Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/67

 of manner from Homer, it gives us of the real effect of

εἰ μὲν γὰρ, πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε

than Mr Newman's lines. And now, why are Mr Newman's lines faulty? They are faulty, first, because, as a matter of diction, the expressions 'O gentle friend', 'eld', 'in sooth', 'liefly', 'advance', 'man-ennobling', 'sith', 'any-gait', and 'sly of foot', are all bad; some of them worse than others, but all bad: that is, they all of them as here used excite in the scholar, their sole judge,—excite, I will boldly affirm, in Professor Thompson or Professor Jowett,—a feeling totally different from that excited in them by the words of Homer which these expressions profess to render. The lines are faulty, secondly, because, as a matter of rhythm, any and every line among them has to the ear of the same judges (I affirm it with equal boldness) a movement as unlike Homer's movement in the corresponding line as the single words are unlike Homer's words. Οὔτε κέ σε στέλλοιμαι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειρν,—'Nor liefly thee would I advance to man-ennobling battle';—for whose ears do those two rhythms produce impressions of, to use Mr Newman's own words, 'similar moral genius'?

I will by no means make search in Mr Newman's version for passages likely to raise a laugh; that search, alas! would