Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/215

 rendered, I am aware; but it is a very vigorous word, like peal and shriek; neither of which would here suit. I sometimes render it skirl: but 'battle-yell' is a received rightful phrase. Achilles is not a stately Virgilian pius Æneas, but is a far wilder barbarian.

After Mr Arnold has laid upon me the sins of Shakspeare, he amazes me by adding, p. 92: 'The idiomatic language of Shakspeare, such language as "prate of his where-*about", "jump the life to come", "the damnation of his taking-off", "quietus make with a bare bodkin", should be carefully observed by the translator of Homer; although in every case he will have to decide for himself, whether the use, by him, of Shakspeare's liberty, will or will not clash with his indispensable duty of nobleness'.

Of the Shakspearianisms here italicized by Mr Arnold, there is not one which I could endure to adopt. 'His whereabout', I regard as the flattest prose. (The word prate is a plebeian which I admit in its own low places; but how Mr Arnold can approve of it, consistently with his attacks on me, I do not understand.) Damnation and Taking-off (for Guilt and Murder), and Jump, I absolutely reject; and 'quietus make' would be nothing but an utterly inadmissible quotation from Shakspeare. Jump as an active verb is to me monstrous, but Jump is just the sort of modern prose word which