Page:On translating Homer. Last words. A lecture given at Oxford.djvu/78

Rh to open hereafter, whether a translator of Homer ought not to adopt the old dissyllabic landis, houndis, hartis’ (for lands, hounds, harts), and also ‘the final en of the plural of verbs (we dancen, they singen, etc),’ which ‘still subsists in Lancashire.’ A certain critic reads all one can say about style, and at the end of it arrives at the inference that, ‘after all, there is some style grander than the grand style itself, since Shakspeare has not the grand manner, and yet has the supremacy over Milton’; another critic reads all one can say about rhythm, and the result is, that he thinks Scott’s rhythm, in the description of the death of Marmion, all the better for being saccadé, because the dying ejaculations of Marmion were likely to be ‘jerky.’ How vain to rise up early, and to take rest late, from any zeal for proving to Mr. Newman that he must not, in translating Homer, say houndis and dancen; or to the first of the two critics above-quoted, that one poet may be a greater poetical force than another, and yet have a more unequal style; or to the second, that the best art, having to represent the death of a hero, does not set about imitating his dying noises! Such critics, however, provide for an opponent’s vivacity the charming excuse offered by Rivarol for his, when he was reproached with giving offence by it:—‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘no one considers how much pain every man of taste has had to suffer, before he ever inflicts any.’