Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/68

 be far too easy. I will quote but one other passage from him, and that a passage where the diction is comparatively inoffensive, in order that disapproval of the words may not unfairly heighten disapproval of the rhythm. The end of the nineteenth book, the answer of Achilles to his horse Xanthus, Mr Newman gives thus:

Chestnut! why bodest death to me? from thee this was not needed. Myself right surely know alsó, that 't is my doom to perish, From mother and from father dear apart, in Troy; but never Pause will I make of war, until the Trojans be glutted. He spake, and yelling, held afront the single-*hoofed horses.

Here Mr Newman calls Xanthus Chestnut, indeed, as he calls Balius Spotted, and Podarga Spry-foot; which is as if a Frenchman were to call Miss Nightingale ''Mdlle. Rossignol, or Mr Bright M. Clair''. And several other expressions, too, 'yelling', 'held afront', 'single-hoofed',—leave, to say the very least, much to be desired. Still, for Mr Newman, the diction of this passage is pure. All the more clearly appears the profound vice of a rhythm, which, with comparatively few faults of words, can leave a sense of such incurable alienation from Homer's manner as, 'Myself right surely know also that 'tis my doom to perish compared with the εὖ νύ τοι οἶδα καὶ αὐτὸς, ὅ μοι μόρος ἐνθάδ' ὀλέσθαι of Homer.