Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/213

 certain in a reader of Shakspeare and all but impossible in a reader of Homer), but because I know, that in Shakspeare's time all literature was coarse, as was the speech of courtiers and of the queen herself. Mr Arnold imputes to me Shakspeare's coarseness, from which I instinctively shrink; and when his logic leads to the conclusion, 'he Shakspearizes', he with gratuitous rancour turns it into 'he Newmanizes'.

Some words which with the Biblical translators seem to have been noble, I should not now dare to use in the primitive sense. For instance, 'His iniquity shall fall upon his own pate'. Yet I think pate a good metaphorical word and have used it of the sea-*waves, in a bold passage, Il. 13, 795:

Then ón rush'd théy, with weight and mass   like to a troublous whirlwind, Which from the thundercloud of Jove   down on the campaign plumpeth, And doth the briny flood bestir   with an unearthly uproar: Then in the everbrawling sea   full many a billow splasheth, Hollow, and bald with hoary pate,   one racing after other.

Is there really no 'mighty current' here, to sweep off petty criticism?

I have a remark on the strong physical word 'plumpeth' here used. It is fundamentally Milton's, 'plump down he drops ten thousand fathom deep'; plumb and plump in this sense are clearly the same