Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/38

 What could better show us how gifted a race was this Greek race? The same member of it has not only the power of profoundly touching that natural heart of humanity which it is Voltaire's weakness that he cannot reach, but can also address the understanding with all Voltaire's admirable simplicity and rationality.

My limits will not allow me to do more than shortly illustrate, from Chapman's version of the Iliad, what I mean when I speak of this vital difference between Homer and an Elizabethan poet in the quality of their thought; between the plain simplicity of the thought of the one, and the curious complexity of the thought of the other. As in Pope's case, I carefully abstain from choosing passages for the express purpose of making Chapman appear ridiculous; Chapman, like Pope, merits in himself all respect, though he too, like Pope, fails to render Homer.

In that tonic speech of Sarpedon, of which I have said so much, Homer, you may remember, has:

εἰ μὲν γὰρ, πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε, αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ' ἀθανάτω τε ἔσσεσθ'—

if indeed, but once this battle avoided, We were for ever to live without growing old and immortal—

Chapman cannot be satisfied with this, but must add a fancy to it: