Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/63

 My overthrow. I know myself it is my fate to fall Thus far from Phthia; yet that fate shall fail to vent her gall Till mine vent thousands.—These words said, he fell to horrid deeds, Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-hoofed steeds.

For what regards the manner of this passage, the words 'Achilles Thus answered him', and 'I know myself it is my fate to fall Thus far from Phthia', are in Homer's manner, and all the rest is out of it. But for what regards its movement, who, after being jolted by Chapman through such verse as this,

These words said, he fell to horrid deeds, Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-hoofed steeds,

who does not feel the vital difference of the movement of Homer,

ἦ ῥα, καὶ ἐν πρώτοις ἰάχων ἔχε μώνυχας ἵππο υς?

To pass from Chapman to Dr Maginn. His Homeric Ballads are vigorous and genuine poems in their own way; they are not one continual falsetto, like the pinch-*beck Roman Ballads of Lord Macaulay; but just because they are ballads in their manner and movement, just because, to use the words of his applauding editor, Dr Maginn has 'consciously realised to himself the truth that Greek ballads can be really represented in English only by a similar manner',—just for this very reason they