326 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



the grammar and words, utterly ignorant of the sense 

 and grace of him." His mastery of English is something 

 wonderful even in an age of masters, when the language 

 was still a mother-tongue, and not a contrivance of ped- 

 ants and grammarians. He had a reverential sense of 

 " our divine Homer's depth and gravity, which will not 

 open itself to the curious austerity of belaboring art, but 

 only to the natural and most ingenious soul of our 

 thrice-sacred Poesy." His task was as holy to him as a 

 version of Scripture ; he justifies the tears of Achilles by 

 those of Jesus, and the eloquence of his horse by that of 

 Balaam's less noble animal. He does not alwaj^s keep 

 close to his original, but he sins no more, even in this, 

 than any of his rivals. He is especially great in the 

 similes. Here he rouses himself always, and if his en- 

 thusiasm sometimes lead him to heighten a little, or 

 even to add outright, he gives us a picture full of life 

 and action, or of the grandeur and beauty of nature, as 

 stirring to the fancy as his original. Of all who have 

 attempted Homer, he has the topping merit of being in- 

 spired by him. 



In the recent discussions of Homeric translation in 

 England, it has always been taken for granted that we 

 had or could have some adequate conception of Homer's 

 metre. Lord Derby, in his Preface, plainly assumes 

 this. But there can be no greater fallacy. No human 

 ears, much less Greek ones, could have endured what, 

 with our mechanical knowledge of the verse, ignorance 

 of the accent, and English pronunciation, we blandly ac- 

 cept for such music as Homer chanted. We have utterly 

 lost the tune and cannot reproduce it. Mr. Newman 

 conjectures it to have been something like Yankee Doo- 

 dle ; Mr. Arnold is sure it was the English hexameter ; 

 and they are both partly right so far as we may trust 

 our reasonable impressions ; for, after all, an impression 



