Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/49

 I follow the same method with Mr Newman's two other epithets, prosaic and low. 'Homer rises and sinks with his subject', says Mr Newman; 'is prosaic when it is tame, is low when it is mean'. First I say, Homer is never, in any sense, to be with truth called prosaic; he is never to be called low. He does not rise and sink with his subject; on the contrary, his manner invests his subject, whatever his subject be, with nobleness. Then I look for an author of whom it may with truth be said, that he 'rises and sinks with his subject, is prosaic when it is tame, is low when it is mean'. Defoe is eminently such an author; of Defoe's manner it may with perfect precision be said, that it follows his matter; his lifelike composition takes its character from the facts which it conveys, not from the nobleness of the composer. In ''Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack'', Defoe is undoubtedly prosaic when his subject is tame, low when his subject is mean. Does Homer's manner in the Iliad, I ask the scholar, ever make upon him an impression at all like the impression made by Defoe's manner in Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack? Does it not, on the contrary, leave him with an impression of nobleness, even when it deals with Thersites or with Irus?

Well then, Homer is neither quaint, nor garrulous, nor prosaic, nor mean: and Mr Newman, in seeing him so, sees him differ