476 Transactions. 



signally in rendering Homer, since he adopted the reflective 

 metre, heroic verse — too much stopped, and too evenly paused. 

 Chapman enables us actually to see the action ; Pope compels 

 us to imagine it. Scott had an instinctive feeling as to the 

 reason for Pope's failure. He pointed out that Pope's opening 

 lines of the Iliad could all drop one foot, reducing the ten syl- 

 lables to eight : thus, instead of — 



The wrath of Peleus' son, the (direful) spring 

 Of (all the) Grecian woes, goddess, sing ; 

 That wrath which hurled to Pluto's (gloomy) reign 

 The souls of (mighty) chiefs untimely slain : 

 Whose limbs, unburied on the (naked) shore, 

 Devouring dogs and (hungry) vultures tore : 

 he read 



The wrath of Peleus' son, the spring 



Of Grecian woes, goddess, sing ; 



That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's reign 



The souls of chiefs untimely slain : 



Whose limbs, unburied on the shore, 



Devouring dogs and vultures tore. 



Note that every pair of lines is in reality one long line. The 

 dropping of this foot brings the metre into line with Scott's 

 favourite, which is no other than the long ballad-metre referred 

 to in section 7 of Chapter II — a metre in which many of Sir 

 Walter Scott's ballads, collected and otherwise, as well as his 

 own minstrelsy, run. 



It would almost seem that the Iliad is best translated in 

 ballad-metre, not heroics or blank verse ; in the verse of energy 

 and action, not of rest and reflection. As suggested, the ballad 

 recites an event ; Pope's heroics contemplate it ; blank verse 

 acts it. This summarises the essential difference in nature : 

 the two former are in a measure artificial ; the last is natural ; 

 and in that fact will be found the reason for the overflowing 

 lines. 



3. Even when rime was discarded from the heroic line, 

 the tendency to stop the lines was for a long time powerful. 

 Whilst writers felt that the rime was a hindrance in emotional 

 passages, they did not, as a class, see why. Soon, however, 

 the lines overflowed, the sense incomplete in one being carried 

 to the next. 



CHAPTEE IV. 



Blank Verse. 



At the outset the secret of blank verse becomes visible : 

 its lines as printed are still those of the heroic, the average length 

 of a sentence ; but the variations of actual speech can be fully 

 displayed with no disruption in metre, no violation of emotion. 

 As the emotions vary, so the breath varies in depth and duration ; 



