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 Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice

A Reply to Matthew Arnold

By Francis W. Newman

It is so difficult, amid the press of literature, for a mere versifier and translator to gain notice at all, that an assailant may even do one a service, if he so conduct his assault as to enable the reader to sit in intelligent judgment on the merits of the book assailed. But when the critic deals out to the readers only so much knowledge as may propagate his own contempt of the book, he has undoubtedly immense power to dissuade them from wishing to open it. Mr Arnold writes as openly aiming at this end. He begins by complimenting me, as 'a man of great ability and genuine learning'; but on questions of learning, as well as of taste, he puts me down as bluntly, as if he had meant, 'a man totally void both of learning and of sagacity'. He again and again takes for granted that he has 'the scholar' on his side, 'the living scholar', the man