BORROWINGS AND ADAPTATIONS FROM THE 



"ILIAD" AND "ODYSSEY" IN MATTHEW 



ARNOLD'S "SOHRAB AND RUSTUM" 1 



By Milo G. Derham 



It has more than once been suggested to me that I should translate Homer. This is a task for which 

 I have neither the time nor the courage; but the suggestion led me to regard yet more closely a poet whom 

 I had already studied, and for one or two years the works of Homer were seldom out of my hands. — Arnold, 

 On Translating Homer. 



Matthew Arnold fulfilled the precept of Horace. He turned over his Greek models by day and by night. 

 He brought everything to the classical touchstone. Whatever was not Greek was barbarian. 



Far more truly Homeric than Clough's jolting hexameters it ("Sohrab and Rustum") is as good a speci- 

 men of Homer's manner as can be found in English. — Herbert Paxil, Matthew Arnold, pp. 3 and 46. 



In the selections here given from "Sohrab and Rustum," the page 

 numbers refer to the Globe Edition of Matthew Arnold's Poems (The 

 Macmillan Company, New York, 1903). Lang, Leaf and Myer's trans- 

 lation of the Iliad, and Palmer's translation of the Odyssey supply the 

 renderings of Homer. 



Page 65 : 



— the men were plunged in sleep; 

 Sohrab alone, he slept not; all night long 

 He had lain wakeful, tossing on his bed. 



Compare II. 24:2 ff . : " The rest bethought them of supper and sweet 

 sleep to have joy thereof; but Achilles wept, remembering his dear com- 

 rade, nor did sleep that conquereth all take hold on him, but he kept 

 turning him to this side and to that." Compare also 77. 10: 1 ff. : "Now 

 beside the ships the other leaders of the whole Achaean host were sleep- 

 ing all night long, by soft Sleep overcome, but Agamemnon, son of Atreus, 

 shepherd of the host, sweet Sleep held not, so many things he debated 

 in his mind." 



Through the black Tartar tents he passed, which stood 

 Clustering like bee hives on the low flat strand. 



1 Classical elements in Matthew Arnold's poems have been pointed out by Churton Collins, Matthew 

 Arnold's Merope and Sophocles' Electra, Oxford, 1906; Professor W. P. Mustard, "Homeric Echoes in 

 Arnold's 'Balder Dead,'" in Studies in Honor of Basil L. Gildersleeve, Baltimore, 1902; and a number of 

 parallel passages have been incorporated in Professor Paul Shorey's notes in his edition of Horace's Odes 

 and Epodes, Boston, 1899. 



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