing but ‘over-particular as to food’?
In the compound Dainty-cheek’d, Homer shows his own epic peculiarity. It is imitated in the similar word εὐπάρᾳος applied to the Gorgon Medusa by Pindar: but not in the Attics. I have somewhere read, that the rudest conception of female beauty is that of a brilliant red plump cheek; such as an English clown admires (was this what Pindar meant?); the second stage looks to the delicacy of tint in the cheek (this is Homer’s καλλιπάρῃος:) the third looks to shape (this is the εὒμορφος of the Attics, the formosus of the Latins, and is seen in the Greek sculpture); the fourth and highest looks to moral expression: this is the idea of Christian Europe. That Homer rests exclusively in the second or semibarbaric stage, it is not for me to say, but, as far as I am able, to give to the readers of my translation materials for their own judgment. From the vague word εἶδος, species, appearance, it cannot be positively inferred whether the poet had an eye for Shape. The epithets curl-eyed and fine-ankled decidedly suggest that he had; except that his application of the former to the entire nation of the Greeks makes it seem to be of foreign tradition, and as unreal as brazen-mailed.
Another word which has been ill-understood and ill-used, is dapper. Of the epithet dappergreav’d for ἐϋκνημὶς I certainly am not enamoured, but I have not yet found a better rendering. It is easier to carp at my phrase, than to suggest a better. The word dapper in Dutch = German tapfer; and like the Scotch braw or brave means with us fine, gallant, elegant. I have read the line of an old poet,
The dapper words which lovers use,
for elegant, I suppose; and so ‘the dapper does’ and ‘dapper elves’ of Milton must refer to elegance or refined beauty. What is there[[54]] ignoble in such a word? ‘Elegant’ and ‘pretty’ are inadmissible in epic poetry: ‘dapper’ is logically equivalent, and has the epic colour. Neither ‘fair’ nor ‘comely’ here suit. As to the school translation of ‘wellgreav’d’, every common Englishman on hearing the sound receives it as ‘wellgrieved’, and to me it is very unpleasing. A part of the mischief, a large part of it, is in the word greave; for dapper-girdled is on the whole well-received. But what else can we say for greave? leggings? gambados?
Much perhaps remains to be learnt concerning Homer’s perpetual epithets. My very learned colleague Goldstücke, Professor of Sanscrit, is convinced that the epithet cow-eyed of the Homeric Juno is an echo of the notion of Hindoo poets, that (if I remember his statement) ‘the sun-beams are the cows of heaven’. The sacred qualities of the Hindoo cow are perhaps not to be forgotten. I have myself been struck by the phrase διϊπετέος ποτάμοιο as akin to the idea that the Ganges falls from Mount Meru, the Hindoo Olympus. Also the meaning of two other epithets has been revealed to me from the pictures of Hindoo ladies. First, curl-eyed, to which I have referred above; secondly, rosy-fingered Aurora. For Aurora is an ‘Eastern lady’; and, as such, has the tips of her fingers dyed rosy-red, whether by henna or by some more brilliant drug. Who shall say that the kings and warriors of Homer do not derive from the East their epithet ‘Jove-nurtured’? or that this or that goddess is not called ‘golden-throned’ or ‘fair-throned’ in allusion to Assyrian sculptures or painting, as Rivers probably drew their later poetical attribute ‘bull-headed’ from the sculpture of fountains? It is a familiar remark, that Homer’s poetry presupposes a vast pre-existing art and material. Much in him was traditional. Many of his wild legends came from Asia. He is to us much beside a poet; and that a translator should assume to cut him down to the standard of modern taste, is a thought which all the higher minds of this age have outgrown. How much better is that reverential Docility, which with simple and innocent wonder, receives the oddest notions of antiquity as material of instruction yet to be revealed, than the self-complacent Criticism, which pronouncing everything against modern taste to be grotesque[[55]] and contemptible, squares the facts to its own ‘Axioms’! Homer is noble: but this or that epithet is not noble: therefore we must explode it from Homer! I value, I maintain, I struggle for the ‘high a priori road’ in its own place; but certainly not in historical literature. To read Homer’s own thoughts is to wander in a world abounding with freshness: but if we insist on treading round and round in our own footsteps, we shall never ascend those heights whence the strange region is to be seen. Surely an intelligent learned critic ought to inculcate on the unlearned, that if they would get instruction from Homer, they must not expect to have their ears tickled by a musical sound as of a namby-pamby poetaster; but must look on a metre as doing its duty, when it ‘strings the mind up to the necessary pitch’ in elevated passages; and that instead of demanding of a translator everywhere a rhythmical perfection which perhaps can only be attained by a great sacrifice of higher qualities, they should be willing to submit to a small part of that ruggedness, which Mr Arnold cheerfully bears in Homer himself through the loss of the Digamma. And now, for a final protest. To be stately is not to be grand. Nicolas of Russia may have been stately like Cowper, Garibaldi is grand like the true Homer. A diplomatic address is stately; it is not grand, nor often noble. To expect a translation of Homer to be pervadingly elegant, is absurd; Homer is not such, any more than is the side of an Alpine mountain. The elegant and the picturesque are seldom identical, however much of delicate beauty may be interstudded in the picturesque; but this has always got plenty of what is shaggy and uncouth, without which contrast the full delight of beauty would not be attained. I think Moore in his characteristic way tells of a beauty
Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender,
Till love falls asleep in the sameness of splendour.
Such certainly is not Homer’s. His beauty, when at its height, is wild beauty: it smells of the mountain and of the sea. If he be compared to a noble animal, it is not to such a spruce rubbed-down Newmarket racer as our smooth translators would pretend, but to a wild horse of the Don Cossacks: and if I, instead of this, present to the reader nothing but a Dandie Dinmont’s pony, this, as a first approximation, is a valuable step towards the true solution.
Before the best translation of the Iliad of which our language is capable can be produced, the English public has to unlearn the false notion of Homer which his deliberately faithless versifiers have infused. Chapman’s conceits unfit his translation for instructing the public, even if his rhythm ‘jolted’ less, if his structure were simpler, and his dialect more intelligible. My version, if allowed to be read, will prepare the public to receive a version better than mine. I regard it as a question about to open hereafter, whether a translator of Homer ought not to adopt the old dissyllabic landis, houndis, hartis, etc., instead of our modern unmelodious lands, hounds, harts; whether the ye or y before the past participle may not be restored; the want of which confounds that participle with the past tense. Even the final -en of the plural of verbs (we dancen, they singen, etc.) still subsists in Lancashire. It deserves consideration whether by a few such slight grammatical retrogressions into antiquity a translator of Homer might not add much melody to his poem and do good service to the language.