Ἀλλ’ οὔπω σεῦ ἄκουσα κακὸν ἔπος, οὐδ’ ἀσύφηλον·
Ἀλλ’ εἴτις με καὶ ἄλλος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἐνίπτοι,
* * σὺ τόνγ’ ἐπέεσσι παραιφάμενος κατέρυκες,
Σῇ τ’ ἀγανοφροσύνῃ, καὶ σοῖς ἀγανοῖς ἐπέεσσι.
Iliad. xxiv. 762.
“Hector, to my soul far dearest of all my brothers-in-law! Never from you have I heard a bad or contumelious word; but if any other in all the household reproached me, you with admonishing voice restrained him—with your bland humanity and gentle words.” Yet with gross and disgusting ignorance this high-souled hero is thus slaughtered in all our dictionaries:—
“Hector—a bully, a blustering, turbulent, noisy fellow!!”
I have adopted the Homeric names in preference to the common Latin forms, as Aphrodité instead of Venus, Atrides for Menelaüs (where so substituted in the original) for the same reasons which have influenced Archdeacon Williams in the spirited prose translations which accompany his learned Essay, “Homerus,” Mr. Guest of Caius College, Cambridge, in the specimen of translation of the first book of Homer into hexameters which is introduced into his ingenious History of English Rhythms, the Translator of Homer in the late numbers of Blackwood’s Magazine, and the learned Voss in his hexametrical German version. I have chosen the name Paris, however, in place of Alexander, for the sake of clearness and appropriateness in the allusion, and to avoid confusion with the better-known hero of that name. I do not know that it is necessary to extend my poetical confessions on this subject further. But I shall just add that in pronunciation I have adhered to classical quantity, wherever it could be done without a sacrifice of beauty, but have unhesitatingly departed from it in such cases as that of the word “Hyperion,” in which Shakspeare has fixed the accent on the antepenultimate, with so fine an effect in the way of improvement on the (to merely English ears) intolerable “Hyperíon” which is of classical rigueur, as to have induced the otherwise uncompromising Cooke, translator of Hesiod, to follow his too sweetly sinning example. I hope I shall not be exorcised for thus erring with Shakspeare.
The best image that I can offer of the Græculist carver of cherry-stones is such a realization of Buridan’s ass suspended between two rival and opposite bundles of hay, as might be presented by a bad concocter of College exercises, puzzled in an address to Prometheus to choose between the heptasyllabic form “Iapetionides” and the tetrasyllabic “Japetides,” to commence his puling hexameter!
The earliest military expedition into Spain, of which there is mention amongst ancient poets or doubt amongst historians, is that of Hercules, amongst whose twelve labours is recorded his victory over Geryon and obtaining possession of his crown. Geryon, the son of Crysaör, was King of the Balearic Isles, and hence by poetical fiction he was endowed with three bodies, and is commonly called tricorpor, triplex, or tergeminus, and sometimes Pastor Iberus. Virgil describes Hercules proceeding to the conquest of Cacus from that of Geryon thus: