Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/143

 Would be! Why does he set his readers to 'imagine', when in fewer words he could tell them what my version is? It stands thus:

A day, when sacred Ilium | for overthrow is destin'd,—

which may have faults unperceived by me, but is in my opinion far better than Mr Arnold's, and certainly did not deserve to be censured side by side with Chapman's absurdity. I must say plainly; a critic has no right to hide what I have written, and stimulate his readers to despise me by these indirect methods.

I proceed to my own metre. It is exhibited in this stanza of Campbell:

By this the storm grew loud apace: The waterwraith was shrieking, And in the scowl of heav'n each face Grew dark as they were speaking.

Whether I use this metre well or ill, I maintain that it is essentially a noble metre, a popular metre, a metre of great capacity. It is essentially the national ballad metre, for the double rhyme is an accident. Of course it can be applied to low, as well as to high subjects; else it would not be popular: it would not be 'of a like moral genius' to the Homeric metre, which was available equally for the comic poem Margites, for the precepts of Pythagoras, for the pious prosaic hymn of Cleanthes,