Page:On translating Homer. Last words. A lecture given at Oxford.djvu/15

4 him is so sincere that I can disregard his probable ingratitude.

First, however, for the explanation. Mr. Newman has published a reply to the remarks which I made on his translation of the Iliad. He seems to think that the respect which at the outset of those remarks I professed for him must have been professed ironically; he says that I use ‘forms of attack against him which he does not know how to characterise;’ that I ‘speak scornfully’ of him, treat him with ‘gratuitous insult, gratuitous rancour;’ that I ‘propagate slanders’ against him, that I wish to ‘damage him with my readers,’ to ‘stimulate my readers to despise’ him. He is entirely mistaken. I respect Mr. Newman sincerely; I respect him as one of the few learned men we have, one of the few who love learning for its own sake; this respect for him I had before I read his translation of the Iliad, I retained it while I was commenting on that translation, I have not lost it after reading his reply. Any vivacities of expression which may have given him pain I sincerely regret, and can only assure him that I used them without a thought of insult or rancour. When I took the liberty of creating the verb to Newmanise, my intentions were no more rancorous than if I had said to Miltonise; when I exclaimed, in my astonishment at his vocabulary,—‘With whom can Mr. Newman have lived?’—I meant merely to convey, in a familiar form of speech, the sense of bewilderment