Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/45

 *tion, to satisfy his judges and to succeed. If, however, Mr Newman's impression from Homer is something quite different from that of his judges, then it can hardly be expected that any amount of labour or talent will enable him to reproduce for them their Homer.

Mr Newman does not leave us in doubt as to the general effect which Homer makes upon him. As I have told you what is the general effect which Homer makes upon me,—that of a most rapidly moving poet, that of a poet most plain and direct in his style, that of a poet most plain and direct in his ideas, that of a poet eminently noble,—so Mr Newman tells us his general impression of Homer. 'Homer's style', he says, 'is direct, popular, forcible, quaint, flowing, garrulous'. Again: 'Homer rises and sinks with his subject, is prosaic when it is tame, is low when it is mean'.

I lay my finger on four words in these two sentences of Mr Newman, and I say that the man who could apply those words to Homer can never render Homer truly. The four words are these: quaint, garrulous, prosaic, low. Search the English language for a word which does not apply to Homer, and you could not fix on a better than quaint, unless perhaps you fixed on one of the other three.

Again; 'to translate Homer suitably', says Mr Newman, 'we need a diction suffi