Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/166

 h, w, y, f (as in English and German is obvious), it is easy to confound them all under the compendious word 'digamma'. I should be glad to know that Homer's forms were as well understood by modern scholars as Mr Arnold lays down.

On his quotation from Shakspeare, I remark, 1. 'Orgulous', from French 'orgueilleux', is intelligible to all who know French, and is comparable to Sicilian words in Æschylus. 2. It is contrary to fact to say, that Homer has not words, and words in great plenty, as unintelligible to later Greeks, as 'orgulous' to us. 3. Sperr, for Bar, as Splash for Plash, is much less than the diversity which separates Homer from the spoken Attic. What is σμικρὸς for μικρὸς to compare with ἠβαιὸς for μικρός? 4. Mr Arnold (as I understand him) blames Shakspeare for being sometimes antiquated: I do not blame him, nor yet Homer for the same; but neither can I admit the contrast which he asserts. He says: 'Shakspeare can compose, when he is at his best, in a language perfectly intelligible, in spite of the two centuries and a half which part him from us. Homer has not Shakspeare's variations: he is never antiquated, as Shakspeare is sometimes'. I certainly find the very same variations in Homer, as Mr Arnold finds in Shakspeare. My reader unlearned in Greek might hastily infer from the facts just laid before him, that Homer