242 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



Fly on each other, strike and truss, part, meet, and then stick by, 

 Tug both with crooked beaks and seres, cry, fight, and fight and cry 

 So fiercely fought these angry kings.* 



Lord Derby s version is nearer : 



He said, and from his car, accoutred, sprang; 

 Patroclus saw and he too leaped to earth. 

 As on a lofty rock, with angry screams, 

 Hook-beaked, with talons curved, two vultures fight, 

 So with loud shouts these two to battle rushed. 



Chapman has made his first line out of two in Homer, but, 

 granting the licence, how rapid and springy is the verse ! Lord 

 Derby s withs are not agreeable, his shouts ; is an ill-chosen 

 word for a comparison with vultures, talons curved is feeble, 

 and his verse is, as usual, mainly built up of little blocks of four 

 syllables each. To battle also is vague. With whom ? 

 Homer says that they rushed each at other. We shall not 

 discuss how much licence is loyal in a translator ; but, as we 

 think his chief aim should be to give a feeling of that life and 

 spirit which makes the immortality of his original, and is the 

 very breath in the nostrils of all poetry, he has a right to adapt 

 himself to the genius of his own language. If he would do 

 justice to his author, he must make up in one passage for his 

 unavoidable shortcomings in another. He may here and there 

 take for granted certain exigencies of verse in his original which 

 he feels in his own case. Even Dante, who boasted that no 

 word had ever made him say what he did not wish, should have 

 made an exception of rhyming ones, for these sometimes, even 

 in so abundant a language as the Italian, have driven the most 

 straightforward of poets into an awkward detoitr. 



We give one more passage from Chapman : 



And all in golden weeds 



He clothed himself; the golden scourge most elegantly done 

 He took and mounted to his seat; and then the god begun 

 To drive his chariot through the waves. From whirl-pits every way 

 The whales exulted under him, and knew their king; the sea 

 For joy did open, and his horse so swift and lightly flew 

 The under axle-tree of brass no drop of water drew. 



Here the first half is sluggish and inadequate, but what surging 

 vigour, what tumult of the sea, what swiftness, in the lastl 

 Here is Lord Derby s attempt : 



All clad in gold, the golden lash he grasped 

 Of curious work, and, mounting on his car, 

 Skimmed o er the waves; from all the depths below 

 Gambolled around the monsters of the deep, 

 Acknowledging their king; the joyous sea 

 Parted her waves; swift flew the bounding steeds, 

 Nor was the brazen axle wet with spray. 



* Chapman himself was evidently pleased with this, for he cites it as a sample olf 

 his version. 



