Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/152

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS Arnold and Mr. Lewis, among the rest, have contributed to the discussion on this subject, the one for, and the other against, the employment of hexameter in translation. Neither of them, it seems to us, succeeds in looking at the question from an independent point of view. Mr. Arnold would have our hexameter more spondaic and classical. Mr. Lewis sees that it cannot be written classically, but does not abuse it much on that account. He says that "it is peculiar among English metres, because it is so very like prose. It is less metrical than any form of English verse. Blank-verse," he adds, "can stoop to the simplest speech without approaching prose." True, but it does not always do so. Run together the opening lines of Mr. Bryant's Odyssey, which in Greek are made highly poetical by the structure and sound, and see if they have not a somewhat prosaic effect:—

"Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man who, having overthrown the sacred town of Ilium, wandered far and visited the capitals of many nations, learned the customs of their dwellers, and endured great suffering on the deep."

Now where, in Mr. Kingsley's "Andromeda,"—a fair specimen of English hexameter, with exquisite cadences throughout,—can five lines be made to read like that? Mr. Bryant has made the most of his material; the barrenness is in the verse.

No master of the natural English hexameter has yet arisen who has brought it to the perfection which charms both scholars and laymen; no translation of Homer has been made which affords any assistance [138]