Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/263

 nature, in the poet its author; the simple seems the grandest when we attend most to the exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But the simple is no doubt to be preferred. It is the more magical: in the other there is something intellectual, something which gives scope for a play of thought which may exist where the poetical gift is either wanting or present in only inferior degree: the severe is much more imitable, and this a little spoils its charm. A kind of semblance of this style keeps Young going, one may say, through all the nine parts of that most indifferent production, the ''Night Thoughts''. But the grand style in simplicity is inimitable:

αἰὼν ἀσφαλὴς οὐκ ἔγεντ' οὔτ' Αἰακίδᾳ παρὰ Πηλεῖ, οὔτε παρ' ἀντιθέῳ Κάδμῳ· λέγονται μὰν βροτῶν ὄλβον ὑπέρτατον οἱ σχεῖν, οἵ τε καὶ χρυσαμπύκων μελπομενᾶν ἐν ὄρει Μοισᾶν, καὶ ἐν ἑπταπύλοις ἄϊον Θήβαις .. ..]

There is a limpidness in that, a want of