Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/249

 for instance, are antiquated for poetry, such language is a bad representative of language which, like Homer's, was never antiquated for that particular purpose for which it was employed. I imagine that Πηληϊάδεω for Πηλείδου, in Homer, no more sounded antiquated to Sophocles, than arméd for arm'd, in Milton, sounds antiquated to us; but Mr Newman's withouten and muchel do sound to us antiquated, even for poetry, and therefore they do not correspond in their effect upon us with Homer's words in their effect upon Sophocles. When Chaucer, who uses such words, is to pass current amongst us, to be familiar to us, as Homer was familiar to the Athenians, he has to be modernized, as Wordsworth and others set to work to modernize him; but an Athenian no more needed to have Homer modernized, than we need to have the Bible modernized, or Wordsworth himself.

Therefore, when Mr Newman's words bragly, bulkin, and the rest, are an established possession of our minds, as Homer's words were an established possession of an Athenian's mind, he may use them; but not till then. Chaucer's words, the words of Burns, great poets as these were, are yet not thus an established possession of an Englishman's mind, and therefore they must not be used in rendering Homer into English.