Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/143

MR. BRYANTS "HOMER" The simplicity of his manner is unaffected. It is simplicité, not simplesse,—the distinction between which has been illustrated by Professor Arnold in a comparison of Wordsworth and Tennyson. There is, it seems to us, much that is common to the genius of the Homeric poems and that of their present translator,—a broad and general way of regarding man and nature, a largeness of utterance, and an imagination always luminous and sufficient to the theme.

The office of a translator is now well understood. It is, to reproduce literally the matter of his author, and to convey the manner and movement to the utmost extent permitted by the limitations of his own tongue. Until the latter has been accomplished, there is always room and a welcome for new effort. Respecting Mr. Bryant's Odyssey we can affirm that he has gone beyond his predecessors. He has equalled, and generally excelled, the literalness of Cowper, and, so far as manner is concerned, has achieved a better general effect than Chapman, Pope, or Worsley. Yet Worsley's Spenserian version has many delightful features. In view of the romantic nature of the Odyssey, it was a happy thought to render it into the graceful mediæval stanza: a verse redolent with the sensuous enchantment of a period when half the world was yet unknown, when personal adventure and travel were the desire of youth and age, and the chosen measure of Spenser was the medium of their poetic narration. It is slow to pall upon the senses, and Worsley has handled it deliciously. But in his Odyssey the matter is constantly sacrificed to the translator's art, and [129]