as "loved of Mars," while the former confounds him with the common herd of the "warlike." We may be pardoned for presenting, side by side, a brief extract from each of the two translations of the same passage, as affording a more ready means of comparing their respective merits both on the score of fidelity and on that of poetical execution. Here is Lord Derby's version of the beginning of Menelaus's acceptance of the challenge: "Hear now my answer: in this quarrel I May claim the chiefest share; and now I hope T' avenge my wrong, at Paris' hand sustained. Bring then two lambs, one white, the other black, Mr. Bryant's is as follows: "Now hear me also-me whose spirit feels To perish, let him die; but let the rest Be from this moment reconciled, and part, And bring an offering of two lambs-one white, The other black-to Earth and to the Sun, And we ourselves will offer one to Jove." It may be noted, first of all, that throughout Bryant's adherence to the form as well as the substance of the Greek is wonderfully close. "Me whose spirit feels the wrong most keenly” is a good equivalent of Homer's μάλιστα γὰρ ἄλγο ikável Ovμòv ¿μóv, which Derby's rendering is not. The same may be said of the expression, "And the original fault of Paris”καὶ ̓Αλεξάνδρου ἕνεκ' ἀρχῆς. Of Lord Derby's use of the terms "Tellus" and "Sol," instead of Earth and Sun, we need only say that it is an absolutely unnecessary resort to the Latin designations of deities, against which, under any circumstances, many strong arguments have been alleged. The employment of the names of the gods of Rome for the essentially distinct gods of Greece can assuredly be defended only on the ground of long usage and general convenience. We believe that Lord Derby has acted judiciously in adopting, though not without hesitation as he informs us in his preface, the Latin rather than the Greek nomenclature for the heathen deities, and his argument is to our mind conclusive: "I have been induced to do so from the manifest incongruity of confounding the two, and from the fact that though English readers may be familiar with the names of Zeus, or Aphrodite, or even Poseidon, those of Hera, or Ares, or Hephæstus, or Leto would hardly convey to them a definite signification." Upon the same principle of admitting only what is perspicuous, Lord Derby ought to have excluded both "Tellus" and "Sol," especially as these were gods of Rome rather than Greece. We notice, in passing, that when describing the sacrifice neither Bryant nor Derby mentions the circumstance that the lamb offered to the sun was to be a white male, and that offered to the earth a black ewe lamb, as is indicated by the gender of the adjective words in the Greek. Without extending the comparison to other portions of the Iliad, it may be worth while to state the conclusion at which a careful reader of the two translations will, we think, be forced to arrive. As respects fidelity of rendering, both writers appear to have been equally emulous of presenting as perfect an image of Homer as could be conveyed in English verse. Both have striven, as Bryant expresses himself in his preface to the Iliad, "to preserve the simplicity of style which distinguishes the old Greek poet, who wrote for the popular ear and according to the genius of his language." But, of the two, Bryant appears to us to have succeeded in this more signally than Derby, and certainly far better than any other poet whom we are acquainted with. There is a smooth and flowing idiom, the counterpart in our language of the untiring numbers of Homer, which never halt or betray a negligent hand. No attempt is visible' in any part to make the translation more ornate than the original. If Homer often condescends in homely language to describe the rude avocations and ruder habits of men, Bryant betrays no false alarm for the honor of his master. When Homer nods, as even Homer, we are told, sometimes does, Bryant is content if his English verses incur no more risk of FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXIV.-40 being styled monotonous than the Greek hexameters. For better or for worse, he espouses the cause of the bard of Smyrna. More distinctly noticeable, however, is the superior poetic color of Bryant's translation. If the Earl of Derby occasionally brings his acknowledged excellence as an orator to assist him in the characteristic delineation of the speeches in which the Iliad abounds, Mr. Bryant displays not only the results of a thorough acquaintance with the poetical literature of modern times, but the spirit and fertility of imagination of a poet. With him the construction of verses was not an accomplishment laboriously acquired under the enforced discipline of the upper forms in a classical school. "Poeta nascitur, non fit." With uncommon precocity, he began to write poetry, as we all know, before he had fairly emerged from childhood into youth, and the ability to clothe thonght in poetical garb was less an attainment than a natural endowment. Add to this that the distinguishing features of Mr. Bryant's own poetry are rather a certain elevation and calm contemplation-that the vicissitudes of human life seem to pass before him as before one seated upon some superior height, where neither its pleasures nor its sorrows affect too much the serenity of his vision-and we seem to have in him the poet who is best calculated to become the interpreter of the great epic poet of Greece; for Homer is not generally an emotional poet, and rarely strives to arouse our sympathies. With him fate is inexorable, human life brief and fitful. Its duration is too short, its pleasures are too transient, its woes too completely merged in the darkness of death and oblivion, to excite a lively joy or a keen regret. Yet the idea of divine retribution runs through his poems and forms a conspicuous feature; and on this point again we need but look at Mr. Bryant's striking poem on Death to see how nearly the current of his habitual representations runs to Homer's view of Nemesis, or the goddess of retribution, and Até, or the goddess of mischief, of the Greeks. The mention of the Homeric Até recalls the circumstance that few or none of our English translators have adequately expressed the precise notion of the Greek poet respecting the fearful goddess that plays so important a part in the Iliad, and by whose pernicious influence he explains the otherwise inex plicable folly of Agamemnon in affronting the bravest hero among the Greeks. Nowhere is the Homeric conception more distinctly brought out than in that exquisite appeal of the aged Phoenix to the offended Achilles (in the ninth book of the Iliad) to moderate his thirst for vengeance and return to repentant Agamemnon and his followers: Καὶ γάρ τε Λιταί εἰσι Διὸς κοῦραι μεγάλοιο, χωλαί τε, ῥυσαί τε, παραβλῶπές τ' ὀφθαλμώ. αἱ ῥά τε καὶ μετόπισθ' Ατης ἀλέγουσι κιοῦσαι, κ. τ. λ. (Line 502, etc..) which Mr. Bryant thus renders: "Prayers Are the daughters of almighty Jupiter Lame, wrinkled, and squint-eyed-that painfully And there wreaks evil on mankind, which prayers To Jove, the son of Saturn, and entreat The offender's way in life, that he in turn May suffer evil, and be punished thus."-(Lines 616-631.) Now we cheerfully admit the difficulty, or impossibility if you will, of finding any one word in the English language which is the exact counterpart of the Greek 'Arŋ; but certainly Mr. Bryant has been exceedingly infelicitous in his selection of Misfortune as the nearest equivalent. Viewed as human frailty, the arη of Homer is a blind judicial folly-sin resulting in the loss of the power of discriminating between what is right and profitable and what is wrong and destructive; in short, error, in which the sinfulness of the act is not destroyed by the circumstance that the disposition to commit it is the righteous punishment of the gods for presumption and arrogance, however much the guilty may attempt (as does Agamemnon in the nineteenth book, line 134) to cast the blame upon the immortals. "As a member of the poetical Pantheon," to use the words of Colonel Mure, "Até is the evil genius, Satan, or tempter, by whom men, or even gods, are 26 seduced into actions involving future shame and remorse.' In the consistent delineation of the mad course of the elder son of Atreus as the working of this seductive and destructive agency, the author we have just named finds one of his strong arguments for the unity of the Iliad. In the passage before us Phoenix is urging Achilles to beware of coming under her blight by giving loose rein to his relentless passion: "Subdue that mighty spirit of thine; Ill it becomes thee to be merciless. The gods themselves are placable, though far And virtue." The Até, or judicial blindness with which the deities visit the daring mortal who, self-sufficient, will not suffer the salutary example of the gods to move him, is therefore manifestly different from what we style Misfortune. True, as has been said, the translation of the word Até is not without its difficulties. To avoid them, as Ogilby and Derby do by leaving it untranslated, is only to make the matter worse, for it makes the pas sage unintelligible to every one save the classical scholar, who needs no version of the poem at all. Pope misses the meaning altogether when he makes Até to be Injustice, as if Injustice were the infliction of the gods in punishment of presumption. Chapman's word, "Injury," is better. Voss, generally so happy, only gives a partial, and that the least prominent, view of Até when he names her "Schuld"-guilt. Mr. Barter has here more nearly hit the meaning, perhaps, than any one of his competitors: "For Prayers the daughters be of Zeus the great; In the remaining pages of this article we shall confine ourselves to the consideration of Mr. Bryant's Odyssey. We do this with the more pleasure because the second volume of the translation has been but a short time before the public, and Critical History of Greek Literature, vol. i, p. 317. |