Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/257

 matter, whatever it is, in a perfectly good and poetic way. But, so long as he treats it in this way, he cannot be said to sink, whatever his matter may do. A passage of the simplest narrative is quoted to me from Homer:—

ὤτρυνεν δὲ ἕκαστον ἐποιχόμενος ἐπέεσσιν, Μέσθλην τε, Γλαῦκόν τε, Μέδοντά τε, θερσιλοχόν τε

and I am asked, whether Homer does not sink there; whether he 'can have intended such lines as those for poetry'? My answer is: Those lines are very good poetry indeed, poetry of the best class, in that place. But when Wordsworth, having to narrate a very plain matter, tries not to sink in narrating it, tries, in short, to be what is falsely called poetical, he does sink, although he sinks by being pompous, not by being low.

Onward we drove beneath the Castle; caught, While crossing Magdalen Bridge, a glimpse of Cam, And at the Hoop alighted, famous inn.

That last line shows excellently how a poet may sink with his subject by resolving not to sink with it. A page or two farther on, the subject rises to grandeur, and then Wordsworth is nobly worthy of it:

The antechapel, where the statue stood Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.