Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/153

 confused in logic, that I may otherwise be thought to garble it, pp. 36, 37.

'Mr Newman speaks of the more antiquated style suited to this subject. Quaint! Antiquated! but to whom? Sir Thomas Browne is quaint, and the diction of Chaucer is antiquated: does Mr Newman suppose that Homer seemed quaint to Sophocles, as Chaucer's diction seems antiquated to us? But we cannot really know, I confess (!!), how Homer seemed to Sophocles. Well then, to those who can tell us how he seems to them, to the living scholar, to our only present witness on this matter—does Homer make on the Provost of Eton, when he reads him, the impression of a poet quaint and antiquated! does he make this impression on Professor Thompson or Professor Jowett? When Shakspeare says, "The Princes orgulous", meaning "the proud princes", we say, "This is antiquated". When he says of the Trojan gates, that they,

With massy staples And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts Sperr up the sons of Troy,

we say, "This is both quaint and antiquated". But does Homer ever compose in a language, which produces on the scholar at all the same impression as this language which I have quoted from Shakspeare? Never once. Shakspeare is quaint and antiquated in the lines I have just quoted; but Shak