Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/110

 comes to us quite naturally; but, from a poet without this familiarity, the attribution strikes as a little unnatural; and therefore, as everything the least unnatural is un-Homeric, I avoid it.

Again, in the address of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, Cowper has:

Jove saw their grief with pity, and his brows Shaking, within himself thus, pensive, said. 'Ah hapless pair! wherefore by gift divine Were ye to Peleus given, a mortal king, Yourselves immortal and from age exempt?'

There is no want of dignity here, as in the versions of Chapman and Mr Newman, which I have already quoted: but the whole effect is much too slow. Take Pope:

Nor Jove disdained to cast a pitying look While thus relenting to the steeds he spoke. 'Unhappy coursers of immortal strain! Exempt from age and deathless now in vain; Did we your race on mortal man bestow Only, alas! to share in mortal woe?'

Here there is no want either of dignity or rapidity, but all is too artificial. 'Nor Jove disdained', for instance, is a very artificial and literary way of rendering Homer's words and so is, 'coursers of immortal strain'.

Μυρομένω δ' ἄρα τώ γε ἰδὼν, ἐλέησε Κρονίων.

And with pity the son of Saturn saw them bewailing, And he shook his head, and thus addressed his own bosom.