Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/94

 *comic poem, and, therefore, of essentially different nature from the Iliad. Still in two things it is, more than any other English poem which I can call to mind, like the Iliad: in the rapidity of its movement, and the plainness and directness of its style. The thought of this poem is often curious and subtle, and that is not Homeric; the diction is often grotesque, and that is not Homeric. Still by its rapidity of movement, and plain and direct manner of presenting the thought however curious in itself, this poem, which, being as I say a serio-comic poem, has a right to be grotesque, is grotesque truly, not, like Mr Newman's version of the Iliad, falsely. Mr Clough's odd epithets, 'The grave man nicknamed Adam', 'The hairy Aldrich', and so on, grow vitally and appear naturally in their place; while Mr Newman's 'dapper-greaved Achaians', and 'motley-helmed Hector', have all the air of being mechanically elaborated and artificially stuck in. Mr Clough's hexameters are excessively, needlessly rough; still owing to the native rapidity of this measure, and to the directness of style which so well allies itself with it, his composition produces a sense in the reader which Homer's composition also produces, and which Homer's translator ought to re-*produce,—the sense of having, within short limits of time, a large portion of human life presented to him, instead of a small portion.