Keats's and Shelley's peculiarities will seem as monstrous as Pope's or Johnson's do in ours. But if, misled by the popular contempt for Pope, he should be inclined to answer this advice with a shrug and a smile, we entreat him, and all young poets, to consider, line by line, word by word, sound by sound, only those once well-known lines, which many a brave and wise man of fifty years ago would have been unable to read without honorable tears: "In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, Of mimic statesmen, and their merry king. No fool to laugh at, which he valued more. Yes; Pope knew, as well as Wordsworth and our "Naturalisti," that no physical fact was so mean or coarse as to be below the dignity of poetry, when in its right place. He could draw a pathos and sublimity out of the dirty inn-chamber, such as Wordsworth never elicited from tubs and daffodils; because he could use them according to the rules of art, which are the rules of sound reason and of true taste. A FAREWELL. My fairest child, I have no song to give you; Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1822 MATTHEW ARNOLD, the poet and essayist, is the eldest son of the celebrated Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and was born December 24, 1822. After his preparatory course at Winchester and Rugby, he entered Baliol College, Oxford, and carried off a prize for English verse. In 1845 he was elected Fellow of Oriel College, and from 1847 to 1851 he acted as private secretary to the Marquis of Landsdowne. On relinquishing this office, he was married to a daughter of Mr. Justice Wrightman. In 1857 he was chosen Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, and. two years afterwards, Foreign Assistant Commissioner to the Royal Commission on Education, in which capacity he visited France, Holland, and Switzerland. Mr. Arnold's first appearance as an author was as a poet. The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, appeared in 1818; Empedocles on Etna, 1853; Poems, 1854; Merope, a tragedy, 1858. In these works he shows he has little sympathy with the modern innovations in our poetic style and diction, and counsels the models of classic antiquity. Though these works give evidence of carefully cultivated taste and true poetic feeling, it is as a prose-writer he is now most known and read. His Essays will ever be prized as among the best things in our language.2 HOMER'S TRANSLATORS. Homer is rapid in his movement, Homer is plain in his words and style, Homer is simple in his ideas, Homer is noble in his manner. Cowper renders him ill because he is slow in his movement and elaborate in his style; Pope renders him ill because he is artificial both in his style and in his words; Chapman renders 1 This nobleman (a noble man, indeed) died January 31, 1863. He formed a splendid library, and one of the noblest collections of pictures and statuary in the kingdom. From his being such a munificent patron of literature and the arts, the Landsdowne edition of Shakspeare was named after him. It was first published by White, 1852, and a new edition by Bohn, 1838. The peculiarity of it is that the names of the characters, stage-directions, &c. are printed in RED. It is beautifully illustrated by thirty-seven steel plates, and is, in my him ill because he is fantastic in his ideas; Mr. Newman renders him ill because he is odd in his words and ignoble in his manner. All four translators diverge from their original at other points besides those named; but it is at the points thus named that their divergence is greatest. For instance, Cowper's diction is not as Homer's diction, nor his nobleness as Homer's nobleness; but it is in movement and grammatical style that he is most unlike Homer. Pope's rapidity is not of the same sort as Homer's rapidity, nor are his plainness of ideas and his nobleness as Homer's plainness of ideas and nobleness; but it is in the artificial character of his style and diction that he is most unlike Homer. Chapman's movement, words, style, and manner, are often far enough from resembling Homer's movement, words, style and manner; but it is the fantasticality of his ideas which puts him farthest from resembling Homer. Mr. Newman's movement, grammatical style, and ideas, are a thousand times in strong contrast with Homer's; still it is by the oddness of his diction and the ignobleness of his manner that he contrasts with Homer the most violently. Therefore the translator must not say to himself: "Cowper is noble, Pope is rapid, Chapman has a good diction, Mr. Newman has a good cast of sentence. I will avoid Cowper's slowness, Pope's artificiality, Chapman's conceits, Mr. Newman's oddity; I will take Cowper's dignified manner, Pope's impetuous movement, Chapman's vocabulary, Mr. Newman's syntax, and so make a perfect translation of Homer." Undoubtedly in certain points the versions of Chapman, Cowper, Pope, and Mr. Newman, all of them have merit; some of them very high merit, others a lower merit; but even in these points they have none of them precisely the same kind of merit as Homer, and therefore the new translator, even if he can imitate them in their good points, will still not satisfy his judge, the scholar, who asks him for Homer and Homer's kind of merit, or, at least, for as much of them as it is possible to give. HOMER AND MILTON. The first kind of blank verse which naturally occurs to us is the blank verse of Milton, which has been employed, with more or less modification, by Mr. Cary in translating Dante, by Cowper and by Mr. Wright in translating Homer. How noble this metre is in Milton's hands, how completely it shows itself capable of the grand, nay, of the grandest, style, I need not say. To this metre, as used in the Paradise Lost, our country owes the glory of having produced one of the only two poetical works in the grand style which are to be found in the modern languages; the Divine Comedy of Dante is the other. England and Italy here stand alone; Spain, France, and Germany have produced great poets; but neither Calderon, nor Corneille, nor Schiller, nor even Goethe, has produced a body of poetry in the true grand style, in the sense in which the style of the body of Homer's poetry, or Pindar's, or Sophocles's, is grand. But Dante has, and so has Milton; and in this respect Milton possesses a distinction which even Shakspeare, undoubtedly the supreme poetical power in our literature, does not share with him. Not a tragedy of Shakspeare but contains passages in the worst of all styles, the affected style; and the grand style, although it may be harsh, or obscure, or cumbrous, or over-labored, is never affected. In spite, therefore, of objections which may justly be urged against the plan and treatment of the Paradise Lost, in spite of its possessing, certainly, a far less enthralling force of interest to attract and to carry forward the reader than the Iliad or the Divine Comedy, it fully deserves, it can never lose, its immense reputation; for, like the Iliad and the Divine Comedy, nay, in some respects to a higher degree than either of them, it is in the grand style. But the grandeur of Milton is one thing, and the grandeur of Homer is another. Homer's movement, I have said again and again, is a flowing, a rapid movement; Milton's, on the other hand, is a labored, a self-retarding movement. In each case, the movement, the metrical cast, corresponds with the mode of evolution of the thought, with the syntactical cast, and is indeed determined by it. Milton charges himself so full with thought, imagination, knowledge, that his style will hardly contain them. He is too full-stored to show us in much detail one conception, one piece of knowledge: he just shows it to us in a pregnant allusive way, and then he presses on to another; and all this fulness, this pressure, this condensation, this self-constraint, enters into his movement, and makes it what it is,-noble, but difficult and austere. Homer is quite different: he says a thing, and says it to the end, and then begins another, while Milton is trying to press a thousand things into one. So that whereas, in reading Milton, you never lose the sense of laborious and condensed fulness, in reading Homer you never lose the sense of flowing and abounding ease. With Milton line runs into line, and all is straitly bound together; with Homer line runs off from line, and all hurries away onward. Homer begins, Misty dside, Oeá‚1—at the second word announcing the proposed action: Milton begins: "Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 1 Myviv äcide, Ocá—Menin acide, Thea. The anger (of Achilles) sing, O Goddess! Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, So chary of a sentence is he, so resolute not to let it escape him till he has crowded into it all he can, that it is not till the thirtyninth word in the sentence that he will give us the key to it, the word of action, the verb. Milton says: "O for that warning voice, which he, who saw He is not satisfied unless he can tell us, all in one sentence, and without permitting himself to actually mention the name, that the man who had the warning voice was the same man who saw the Apocalypse. Homer would have said, "O for that warning voice, which John heard;" and if it had suited him to say that John also saw the Apocalypse, he would have given us that in another sentence. The effect of this allusive and compressed manner of Milton is, I need not say, often very powerful. DESIRE. Thou, who dost dwell alone,- From the world's temptations, From that fierce anguish When the Soul, growing clearer, When the Soul, mounting higher, And, when she fain would soar, To a skin-deep sense Of her own eloquence; Strong to deceive, strong to enslave,— Save, oh, save! From the ingrain'd fashion Of this earthly nature That mars thy creature; From grief, that is but passion; From doubt, where all is double; Where just men suffer wrong; Oh, let the false dream fly From the cradle to the grave, Save, oh, save! 1 This might rather be called A PRAYER, as it is an earnest and sublime one. |