Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/150

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS

Aὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ ποταμοῖο λίπεν ῥόον Ωκεανοῖο Νηῦς, ἀπὸ δ᾽ἵκετο κῦμα ταλάσσῃς εὐρυπόροιο.

Now when our bark had left Oceanus

And entered the great deep.

All this points to the one deficiency in a blank-verse translation, and this, unquestionably, relates to the movement. Can a version in our slow and stately iambics, which are perfectly adequate to represent the dialogue of the Greek dramas, approximate to the rhythmic effect of a measure which originally was chanted or intoned? The rush of epic song has been partially caught by Chapman, Pope, and others, at the expense of both matter and style; and it may be owing to the pleasure afforded by this quality, that Pope's translation has held so long the regard of English readers. But only in one instance, that we now recall, has modern blank-verse attained to anything like the Homeric swiftness. A study of the tournament-scene, which closes the Fifth Book of "The Princess," will show to what we refer; yet even the splendid movement of this passage is unrestful, and like the fierce spurt of a racer that can win by a dash, but has not the bottom needed for a three-mile heat.

There are two forms of English verse in which, we think, the Homeric rhythmus may be more nearly approached. A good objection has been made to our rhymed heroic measure, as used by Pope (and by Dryden in his Virgil), that it disturbs the force of the original by connecting thoughts not meant to be connected; that it causes a "balancing of expression in [136]