Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/148

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS Many, with even a superficial knowledge of the Greek text, will confess that, while delighted with the unequalled merits of this translation, they still are conscious of something yet to be achieved. What is the one thing wanting? We have intimated that its absence is least felt in those elevated passages, the fiery glow of which for a time lifts us above contemplation of the translator's art. But in the more mechanical portions blank-verse cannot of itself, by the music and flexibility of its structure, have the converse effect of holding us above the level of the theme. Here the deficiency is felt. And for this reason, amongst others, that in Greek the names of the most common objects are imposing and melodious. Hence those lines whose poverty of thought is greatest, upborne by the long roll of the hexameter, have a quality as aristocratic as the grace and dignity of a Spanish beggar. Undoubtedly Mr. Bryant has perceived the weakness of blank-verse in those intercalary lines, which are such a feature in Homer, and constitute a kind of refrain, affording rest at intervals along the torrent of the song. In the best lyric and epic poetry of all nations a disdain of minor changes is observable; but Mr. Bryant, seeing that blank-verse does little honor to a purely mechanical office, often has varied his translations of such lines, instead of following the Homeric method of recurrence to one chosen form. The very directness of his syntax, leading to the rejection, even, of such inversions as Tennyson's,

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