Page:On translating Homer. Last words. A lecture given at Oxford.djvu/37

26 ‘lively eye of the savage,’—‘that would be no fault of mine. That would not justify Mr. Arnold’s blame of me for rendering the words correctly.’ Correctly—ah, but what is correctness in this case? This correctness of his is the very rock on which Mr. Newman has split. He is so correct that at last he finds peculiarity everywhere. The true knowledge of Homer becomes at last, in his eyes, a knowledge of Homer’s ‘peculiarities, pleasant and unpleasant.’ Learned men know these ‘peculiarities,’ and Homer is to be translated because the unlearned are impatient to know them too. ‘That,’ he exclaims, ‘is just why people want to read an English Homer,—to know all his oddities, just as learned men do.’ Here I am obliged to shake my head, and to declare that, in spite of all my respect for Mr. Newman, I cannot go these lengths with him. He talks of my ‘monomaniac fancy that there is nothing quaint or antique in Homer.’ Terrible learning,—I cannot help in my turn exclaiming,—terrible learning, which discovers so much!

Here, then, I take my leave of Mr. Newman, retaining my opinion that his version of Homer is spoiled by his making Homer odd and ignoble; but having, I hope, sufficient love for literature to be able to canvass works without blinking of persons, and to hold this or that production cheap, while retaining a sincere respect, on other grounds, for its author.

In fulfilment of my promise to take this