LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 329 



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 license, 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, mainh^ built up of little blocks of four syllables 

 each. "To battle" also is vague. With whom? Ho- 

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

 discuss how much license 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 origi- 

 nal, 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 wdsh, should 

 have made an exception of rhyming ones, for these some- 

 times, even in so abundant a language as the Italian, 

 have driven the most straightforward of poets into an 

 awkward detour. 



We give one more passage from Chapman : — 



* Chapman himself was evidently pleased with this, for he cites it 

 as a sample of his version. 



