Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/127

 Now with the warmest sincerity I say: If any English reader, after perusing my version of four or five eminently noble passages of sufficient length, side by side with those of other translators, and (better still) with a prose version also, finds in them high qualities which I have destroyed; I am foremost to advise him to shut my book, or to consult it only (as Mr Arnold suggests) as a schoolboy's 'help to construe', if such it can be. My sole object is, to bring Homer before the unlearned public: I seek no self-glorification: the sooner I am superseded by a really better translation, the greater will be my pleasure.

It was not until I more closely read Mr Arnold's own versions, that I understood how necessary is his repugnance to mine. I am unwilling to speak of his metrical efforts. I shall not say more than my argument strictly demands. It here suffices to state the simple fact, that for awhile I seriously doubted whether he meant his first specimen for metre at all. He seems distinctly to say, he is going to give us English Hexameters; but it was long before I could believe that he had written the following for that metre:

So shone forth, in front of Troy, by the bed of Xanthus, Between that and the ships, the Trojans' numerous fires. In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires: by each one