HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS
AND
THE GREEK DRAMA
PROFESSOR WILSON
0S70H ODIXTOD iaw & a&i
CHESTNUT HILX, >1A38.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLX
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
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*
PREFATORY NOTE.
In the Articles which compose this Volume, an unusually large amount of
extract is embodied. This was rendered unavoidable by the aim which the
Author had in view,—his object being not merely to discuss the poetry of
Homer, but to present a critical estimate of the comparative merits of his
translators. Superabundant, therefore, as the quotations may seem, the
Editor has made no attempt at retrenchment, believing that, while the general
reader will not object to the amount, the classical student will find in the speci¬
mens so fully placed before him, and so sagaciously commented on, the means
of improving his scholarship, of cultivating his taste, and of sharpening his
critical penetration. As fit accompaniments to the genial criticism of Professor
Wilson, and as throwing much light on all that relates to the Homeric poems,
the Editor may refer the studious reader to the erudite argumentation of
Colonel Mure (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece , vol. i.), the vigorous
summary of Professor Blackie {Encyclopedia Britannica, article “ Homer,”)
and the able advocacy and fine analysis of Mr Gladstone (Oxford Essays,
1857 ).
The edition of Cowpcr’s Homer which Professor Wilson made use of when
writing these critiques was the second. Mr Southey has preferred to reprint the
first edition in his collection of Cowper’s Works. The two editions differ from
each other very mateiially, and it is quite possible that Mr Southey may have
been right in his opinion that the first is the better version of the two. In
the present volume, however, it was of course necessary to reprint the extracts
from the edition from which they were originally taken, as it is only to these
that the reviewer's criticisms apply.
ESSAYS
CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS . 1
CRITIQUE I.
[APRIL 1831J
Patriots as we are, as well as Cosmopolites, how relieving,
how refreshing, how invigorating, and how elevating to onr
senses and our souls, to fly from politics to poetry—from the
Honourable House to the Immortal Homer — from the vapid
feuds of placemen and reformers, to the deadly wrath of nature’s
heroic sons—from the helpless limp of any middle-aged Smith,
to the elastic lameness of old Vulcan—from O’Connell and
Hunt, with their matchless blacking, to
“ Atrides, king of men, and Thetis’ godlike son ! ”
We are no great Greek scholars ; but we can force our way,
vi et armis , through the Iliad. What we do not clearly, we
dimly, understand, and are happy in the glorious glimpses ;
in the full unbroken light, we bask like an eagle in the sun¬
shine that emblazons his eyrie ; in the gloom that sometimes
falls suddenly down on his inspired rhapsodies, as if from a
tower of clouds, we are for a time eyeless as “ blind Mseon-
ides,” while with him we enjoy “ the darkness that may be
felt; ” as the lightnings of his genius flash, lo ! before our
wide imagination ascends u stately-structured Troy,” expand
1 The Iliad of Homer. Translated by William Sotheby. 1831.
VOL. VIII. A
2
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
tented shore and masted sea ; and in that thunder we dream
of the nod that shuddered Olympus.
Some people believe in twenty Homers—we in one. Nature
is not so prodigal of her great poets. Heaven only knows the
number of her own stars—no astronomer may ever count them
—but the soul-stars of earth are but few ; and with this
Perryan pen could we name them all. Who ever heard of two
Miltons—of two Shakespeares ? That there should even have
been one of each, is a mystery, when we look at what are
called men. Who, then, after considering that argument,
will believe that Greece of old was glorified by a numerous
brotherhood of coeval genii of mortal birth, all “ building up
the lofty rhyme,” till beneath their harmonious hands, arose,
in its perfect proportions, immortal in its beauty and magni¬
ficence, “ The Tale of Troy Divine ? ”
Was Homer savage or civilised ? Both. So was Achilles.
Conceived by a goddess, and begotten by a hero, that half¬
celestial child sat at the knees of a formidable Gamaliel—
Chiron the Centaur. Grown up to perfect stature, his was
the Beauty of the Passions — Apollo’s self, in his loveliness,
not a more majestic minister of death. Paint him in two
words— Stormy Sunshine.
Was the breath of life ever in that shining savage—or was
he but a lustrous shadow in blind Homer’s imagination ?
What matters it ? All is that we think ; no other existence ;
Homer thought Achilles ; clouds are transient, but Troy’s
towers are eternal. Oh! call not Greek a dead language, if
you have a soul to be saved ! The bard who created, and the
heroes who fought in the Iliad, are therein not entombed, but
enshrined ; and their spirits will continue to breathe and burn
there, till the stars are cast from the firmament, and there is
an end to what we here call Life.
Homer, you know, wrote in Greek, and in many dialects.
He has been translated into English, which, in heroic measures,
you know, admits but of one. All translation of the highest
poetry, we hold, must be, such is the mysterious incarnation of
thought and feeling in language, at best but a majestic mockery
—something ghostlike ; when supposed most substantial, sud¬
denly seeming most a shadow — or change that image, why,
then, like a broken rainbow, or say, rather, like a rainbow re¬
fracted, as well as reflected, from the sky-gazing sea. Glori¬
ous pieces of colour are lying here and there, reminding
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
3
us of what, a moment before, we beheld in a perfect arch on
heaven.
But while the nations of the earth all speak in different
tongues—they all feel with one heart, and they all think
with one brain. Therefore, he who hath the gift of tongues,
may, from an alien language, transfuse much of the meaning
that inspirits it into his own ; although still we must always be
inclined to say, listening to the u repeated strain,”
“ Alike, but oh! how different.”
All truly great or good poets desire that all mankind should,
as far as it is possible, enjoy all that in the human is most
divine ; and therefore while each has,
“ Like Prometheus, stolen the fire from heaven,”
they have all exultingly availed themselves of the common
privilege of stealing — whenever inspired so to do — and
plagiarism is thus often the sign of a noble idolatry— of steal¬
ing from one another, that after hoarding them up in the
sunny and windy air-lofts of their own imaginations, they may
in times of dearth—or to make plenty more plenteous—diffuse
and scatter those life-ennobling thefts—in furtherance of the
desires of the dead—
“ O’er lands and seas,
Whatever clime the sun’s bright circle warms ! ”
And thus, too, have the truly great and good poets sometimes
—often — felt that it was dignified to become translators.
What else—ay, ay, much else—was the divine Virgil ? Fools
disparage him, for that he translated—stole from Homer. As
well despise Shakespeare because he stole, not only from un¬
written nature and her oral traditions, but from all the old
Homeric war-chronicles people had got printed, that he
could lay hands on ;
“ For the thief of all thieves was the Warwickshire thief! ”
Indeed, Shakespeare, who had u little‘Latin, and no Greek,”
contrived — heaven only knows how — to translate into Eng¬
lish thousands of fine things from those languages. Marlow
was an avowed and regular translator—so was Ben Jonson—
and many others of that wonder-working age. But come
down, without fear of breaking your neck by the fall—to
Dryden and Pope at once;—and then, sliding along a gentle
4
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
level, to Cowper—and, last of all, to *Sotheby—all translators
—and who is good, who better, and who best, you sure will
find it hard to say—of the “ myriad-minded ” Homer.
Let it at once suffice for Mr Sotheby’s satisfaction, that we
say he is entitled—and we do not know another person of
whom we could safely say as much — to deal with that well-
booted Grecian, even at this time of day, after all that has
been done to, in, with, and by “ Him of the Iliad and the
Odyssey,” by not a few of our prevailing poets.
Let us draw the best of them up in rank and file, and as
they march before us, try their height by a mental military
standard, declaring who are fit for admission into the grena¬
diers, who into the light company, and who must go into the
battalion.
We shall confine ourselves to the First Book—itself a
poem—and let us try the volunteers by the test of the
Opening thereof—almost all educated persons being familiar
with that glorious Announcement in the original Greek.
CHAPMAN.
“ Achilles’ baneful wrath resound, O Goddess, that imposed
Infinite sorrows on the Greeks, and many brave souls loosed
From breasts heroic, sent them far to that invisible cave
That no light comforts, and their limbs to dogs and vultures gave;
To all which Jove’s will gave effect, from whom first strife begun
Betwixt Atrides, king of men, and Thetis’ godlike son.”
DRYDEN.
“ The wrath of Peleus’ son, O muse, resound,
Whose dire effects the Grecian army found,
And many a hero, king, and hardy knight,
Were sent in early youth to shades of night,
Their limbs a prey to dogs and vultures made.
So was the sovereign will of Jove obey’d ;
From that ill-omen’d hour, when strife begun
Betwixt Atrides great and Thetis’ godlike son.”
*
TICKEL.
“ Achilles’ fatal wrath, whence discord rose,
That brought the sons of Greece unnumber’d woes,
O Goddess! sing. Full many a hero’s ghost
Was driven untimely to th’ infernal coast,
While in promiscuous heaps their bodies lay,
A feast for dogs and every bird of prey.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
5
So did the sire of gods and men fulfil
His steadfast purpose and almighty will ;
What time the haughty chiefs their jars begun,
Atrides, king of men, and Peleus’ godlike son.”
POPE.
“ Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess! sing,
That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain ;
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore ;
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove.”
COWPER.
“ Sing, Muse, the deadly wrath of Peleus’ son,
Achilles, source of many thousand woes
To the Achaian host, which num’rous souls
Of heroes sent to Ades premature,
And left their bodies to devouring dogs
And birds of heaven (so Jove his will perform’d),
Prom that dread hour when discord first embroil’d
Achilles and Atrides, king of men.”
SOTHEBY.
“ Sing, Muse, Pelides’ wrath, whence woes on woes
O’er the Acheans’ gather’d host arose,
Her chiefs’ brave souls untimely hurl’d from day,
And left their limbs to dogs and birds a prey ;
Since first ’gainst Atreus’ son Achilles strove,
And their dire feuds fulfill’d the will of Jove.”
What are the qualities that characterise the original ?
Simplicity and stateliness. Each word in the first line is
great.
MHNIN ccu'St, ©£«,
Now, not one of all the translations makes an approach to the
grandeur of that magnificent line. It is then, we may con¬
clude, unapproachable in the English—and consequently in
any other language. Dryden and Cowper, we think (please
always, if you have time and opportunity, to verify or falsify
our criticisms by reference to translation and original), suc¬
ceed best; Pope and Sotheby are about on an equality, though
Pope is the most musical; and Tickel is poor, though Johnson,
6
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
throughout that passage, waywardly prefers him to Pope.
Perhaps some will think old Chapman the best, after all, and
certainly his lines have the “ long-resounding march,” if not
the “ energy divine.” Pope says of Chapman sneeringly,
that he has “ taken an advantage of an immeasurable length
of verse.” The longer the better, say we, had he known how
to use it—which, though the above quotation be very good,
we say he generally did not, in spite of the Cockneys.
Observe with what a sonorous and significant, nay sublime,
word, Homer begins the second line, OvXo/xsvriv. The trans¬
lators give “baneful,” “dire effects,” “fatal,” “direful,”
“deadly,” all right and good, but not one of them placed
where Homer placed his word in its power. Sotheby omits it.
The last line of the Announcement is full brother to the
first—only look at it.
A rgiilins n civet? ccv^gcuv xct\ $7os ’A %iXXs'j$.
All the translators were bound by every tie, human and
divine, to have preserved—if that were possible—its sound,
and its sense, and its soul. Old Chapman has done so, and
praise be to him; Dryden had the gumption to steal old
Chapman's line, but even in an Alexandrine he could not
get a common title to Agamemnon's just title of “ King of
Men,” and had to cut it down to “great,” thereby impairing
its majesty; Tickel also keeps to old Chapman, and wisely
drops out “ betwixt; ” Pope translates it poorly, and kills it
by transposition ; Cowper keeps it in its right place, but has
dropped the noble and essential epithets ; Sotheby almost
repeats Pope.
Let us go straight to the famous picture of the Descent of
the Plague-Apollo. We must really give the Greek.
*’0? sfar tl^ofjtivoi, rou ixXvi $o7£o; ’ AcroXXeav,
Bjj xetr O vXvutoio xoe^rivuv ^mo^ivo; xyi^
To\' ufjcoiaiv t%ctjv ot/x(pvgi(pict nets [aiv •x’^u/rov xot) xvvet; otoyov
Avrccg otvro7oi fitXo; l^tcrsi/xti i (fin'll
B a.XX’‘ alii tfv^oci ViXVOOV xctlovro
—I. 43-52.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
7
This all men feel to be sublime. Yet, strange to say, we
doubt if to two imaginations it presents anything like the
same picture. The Sun-god, Phoebus Apollo, being incensed,
slew mules, dogs, and Greeks. He is the Plague. Yet he is
a Divinity too—and, at one and the same time, he plays to
admiration the part of both, and we defy you to tell which is,
in your mind, the predominant idea—of his Godship or his
Plagueship. Down to the end of the line closing with 10T0,
he is himself Oo/'Cog ’AcroXXwv—Etty might paint him, Macdon¬
ald show him in sculpture. But henceforth he is entirely, or
nearly, the Plague. True, he continues to shoot his arrows—
but the Impersonation grows faint; and, finally, from before
our eyes at least, fades utterly away. For how can the ima¬
gination, that was startled by the suddenness of the descent
of the glorious Apparition from the summits of Olympus,
figure to itself the same Sight sitting apart from the ships for
nine nights and days of slaughter, and of blazing funeral
piles ! The bright Vision of Poetry gives place gradually to
the dim vagueness of national Superstition. If this be true—
and if it be possible to do it, then the translator should vary
his version, in the same spirit as Homer saw and sung, and
make us feel the strange transition from Divinity to Disease.
How may he do so? By intensifying, as Homer did, the
Personality of the Godhead, up to the highest pitch at B/o/o;
and then letting it generalise itself away into the mere pre¬
sence of the unweariable activity of death.
Competitors ! right shoulders forward—wheel!
CHAPMAN.
“ Thus he pray’d, and Phoebus heard him pray—
And, vex’d at heart, down from the tops of steep heaven stoop’d,
his bow,
And quiver covered round, his hands did on his shoulders throw ;
And of the angry deity the arrows as he moved
Rattled about him. Like the night he ranged the host, and roved
(Apart the fleet set) terribly ; with his hard-loosing hand
His silver bow twang’d, and his shafts did first the mules command,
And swift hounds, then the Greeks themselves—his deadly arrows
shot,
The fires of death went never out, nine days his shafts flew hot
About the army.”
8
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
DRYDEN.
“ He pray’d, and Phoebus hearing, urged his flight,
With fury kindled, from Olympus’ height;
His quiver o’er his ample shoulders threw ;
His bow twang’d, and his arrows rattled as they flew.
Black as a stormy night, he ranged around
The tents, and compass’d the devoted ground.
Then with full force his deadly bow he bent,
And feather’d fates among the mules and sumpters sent,
The essay of rage ; on faithful dogs the next;
And last in human hearts his arrows fix’d.
The god nine days the Greeks at rovers kill’d,
Nine days the camp with funeral fires was fill’d.”
TICKEL.
“ Apollo heard his injured suppliant’s cry ;
Down rush’d the vengeful warrior from the sky ;
Across his breast the glittering bow he flung,
And at his back the well-stored quiver hung
(His arrows rattled as he urged his flight).
In clouds he flew, conceal’d from mortal sight,
Then took his stand the well-aim’d shaft to throw ;
Fierce sprang the string, and twang’d the silver bow.
The dogs and mules his first keen arrows slew ;
Amid the ranks, the next more fatal flew,
A deathful dart. The funeral piles around,
For ever blazed on the devoted ground.”
POPE.
“ Thus Chryses pray’d, the favouring power attends,
And from Olympus’ lofty top descends.
Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound,
Fierce as he moved his silver shafts resound.
Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread,
And gloomy darkness roll’d around his head.
The fleet in view, he twang’d his deadly bow,
And hissing, fly the feather’d fates below.
On mules and dogs, the infection first began,
And last, the vengeful arrows fix’d in man.
For nine long nights, through all the dusky air,
The pyres thick flaming, shot a dismal glare.”
COWPER.
“ Such pray’r he made, and it was heard. The God,
Down from Olympus, with his radiant bow,
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
9
And his full quiver o’er his shoulder slung,
March’d in his anger ; shaken as he moved,
His rattling arrows told of his approach.
Like night he came, and seated with the ships
In view, despatch’d an arrow. Clang'd the cord,
Dread-sounding, bounding on the silver bow.
Mules first, and dogs, he struck, but aiming soon
Against the Greeks themselves, his bitter shafts
Smote them. The frequent piles blazed night and day.”
SOTHEBY.
“ Thus Chryses pray’d : his pray’r Apollo heard,
And heavenly vengeance kindled at the word.
He from Olympus’ brow, in fury bore
His bow and quiver’s death-denouncing store.
The arrows, rattling round his viewless flight,
Clang’d, as the god descended, dark as night.
Then Phoebus stay’d, and from the fleet apart,
Launch’d on the host the inevitable dart;
And ever as he wing’d the shaft below,
Dire was the twanging of the silver bow.
Mules and swift dogs first fell, then far around
Man felt the god’s immedicable wound.
Corse lay on corse, to fire succeeded fire,
As death unweary’d fed the funeral pyre.”
Here again, old Chapman may be said, on the whole, to be
excellent. But Homer does not show us Apollo—that trans¬
lator does—in the act of enduing himself with his bow and
quiver. We see from the first the “ heavenly archer ” (these
are Mr Milman’s words) equipped for revenge. “ His silver
bow twang’d,” is indeed woefully inadequate ; and “ hard-loos¬
ing hand,” though rather expressive, and showing that old
Chapman may have been a toxopholite as well as Ascham,
nor yet un-Homeric, is not in the original, and therefore gives
offence to us who belong to the King’s Body-Guard.
Dry den sadly mistakes and mars the majestic meaning of
>1 r-, * y it » * •• V > > it f
hKACCy^GCV 0 CCg OlffTOl S'T OUfJiOJV ^CdOfJLlVOlO,
A vrov xivr.6 tvrof'
“ His bow twaDg’d, and liis arrows rattled as they flew ! ”
This is an unlucky blunder—and it led him into another,—
“ Then with full force his deadly bow he bent! ”
10
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
As much as to say, we presume, that though before his
u bow twang’d ” it had not been bent with full force. 11 Glo¬
rious John ” did not see that it had not before been bent at
all. Why should it, till he had taken his station apart from
the ships ? “ Feather’d fates ” are fine things—but not in the
passage. “ The Greeks at rovers killed ,” is a piece of pedantic
impertinence—which archers will understand—and for which,
could Homer have foreseen it, he would have longed even in
Hades to have broken Dryden’s head.
Ticket’s translation is nearly a total failure. Vengeful
u warrior ,” is somewhat impertinent.
u The well-aim’d shafts to throw,”
suggests a suspicion that our friend was thinking of a “ stone
bicker; ” yet, strange to say, the next line is more truly
Homeric than, perhaps, any other single line in any of the
other translations, and is almost perfect,—
“ Fierce sprung the string, and twang’d the silver bow.”
“ In clouds he flew, conceal’d from mortal sight,”
is an absolute and manifest lie ; for Homer saw him, and so do
we, and so did Tickel himself, unless he were bat-blind,
which he was not, but, on the contrary, had a couple of good
sharp eyes in his head.
On Pope’s translation it is not possible to bestow much
praise.
“ Bent was his bow the Grecian hearts to wound”
is false and feeble. “Kesound” should have been “resound¬
ed,” we suspect; though such capricious change of tense is,
we know, a bad trick, common among the poets of Pope’s
school.
“ And gloomy darkness roll’d around his head,”
is idle tautology. “ Twang’d his deadly bow,” not literal,
where literality was demanded; and “ feather’d fates ” may
be restored, without Pope being the poorer, to Dryden.
“ For nine long nights through all the dusky air,
The pyres thick-flaming shot a dismal glare,”
are very noble lines ; but the pyres burned by day as well as
night—though by day they were doubtless not so visible.
Homer left us to see them of ourselves during both; but since
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
11
Pope has grandly directed our eyes to the night-imagery, we
owe him gratitude.
Cowper, on the whole, is good, forcible; but owing to some
rather commonish words, we fear not sufficiently dignified—
for Apollo. “ March'd in his anger," is raw-recruitish;
though raw recruits are often formidable fellows ; and “ told
of his approach," is very prosaic. After it, only think of
Milton's “ far off his coming shone ! " The attempt at imi¬
tative harmony or discord in the singular line about “ dread¬
sounding, bounding,” we confess we like—but liking is not
loving, nor loving admiring, nor admiring astonishment, nor
astonishment exultation.
Sotheby is excellent—but not all we hoped he might have
been—with all these bell-rocks and beacon lights—to show
him his path on the waters. “ Kindled at the word” is sud¬
den and sharp, but quaint and incorrect. “ Then Phoebus
stayed," has the same merit and the same demerit. We do
not like the repetition of 11 dart ” in 11 shaft.” “ Immedicable
wound ” and “inevitable dart," have a sameness of sound not
satisfactory to our ears at the close of lines so near each
other—nor is there anything answering to either epithet in
Homer.
“ Dire was the twanging of the silver bow,”
is admirable in its almost literal simplicity.
“ Corse lay on corse, to fire succeeded fire,
And death unwearied fed the funeral pyre,”
are in themselves two strong lines—but are they both equal
in power and glory, to
ethi 5s 5 rv(>ct) vmvuv xoiiovro S-ccftuui J
There is one half-line in the original of which we have yet
said nothing—and which loses its identity in some of these
translations, and scarcely preserves it in others. What effect
does it produce on your imagination ?
f J/*’ N > / -
0 d Y\ll VVKT4 iOlKMS
Old Chapman renders it—rightly so far, for so far literally—
“ Like the night he ranged the host.”
Dryden—
“ Black as a stormy night, he ranged around
The tents ”
12
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Pope-
“ Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread,
And gloomy darkness roll’d around his head,”
which last line we have already abused. Tickel, idiotically
as we said—
“ In clouds he flew, conceal’d from mortal sight.”
Cowper, best of all, and perfectly—
“ Like night he came ; ”
and Sotheby—
“ As the God descended, dark as night,”
—which is not so good as Cowper, only because not literally
Homer.
We ask you again, what effect does it produce in your im¬
agination? Not surely that of night over the whole sky—
not utter concealment of the God in a darkness not appertain¬
ing to himself, but in which he is merely enshrouded, as are
the heavens and earth ? No, no, no, that cannot have been
intended by Homer. But Homer, we think, in the inspiration
of his religious awe, suddenly saw Apollo, the very God of
Light, changing in the passion—the agony of rage—into an
Apparition the reverse, the opposite, of his own lustrousness,
—undergoing a dreadful Transfiguration. It was not as if
Hay became Night, but that the God of Hay was wrath-
changed into the Night God—almost as if Apollo had become
Pluto. Milton must have understood the image so, for he has
transferred it—not the change—but the image itself, to his
most dreadful personage, “ Black it stood as night,”—in the
daylight you know, and therefore was that Foul Blotch so ter¬
rible. Try then each translation separately, by this the test
of truth, and judge for yourself which is good, which bad, and
which indifferent. We should like to hear your opinion.
Meanwhile, before we proceed to another passage, only hear
old Hobbes, who, perhaps you may not know it, translated the
Iliad and the Odyssey. “ His poetry, as well as Ogilvie’s ”
(which we have never chanced to see), says Pope truly, “ is
too mean for criticism.”
“ His prayer was granted by the Heity ;
Who with his silver bow and arrows keen,
Hescended from Olympus silently,
In likeness of the sable Night unseen.”
In this stealthiness there seems to us something meanly sus-
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
13
picious. True, that in Scripture we read of death coming like
a thief in the night—but that was not said for the sake of sub¬
limity, but to show us how we are, in our imagined deepest
home-felt security, unsafe from that murderous wretch Death,
or Williams . 1 But Homer, being a heathen, meant no uncivil
scorn of Apollo, whereas Hobbes converts him into a cracksman.
“ His bow and quiver both behind him hung,
The arrows chink as often as he jogs! ”
We come now to that immortal quarrel
“ Betwixt Atrides, king of men, and Thetis’ godlike son
and are thankful to learn that we ourselves have never felt
tempted, by a rash ambition, to dare to try to translate it.
Never did Wrath so naturally, we may say rightfully,—
speaking of chiefs who were anything but Christian—flame up,
from a single spark into a roaring flame, within magnanimous
hearts. Ere yet he knew what Chryses was about to divulge
as the cause of the Plague—unless, indeed, he had a sort of
presaging forethought, that it somehow or other regarded the
king—Achilles, by promising the priest immunity from all
punishment, placed himself in the spirit and posture of a foe
to Agamemnon. That Atrides should have been smitten
with sudden rage against the supplicant Father, we cannot
wonder; for we soon have his own word for it, that Chryseis 2
was now as dear, that is, dearer to him than ever had been
Clytemnestra in her golden and virgin days. Kings, heroic
and unheroic, are seldom subjects to right reason; and, in his
towering passion with the slow-footed Chryses, his looks
could have been none of the sweetest towards the swift-footed
Achilles. That fiercest of the fierce took him up at once,
on his first tyrannical deviation from justice—thence instant
revenge threatened not vainly by him whose will was law—
the pride of unmatched power in one, conflicting with the
more than pride of the invincible valour of the other—the
indignation of habitual dignity on this side, watching the
character of the rage of natural passionateness on that—till
each seemed equally the fount of the stormy light that redly
1 The perpetrator of several murders in London in 1812.
2 Chryseis—daughter of Chryses, the priest of Apollo. Agamemnon (Atrides)
had refused the ransom which her father offered ; and hence Apollo had sent
the plague upon the Greek camp.
14
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
discoloured the countenances of both heroes—and king and
prince shone and shook alike in the perturbation of their
savage spirits, the intolerant and untamed sons of headstrong
and headlong nature.
Is it not amazing to think of it, after we lay down this
dramatic scene, how Homer, without any apparent effort, has
kept up, throughout all the furious injustice of these heroes
to each other, such strong sympathy with both, that though
sometimes shaken, it is never broken; and that, during the
course of the quarrel, though assuredly our hearts beat faster
and louder towards Achilles, they ever and anon go half over
to the side of Agamemnon ? tie swore but to deprive his anta¬
gonist of that blessing of which himself was about to be, as
he thought, .robbed — the enjoyment of love and beauty.
What signifies right, or the observance or violation of right,
when disappointment, which in the soul of a king is equal to
a subject's despair, has darked conscience and corrupted will,
and seeks refuge in revenge? And what signifies blood¬
thirsty heroism, that has been exulting in victorious fields of
death, to the soul in which it has burned, when its sweetest
meed is ravished out of its embrace, the light of woman's
eyes, and the fragrance of woman’s bosom, that had capti¬
vated the conqueror, and bound him within his night-tent, in
divinest thraldom, the slave of a slave? Patriotism, glory,
fealty, are all overpowered by pride raging in the sense of
degradation, injustice, and wrong, done to it, openly beneath
the sun, and before all eyes; and down is flung the gold-
studded sceptre on the earth, that the clash may ratify the
oath sworn to Jove, that never more shall the hand that
swayed it draw the sword, though the hero-slaughtering
Hector should drive Greece to her ships, and Troy be trium¬
phant over her flying sons. Is not this a Quarrel indeed of
demigods, and who could have sung it but Homer ?
We cannot quote all the translations of the progress of this
Wrath up to the intervention of Minerva, and therefore we
shall quote none of them—but go to the passage in which
the goddess reveals herself to the goddess-born, and so far
calms the roar within his soul, as does a sudden lull for a
while that of the sea. Agamemnon has just said—as Dryden
makes him say, “Briseis shall be mine .'' 1
1 Brise'is had been assigned to Achilles.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
15
CHAPMAN.
“ Thetis’ soil 1 at this stood vext, his heart
Bristled his bosom, and two ways drew his discursive part,
If from his thigh his sharp sword drawn, he should make room
about
Atrides’ person, slaughtering him, or sit his anger out,
And curb his spirit. While these thoughts strived in his blood
and mind,
And he his sword drew, down from heaven Athenia stoop’d, and
shined
About his temples, being sent by the ivory-wristed queen,
Saturnia, who out of her heart had ever loving been,
And careful of the good of both. She stood behind, and took
Achilles by the yellow curls, and only gave her look
To him appearance ; not a man of all the rest could see.
He turning back his eye, amaze shook every faculty ;
Yet straight he knew her by her eyes, so terrible they were
Sparkling with ardour ”-
DRYDEN.
“ At this the impatient hero sourly smiled ;
His heart impetuous in his bosom boil’d,
And, justled by two tides of equal sway,
Stood for a while suspended in his way.
Betwixt his reason and his rage untamed,
One whisper’d soft, and one aloud reclaim’d ;
That only counsel! d to the safer side,
This to the sword his ready hand applied.
Unpunish’d to support the affront was hard,
Nor easy was the attempt to force the guard.
But soon the thirst of vengeance fired his blood,
Half-shone his falchion, and half-sheath’d it stood.
In that nice moment, Pallas, from above,
Commission’d by the imperial wife of Jove,
Descended swift (the white-arm’d queen was loth
The fight should follow, for she favour’d both):
Just as in act he stood, in clouds enshrined,
Her hand she fasten’d on his hair behind :
Then backward by his yellow curl she drew ;
To him, and him alone, confess’d in view.
Tamed by superior force, he turn’d his eyes
Aghast at first, and stupid with surprise.”
1 Achilles.
16
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
POPE.
“ Achilles heard, with grief and rage oppress’d,
His heart swell’d high, and labour’d in his breast.
Distracting thoughts by turns his bosom ruled,
Now fired by wrath, and now by reason cool’d :
That prompts his hand to draw the deadly sword,
Force through the Greeks, and pierce their haughty lord
This whispers soft, his vengeance to control,
And calm the rising tempest of his soul.
Just as in anguish of suspense he stay’d,
While half-unsheath’d appear’d the glittering blade,
Minerva swift descended from above,
Sent by the sister and the wife of Jove ;
For both the princes claim’d her equal care.
Behind she stood, and by the golden hair
Achilles seized ; to him alone confess’d,
A sable cloud conceal’d her from the rest.
He sees, and sudden to the goddess cries,
Known by the flames that sparkle from her eyes.”
COWPER.
“ He ended, and Achilles’ bosom swell’d
With indignation ; wracking doubts ensued,
And sore perplex’d him, whether forcing wide
A passage through them, with his blade unsheath’d,
To lay Atrides breathless at his foot,
Or to command his stormy spirit down.
So doubted he, and undecided yet
Stood drawing forth his falchion huge ; when, lo !
Down sent by Juno, to whom both alike
Were dear, and who alike watch’d over both,
Pallas descended. At his back she stood,
To none apparent, save himself alone,
And seized his golden locks. Startled, he turn’d,
And instant knew Minerva. Flash’d her eyes
Terrific, whom in haste he thus bespake.”
SOUTHEY.
“ He spake—Achilles flamed—wrath, deep disdain,
Swell’d his high heart, and thrill’d in every vein ;
In doubt, with sword unsheath’d to force his way,
Dash through the warriors, and the tyrant slay;
Or, in stern mastery of his mind, control
Th’ unsated vengeance of an outraged soul.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
17
In this dread doubt, while now in act display’d,
His hand had half unsheath’d the avenging blade.
Pallas, at mandate of the wife of Jove,
Who watch’d the rival chiefs with equal love,
Unseen by all, behind Achilles stood,
Seized his gold locks, and curb’d his madd’ning mood.
He turn’d, and awe-struck, straight the goddess knew,
As from her eyes the living lightning flew.”
Achilles has now lost all desire—all power to speak—and
he late so insultingly, and scornfully, and savagely, and
fiercely, and ferociously eloquent, is dumb, "fig cpdro’ n9jXe/ftw
d' dyog y'ivsr. Homer then in four lines says, that the heart
of Achilles deliberated—to kill Atrides, or to subdue his own
rage. The words he uses are strong as strong may be, and
direct as his alternate purposes of slaughter or silence. Let
them be so, therefore, in all translation. Old Chapman de¬
serves to have his grave disturbed for having said “ his heart
bristled his bosom,” which either means nothing, or that the
hair thereon bristled, which is mean and miserable falsehood
of the chest of the youth who excelled all living in heroic
beauty. “ Stood vext,” is perhaps good—to them who re¬
member Shakespeare’s “ still vexed Bermuthes.” “ This
discursive part,” no doubt, gives the right meaning, but is
too formal and philosophical for the occasion. What follows
on to the Apparition of Pallas, is forceful and rather grim—
which is good—but there is a dignity in the original—in the
verbs, especially—which has forsaken Chapman’s eyesight.
Minerva, sent by Juno, the protectress of both heroes alike,
comes from heaven, and takes Achilles by his yellow hair,
who, astounded, turns his head, and by her stern eyes re¬
cognises the Goddess. Now when Chapman says that Athe-
nia “shined about his temples,” he is manifestly thinking not
of her Person, which was there, but of Wisdom, of which she
was Goddess—and this open expression of Homer’s hidden
meaning is as bad as can be, and brings out marringly the
lesson which the great moral bard doubted not all the world
would read for itself.—Otherwise the translation has the merit
of much vigour.
Dryden’s version is, of course, also vigorous ; but it is not
literal, but licentious ; and he wilfully violates*' throughout
both the style and the spirit of Homer. The “ hero sourly
VOL. VIII. B
18
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
smiled,” is in itself good, but not in the original; and one
bates to see beigbtenings of the expression of any strong
passion beyond the aim of the mind that depicted it.
“ And, j ustly by two tides of equal sway,
Stood for a while suspended in his way,”
is coldly conceived and inaccurately expressed, as are the two,
indeed the six lines, which follow—a sorry sort of declamation,
in which the plainest statement is perverted and falsified, and
fire made mere smoke. The rest is sweeping and sonorous ;
but thirteen lines of Greek into twenty-one of English, is a
dilution that must be severely condemned.
Pope’s translation is very fine. It flows freely, and has few
faults, except that it is somewhat too figurative.
“ Now fired by wrath, and now by reason cool’d,”
is an antithesis not to be found—though there is something
like it—in Homer.
“ This whispers soft, his vengeance to control,
And calm the rising tempest of his soul,”
sounds like commonplace to our ears now—though it is like¬
wise common sense. “ A soft whisper ” did not suit the ear
of Achilles—at least not from cool reason, though assuredly
from warm Brise'is—and
i
“ A sable cloud conceal’d her from the rest,”
is not in Homer ; for Homer never spoke nonsense; and non¬
sense it would have been to have said that a sable cloud was
present on this occasion.
Sotheby’s translation, we may safely say, is admirable. It
has but one line more than the original—and loses little
either of the style or sense of Homer.
“ Swell’d his high heart, and thrill’d in every vein,”
is a line, the construction of which Pope was too fond of, and
its latter half is weak and futile ; and the last line of all,—
“ As from her eyes the living lightning flew,”
is a sorry substitute in its meretricious glitter, for
^tivu ol oiTov, oiV octoctvXov,
OuV anXtvrnrov, o n xiv xtva , tagog ionyiyvtrut
"Of oov^^uv ytvtn h ft.lv
Kourlyrnros, cv B-ocXigcs tcc^kxoittis.
—VI. 429.
Chapman has certainly rendered them well—better, as we
shall see, than Pope or Cowper. “ Thou art my husband too,”
corresponds exactly with the Greek words, and the same their
position at the close of the line—a beauty not found in any
of the other translations. “Pity our common joy” is ex¬
tremely tender—and so is “ lest thou leave him a poor
76
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
widow’s charge.” Throughout the whole of Chapman’s
English there is an earnestness—a beseeching and imploring
affectionateness, which is also, though otherwise, breathed
over all Homer’s Greek—and therefore, without farther re¬
mark, we conclude as we began, with praise of the version—
and request you to admire it along with us, and not to be
offended by its oddnesses or additions, or “ periphrases or
circumlocutions ”—for, were you to do so, and Chapman’s
ghost to overhear you, it would call you u a certain envious
windsucker.”
Dry den’s version, though in the simpler lines it loses not a
little of the simplicity of the original, does not depart far from
it; and throughout there is such an easy and musical flow,
that we are almost willing to accept it instead of that simplest
strain. “ Better it were for miserable me,” is extremely
touching ; though Dry den had not much power over the
pathetic,
“ Eternal sorrow and perpetual tears
Began my youth, and will conclude my years,”
have a truly tragic sound; and they have influenced Pope in
this part of his paraphrase. Eetion’s slaughter and funeral
are nobly given; and true to the picturesque of old Homer
are the verses,
“ A tomb he raised ; the mountain nymphs around
Enclosed, with planted elms, the holy ground.”
And how stands Dryden a The Test ?”
“ But thou, my Hector, art thyself alone,
My parents, brothers, and my lord, in one.”
Admirable—but of these lines a word or two hereafter.
“ O kill not all my kindred o’er again,”
seems to have been suggested by Chapman, and is afterwards
copied by Pope. It is not very good ; for not very natural in
feeling, and rather unnatural in expression. A few other flaws
in the diamond we see—but it is a diamond—and almost of
the first water. Let us do justice always to Glorious John—
though in his strength he is too often a wilful transgressor.
Had Homer’s Andromache never spoken in the simple strain
in which, thank Heaven, she spake in the Sixth Book of the
Iliad, Pope’s lovely lady of that name would have been
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
77
allowed by all to have uttered mucli natural pathos in the
speech, which had then been not a paraphrastic translation
from the Greek, but an absolute inspiration in English; and
great had been the glory of the bard of Twickenham. For
the lines are beautiful. But here, if anywhere, was Pope
bound by the most sacred considerations to have adhered
to the words of Homer, that all who might ever speak the
English tongue might have known how, thousands of years
ago, that high-priest of nature inspired, in the hour of trial,
the lips of a Trojan princess pouring out the heart of a
mother-wife to an heroic husband issuing to battle—the
defender—if not the deliverer. In the first four lines Pope’s
Andromache utters three or four interjections, exclamations,
or interrogations — Homer’s Andromache but one— Aaipovts.
Pope’s Andromache thinks first of herself and child—or chiefly
so—for “ whither dost thou run,” is but faint; and worse, it is
not “ all one in the Greek.” Homer’s Andromache thinks
first and solely of Hector —axo/V?j£, “and thou art my blooming spouse!”
While the last two lines—which contain the word desiderated
in its proper place, “husband”—are too ingenious by far, and
copied injudiciously from Chapman and Dryden, and, after all,
liker Abraham Cowley than Dan Homer. The rest of Andro¬
mache’s speech is, with the exception of the first two lines of
it, well done; and the two concluding lines, though not in
Homer, make an affecting and a natural close, and may be
more than forgiven.
Cowper at once seizes, grasps, and expresses the passion of
Andromache. “ Ah! doom’d ! ” is the very word—the sound
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
79
and sense—so seemeth it to us—of AoufAovte. Or is it—In¬
fatuate? Pope’s “too daring Prince” is good—but this is
far better—followed as it is by “ victim of thy own too daring
courage,” which, though inferior to the Greek, is forcible.
“ Pity of thy boy thou feel’st not, nor of me thy widow soon,”
is all that could be desired—and is Homer’s, Andromache’s,
and Nature’s self. So—nearly—are the two lines that follow.
By Homer all this is said in three lines and a half—by Pope
in eight—and by Cowper in five. Having thus started in
power—and with the true heart of tenderness—how does
Cowper continue to fare ? Well—though not so well. “ Earth
yield me then a tomb,” is far better than Pope’s “ 0 grant me,
gods,” &c.; but “ refuge else or none so safe have I,” is,
though simple, somewhat tame and cold ; nor is “ Mother’s
genial home ” entirely to our liking for Korvia The
history given by Andromache of her parents is exquisite—
especially the lines describing Eetion’s funeral. They are
indeed very noble in Cowper—equal to those in Homer. Not
less so is the slaughter of the Seven Brothers. But how doth
Cowper conquer the two immortal lines, and reduce them
under the English yoke ? How stands he the Test ?
“ All these are lost—but in thy wedded love,
My faithful Hector—I regain them all.”
Here the meaning, the feeling, the passion is doubtless trans¬
fused into a comprehensive power of “English undefiled.”
The lines are good and great lines—and worthy of Cowper.
But Homer’s, though not greater—not so great—are better,
for there is a tenderness in the words he puts into Andro¬
mache’s lips, which surpasses all other merit. Cowper says
“ all these are lost; ” but Homer gives us “ all these ” them¬
selves—over again—and in a heap—at once successive and
clustering
- 5r«r»j£ act) ‘7T0'rvia, ftriryp,
’HTi xouriywros, crb poi S-uk&gos vrxgxxoirns.
No other words under the sun can make amends for the want
of these—the eye must see, the ear must hear them, from
Andromache’s looks and lips—else neither her heart nor
ours can be satisfied nor have any rest. “ Come, then, let
pity plead,” is good—but too modern; Homer does not say
“let pity plead,” but, “ come now, take pity upon us,” which
80
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
is infinitely fuller of prayer, and therefore more natural in
Andromache. All the rest is what it ought to be—except,
perhaps, the last line of all, which appears pedantic. As a
whole, however, the translation is, to our feelings, better than
Pope’s.
Sotheby manifestly feels the force of the first words of Andro¬
mache’s address to Hector, but he has not felicitously trans¬
fused them into his version, which is, indeed, awkward and
tautological. “ Sole defence of Troy,” is not in the original;
yet that here matters little or nothing, for such Hector w T as,
and therefore was “ The Boy” called Astyanax. Still, Sothe¬
by should not have said so here, because Andromache does
not; and, as sure as Homer is now in heaven, did Andromache
say all, and no more, that was right. But “ brave right arm
and fearlessness destroy,” is positively bad speaking and bad
writing; whereas Aa/^rk/s, kou Torvia (/.yityiq
' nTi xatrl'yvwroi, Vu Vi pot 9-otkigo; ‘ru.^a.x.o'irnt.
What says majestic Hector to his Andromache ? Thus :—
COWPER.
“ Thy cares are all mine also. But I dread
The matron’s scorn, the brave man’s just disdain,
Should fear seduce me to desert the field.
No ! my Andromache ! my fearless heart—•
Me rather urges into foremost fight,
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
85
Studious of Priam’s glory and my own.
For my prophetic soul foresees a day,
When Ilium, Ilium’s people, and himself
Her warlike king shall perish. But no grief
For Ilium ; for her people ; for the king,
My warlike sire ; nor even for the queen ;
Nor for the numerous and the valiant band,
My brothers, destined all to lick the ground,
So moves me, as my grief for thee alone !
Doom’d then to follow some imperious Greek,
A weeping captive, to the distant shores
Of Argos ; there to labour at the loom,
For a task-mistress, and with many a sigh,
But heaved in vain, to bear the ponderous urn
From Hypereia’s, or Messeis’ fount.
Fast flow thy tears the while, and as he eyes
That silent shower, some passing Greek will say,
‘ This was the wife of Hector, who excell’d
All Troy in fight, when Ilium was besieged.’
While thus he speaks, thy tears shall flow afresh,
The guardian of thy freedom, while he lived
For ever lost; but be my bones inhumed
A senseless store, or e’er thy parting cries
Shall pierce mine ear, and thou be dragg’d away! ”
SOTHEBY.
“ Hector replied—‘ These all, 0 wife beloved !
All that moves thee, my heart have deeply moved :
Yet more I dread each son of Trojan birth,
More Ilion’s dames whose raiment trails on earth,
If like a slave, where chiefs with chiefs engage,
The warrior Hector fears the war to wage—
Not thus my heart inclines. Far, rather far,
First of Troy’s sons, I lead the van of war
Firm fix’d, not Priam’s dignity alone
And glory to uphold, but guard my own.
I know the day draws nigh when Troy shall fall,
When Priam and his nation perish all ;
Yet, less—forebodings of the fate of Troy,
Her king and Hecuba, my peace destroy ;
Less—that my brethren all, the heroic band,
Must with their blood imbrue their native land,—
Than thoughts of thee in tears, to Greece a prey,
Dragg’d by the grasp of war in chains away,—
86
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Of tliee in tears, beneath an Argive roof,
Labouring reluctant the allotted woof,
Or doom’d to draw from Hypereia’s cave,
Or from Messeis fount, the measured wave :
A voice will then be heard that thou must hear
‘ See’st thou yon captive pouring tear on tear %
Lo, Hector’s wife, the hero bravest far
When Troy and Greece round Ilion clash’d in war.’—
Then thou with keener anguish wilt deplore
. Him whose cold arm can free his wife no more :
But first, may Earth o’er me her mound uprear,
Ere I behold thee slaved, or see thy tear ! ’ ”
We hesitate not to say that Cowper’s version is perfect.
Unequalled it is at present; excelled it can be—never. It
is coloured not by the faintest hue of translation, but breathes
throughout the pure free air of a divine original. It is just as
good as Homer. The first six lines of Greek are given in six
of English, and their calm firm spirit is finely preserved. All
the others are exquisite.
We cannot say the same of Sotheby’s. It is good—Pope’s
(which look at) is better—for with more faults, it has greater
beauties—but Cowper’s, we repeat, is best. For it alone is
“ the tender and the true.” In Sotheby the first six lines of
Greek become ten in English—and Hector seems to vaunt
himself rather too much. “My peace destroy,” is neither
Homeric nor Hectorian; “yet less,” and again “less,” are
feeble and formal, cumbrous and clumsy. “ The grasp of war”
is an unaffecting generality, compared with its definite original;
we do not admire here the alliteration of “ labouring reluctant
the allotted woof,” though others may ; “ measured wave” are
two words not to our taste, especially the last, which is falsely
poetical for “ water.” “ A voice will then be heard that
thou must hear,” is not happy for xai rror's rig s/V/jov. “ Seest
thou yon captive pouring tear on tear,” is a negligent miscon¬
ception of iduv xara dd/tgv %sovtav, as Sotheby must in an instant
see. “ When Troy and Greece together clash'd in war,” is not
the natural language of a bystander, like or s "IXiov a^sfid^ovro.
The final line, “ Ere I behold thee slave, or see thy tear,” is a
poor impostor, detected at once in the attempt to pass itself
off for
n g'tv y in rs (iov; ffov 3’ \\xr)6(£o7o ’Pfv6ia’6ou.
Hector in Homer speaks twice of Andromache’s weeping—
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
87
duxgvoefftav —xara ddxov ^sovffav : in Sotheby four times —
“ thoughts of thee in tears’’—“ of thee in tears”—“ pouring
tear on tear”—“see thy tear.” With more than double the
effort, the translator produces less than half the effect.
Old Chapman felt Hector’s address—and he labours to ren¬
der it, if possible, still more dismal. He makes Hector say,
“ And such a stormy day shall come, in mind and soul I know,
When sacred Troy shall shed her towers, for tears of overthrow.”
Not in Homer, indeed, but dreadful—and afterwards,—
“ As thy sad state when some rude Greek shall lead thee weeping
hence,
Those free days clouded, and a night of captive violence,
Loading thy temples, out of which thine eyes must never see,
But spin the Greek wives’ webs of task, and their fetch-water be.”
Expansion and paraphrase all—but conceived and expressed
in intensity of emotion, and full of ruth.
Who gives best the sense and feeling of
Kui rfori ns -
' C, E xrogo; ri^t yuvri, os ya.i
Tgwwv Ivroro'Sa.yuv, on J, I Xiov a.ytyiy.KXovroJ
—VI. 460.
Chapman says,
“ This dame was Hector’s wife,
A man that at the wars of Troy did breathe the worthiest life
Of all their army.”
Dry den,
“ While groaning under this laborious life,
They insolently call thee Hector’s wife ;
Upbraid thy bondage with thy husband’s name,
And from thy glory propagate thy shame.”
Pope,
“ There, while you groan beneath the load of life,
They cry, 1 behold the mighty Hector’s wife ! ’
Some haughty Greek, who loves thy tears to see,
Embitters all thy woes by naming me.”
Cowper,
“ This was the wife of Hector who excell’d
All Troy in fight when Ilium was besieged.”
88 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Sotkeby, as yon have seen,
“ Lo, Hector’s wife, the hero bravest far,
When Troy and Greece round Ilion clashed in war! ”
Who, we ask again, is best ? Cowper. Who next ? Per¬
haps Pope—perhaps Chapman. Who next? Perhaps Sotheby.
Dryden is the worst—inasmuch as he is the least Homeric—
and his lines, though they have his usual copious flow, are
failures ; for “ insolently” in the second is beyond and out of
Hector’s meaning; the third is superfluous, and the fourth
absurdly and coarsely and vulgarly “ propagated.”
Dunces, with “ hearts as dry as summer dust,” have here
found fault with Homer and Hector. Cold comfort this, they
have said, from husband to wife. Hector is here chicken-
hearted—cowed—crowed-down—cool in the pens— : fugy , as
cockers say; but he ought to have sung clear as unconquered
chanticleer, dropt his wing, strutted crousely, and sent his fair
hen and chicken chuckling gaily to Troy. Such is the spirit
of their fault-finding, though they were not up to the use of
such appropriate terms of reprobation; for they are Fools.
Hector speaks to Andromache, at first, like the heroic soldier
—“jealous and quick of honour ”—and conscious that in his
arm lies the salvation of his country. But all at once, “ 0 my
prophetic soul! ” He sees Troy taken—and Andromache
captive. The vision asks not his leave—but embodies itself
in words, leaving the choice of them to Love and Pity. Of
that dismal day, “ far off the coming shone” on his soul—and
it will therefore speak as another great poet makes a sad seer
say,
“ Though dark and despairing my sight I may seal,
Yet man cannot cover what God would reveal.”
But now for our concluding specimen of Sotheby, which
completes the
“ Tale of tears, the mournful story.”
“ He spoke, and stretch’d his arms, and onward prest
To clasp his child, and fold him on his breast;
The while the child, on whose o’er-dazzled sight
The helm’s bright splendour flash’d too fierce a light,
And the thick horse-hair as it wavy play’d
From the high helmet cast its sweeping shade,
Scared at his father’s sight, bent back distrest,
And shrieking, sunk upon his nurse’s breast.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
89
The child’s vain fear their bitter woe beguiled,
And o’er the boy each parent sweetly smiled.
And Hector now the glittering helm unbraced,
And gently on the ground its terror placed,
Then kiss’d, and dandling with his infant play’d,
And to the gods and Jove devoutly pray’d.
‘.Jove ! and ye gods, vouchsafe that Hector’s boy,
Another Hector, all surpass in Troy,
Like me in strength pre-eminently tower,
And guard the nation with his fathers power ;
Heard be a voice, whene’er the warrior bends,
Behold the chieftain who his sire transcends.
And grant that home returning, charged with spoil,
His mother’s smile repay the hero’s toil.’
He spake, and gave, now sooth’d from vain alarms,
The lovely infant to his mother’s arms,
And the fond mother, as she laid to rest
The lovely infant on her fragrant breast,
Smiled in her tears, while Hector, as they fell,
Kiss’d her pale cheek, and sooth’d with fond farewell.
1 Grieve not, my love, untimely ; ere the hour
My fate predestined dread no hostile power ;
But—at the time ordain’d, the base, the brave,
All pass alike within th’ allotted grave.
Now home retire ; thy charge, beneath our roof,
To ply the distaff, and to weave the woof;
To task thy maids, and guide their labour, thine ;
The charge of war is man’s, and chiefly mine.’ ”
There is a screed-—a sweep of Sotheby, gentlest reader ;
and as the parallel passage in Pope—w r ho, you may depend
upon it, was a poet—is one of the most popular in poetry,
doubtless you have it by heart, and it comes in palpitations,
pat for comparison. But .first of all, see the ebb and flow of
the tides of our sea-like passions. A while ago the waves of
sorrow came fast and loud, tumbling in, as
“ Drumly and dark they roll’d on their way,”
and rueful was the plight of Hector’s soul as a surf-beaten
ledge of rocks. It was drowning—drowned. But the over¬
whelming mass of foam all at once lulled, and wheeled back
into the sea, leaving bare the bright-shelled sands to the sun¬
shine of Heaven. Let that image suffice in its insufficiency;
90
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
and say simply that Hector again is, as the warful world goes,
happy, and so is Andromache. Why not ? They know their
fate, and to it are now “ deeply reconciled.” In such recon¬
cilement there is often profound peace—sometimes still, yea,
even brightest joy;—and now the hour is blest, even
“ As when some field, when clouds roll thick and dun,
Shines, in the distance, ’neath the showery sun ;
Or as some isle the howl of ocean braves,
And rises lovely ’mid the dash of waves.”
(Christopher North, MSS. penes me)
We said this moment “ they know their fate, and to it are
now deeply reconciled.” Unsay the words—for they have
forgotten their fate, and in their blindness are blest. Astya-
nax shall not be spun from the tower-top by Pyrrhus—Troy
shall not totter to its fall—still shall Ilion salute the sky.
For see o'a/3’ sov, how he smiles, as Hector high in the air
holds up “ his beautiful and shining golden head,” starlike
even in mid-day, before the “ weepingly smiling ” eyes of
Andromache ! That is a vision “ able to drive all sadness—
even despair.” That blood shall be a blossom—that blossom
a flower ; and that flower shall bear glorious fruit—fruit
worthy the scion of such a stem—deeds of deliverance, and
the fame that flames before the feet of the free. Hector shall
be eclipsed by Hector’s son—and by none but he; and the
young warrior shall walk in the rescued city, among the
music of perpetual hymns. Hector himself, ere then, may
have “undergone the earth,” and the green mound over his
ashes be shaded with trees; but Andromache will be surviv¬
ing in her honoured and happy widowhood, and as her son
comes to her from battle, glorious in the arms of some van¬
quished hero, %ag8/jj Ss pgsva wrriP. But why — oh why !
Sotheby ! Sotheby! didst thou say that these three thrilling
words mean
“ His mother’s smile repays the hero’s toil” ?
Hector, or his prophetic soul, had been glorying in the glory
of his Astyanax ; but just as he is about to shut his lips, he
thinks of what will then be the joy of his Andromache—and
that is his joy as he places his boy on her beloved breast.
This stroke of tenderness Sotheby does not seem to see ; and
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
91
sorry are we to say it, for here between a hit and a miss,
“ Oh the difference to me ! ”
»
Now, let us take things calmly, and criticise the execution
by the several translators, or engravers, of two of these cele¬
brated pictures contained in this passage; and first, that of
the Helmet.
a Q; tiTwv, 011 orxiboi o^i\xro ytXtx.crct.a s/g ohov /oDcra, &c. His meaning here was
to divert Andromache’s attention to other objects, and the ex¬
pression was meant to convey the utmost tenderness ; but has
it that effect upon us ? Is not the English reader offended at
a certain indelicacy in those words which Homer puts into the
mouth of an affectionate husband to his wife ?” A certain in¬
delicacy forsooth ! Ho—the English reader is not offended—
nor the Scotch reader either—nor yet the Irish ; for there is
no indelicacy, but all is beautiful and Bible-like—which, dear
reader, you will feel to-morrow—for it is the Sabbath—so
farewell!
I
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
CRITIQUE III.
[JULY 1831.]
We have the highest respect for Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric
and Belles Lettres. Dr Hugh, had so much taste and talent, that
his mind bordered on genius. It may be said to have lived in
the debatable land between the two great kingdoms of Reason
and Imagination. Not that we mean to say the Doctor was
in any mood a poet; but in many a mood he loved poetry, and
saw and felt its beauties. It spoke to something within him,
which was not mere intelligence. In short, Nature had not
gifted him with Imagination active, but of Imagination passive
she had given Hugh a considerable share ; and thus, though
it was impossible for him to originate the poetical, it was easy
for him to appreciate it when set before him by the makers.
A pure delight seems to have touched his heart, in contem¬
plating the creations of genius, in listening to the inspiration
of those on whom heaven had bestowed “ the vision and the
faculty divine.” The Professor doth sometimes prose, it must
be confessed, “ wearisome exceedingly; ” but that in some
measure was his vocation; and the heaviest of all vehicles is
perhaps, in print, a Lecture. It was his bounden duty to be
as plain as a pike-staff, perspicuous as an icicle; and rare
would have been his felicity had he escaped the 11 timmer-
tune” of the one, and the frigidity of the other, in his very
elegant and useful prelections. Cowper, in one of his letters,
commends Blair’s good sense, but speaks most contemptuously
of his utter destitution of all original power either of thought
or feeling; but there the author of The Task was too severe,
for compare him with the best critics going or gone, and he
will appear far from barren. His mariner is somewhat cold,
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
101
but there is often much warmth in the matter—and let us say
it at once, he had, in his way, enthusiasm. In private life
Blair was a man of a constitution of character by no means
unimpassioned ; his human sensibilities were tender and acute ;
with finer moral, or higher religious emotions, no man was
ever more familiar; and with these and other endowments,
we take leave to think that he was entitled and qualified to
expatiate, ex cathedra , nay, without offence, even now and
then to prose and preach by the hour-glass, as if from the
very pulpit, on epic poetry and poets, yea, even on Homer.
Mr Wordsworth has been pleased to say, that the soil of
Scotland is peculiarly adapted by Nature for the growth of
that weed called the Critic. He instances David Hume and
Adam Smith. David certainly was somewhat spoiled by an
over-addiction to French liqueurs; and he has indited some
rare nonsense about Shakespeare. Adam, too, for poetry had a
Parisian palate ; and cared little for Percy's Reliques. It seems
he once said that the author of the ballad of “ Clym of the
Cleugh ” could not have been a gentleman. For this senti¬
ment, he of The Excursion has called the author of the Theory
of Moral Sentiments a weed. If he be, then, to use an expres¬
sion which Wordsworth has borrowed from Spenser, ffis “ a
weed of glorious feature.” We agree with Adam Smith in be¬
lieving that the ancient balladmonger was no gentleman. But
we must not “cry mew” to him on that account; for ancient
balladmongers are not expected to be gentlemen; and they
may write admirably of deer-stalking, of deer-shooting, and
deer-stealing, though in the rule of manners they have not
anticipated Chesterfield. We found fault with Mr Wordsworth
for having suffered his spite towards one of its productions,
the Edinburgh Review , to vitiate his judgment of the whole
soil of Scotland—and to commit himself before the whole
world by declaring people to be worthless and ugly weeds,
who are valuable and useful flowers. David and Adam are
Perennials—or, “ say rather,” Immortals. Both the one and
the other is
-“ like a tree that grows
Near planted by a river,
Which in its season yields its fruit,
And its leaf fadeth never.”
So is William Wordsworth—and justifiably would he despise
102
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
tlie person who, pitying perhaps poor Alice Fell, without see¬
ing anything particularly poetical or pathetic in her old or
new duffle cloak, should, forgetful of all his glories, call the
author of that feeble failure a weed. True enough, he is
there commonplace as a docken by the wayside ; but else¬
where rare as amaranth, which only grows in heaven.
The truth seems to be, that the soil of Scotland is most
happily adapted for the cultivation of philosophical criticism.
There was old Karnes, though flawed and cracked, a diamond
almost of the first water. Hold up his Elements between
your eye and the firmament, and you see the blue and the
clouds. To speak sensibly, he was the very first person pro¬
duced by this island of ours, entitled to the character of a
philosophical inquirer into the principles of poetical composi¬
tion. He is the father of such criticism in this country—the
Scottish—not the Irish—Stagirite. He is ours—let the
English show their Aristotle. That his blunders are as
plentiful as blackberries, is most true; but that they are so is
neither wonder nor pity — for so are Burke’syet is his
treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, juvenile as it is, full of
truth and wisdom. Change the image; and fling Karnes’
Elements of Criticism into the fanners of Wordsworth’s wrath;
and after the air has been darkened for a while with chaff, the
barn-floor will be like a granary rich in heaps of the finest
white wheat, which, baked into bolted bread, is tasteful and
nutritive sustenance even for a Lake poet.
By much criticism, sincerely or affectedly philosophical, has
the genius of Shakespeare been lately belaboured, by true
men and by pretenders—from Coleridge and Lamb, to Hazlitt
and Barry Cornwall. But, after all, with the exception of
some glorious things said by the Ancient Mariner and Elia,
little new has been added, of much worth, to the Essays of
Professor Richardson, a forgotten work, of which a few copies
have been saved by thieves from the moths. There, too, is
Alison’s delightful book on Taste, in which the Doctrine of
Association is stated with the precision of the Philosopher,
and illustrated with the prodigality of the Poet. Compare
with it Payne Knight’s Analytical Enquiry , and from feast¬
ing on the juicy heart of an orange, you are starving on its
shrivelled skin. Of the Edinburgh Review , and Blackwood’s
Magazine ,—mayhap the least said is soonest mended; but
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
103
surely it may be permitted us to say this much for Francis
Jeffrey, and Christopher North, that the one set agoing all
the reviews, and the other all the magazines, which now
periodically, that is, perpetually, illumine the world; and if
the Quarterly and its train have eclipsed, or should eclipse,
the Blue and Yellow, and the Metropolitan and its train take
the shine out of Her of the Olive, let it be remembered with
grateful admiration what those planets once were; and never
for one moment be forgotten the illustrious fact, that Scotland
has still to herself been true; for that certain new-risen Scot¬
tish stars have outshone certain old ones; that—again to
change the image—the Tweed has lent its light and music to
the, Thames, and made it at once a radiant and a sonorous river.
As to German philosophical criticism, almost all that we
know of it is in Lessing, Wieland, Goethe, and the Schlegels.
We understand on good authority, that of Carlyle, Moir, and
Weir, that there are at least seven wise men in that land of
lumber, and we understand on still better, our own, that there
are at least seventy sumphs, who, were the Thames or the
Rhine set on fire by us, would speedily extinguish it. But of
the above said heroes, the two first, like Hercules, conquer
the bulls they take by the horns; of Wilhelm Meister on
Shakespeare, our friends aforesaid have expressed their reve¬
rence ; but that, we hope, need not hinder us from hinting our
contempt; and as for the u bletherin brithers,” as the Shep¬
herd most characteristically called the Schlegels, they are
indeed boys for darkening the daylight and extinguishing
the moon and stars. So, let us return from these few modest
remarks on the former schools of Philosophical Criticism to
where we set out from, namely, the Chair of Rhetoric and
Belles Lettres, with Dr Hugh Blair sitting in it decorously,
and lecturing on Epic Poetry, particularly on Homer, and
more particularly on the Iliad. The Doctor doth thus dissert
on the opening of the Iliad.
u The opening of the Iliad possesses none of that sort of
dignity which a modern looks for in an Epic Poem. It turns
on no higher subject than the quarrel of two chieftains about
a female slave. The priest of Apollo beseeches Agamem¬
non to restore his daughter, who, in the plunder of a city, had
fallen to Agamemnon’s share of booty. He refuses. Apollo,
at the prayer of his priest, sends a plague into the Grecian
104
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
camp. The augur, when consulted, declares that there is no
way of appeasing Apollo but by restoring the daughter of
his priest. Agamemnon is enraged at the augur; professes
that he likes this slave better than his wife Clytemnestra; but
since he must restore her, in order to save the army, insists to
have another in her place ; and pitches upon Briseis, the slave
of Achilles. Achilles, as was to be expected, kindles into
rage at this demand; reproaches him for his rapacity and
insolence, and, after giving him many hard names, solemnly
swears that, if he is to be thus treated by the general, he
will withdraw his troops, and assist the Grecians no more
against the Trojans. He withdraws accordingly. His mother,
the goddess Thetis, interests Jupiter in his cause; who ; to
avenge the wrong which Achilles had suffered, takes part
against the Greeks, and suffers them to fall into great and
long distress ; until Achilles is pacified, and reconciliation
brought about between him and Agamemnon.”
The Doctor has delivered his dictum that the opening of the
Iliad possesses none of that sort of dignity which a modern looks
for in an Epic poem. “ It turns,” quoth he, contemptuously,
“on no higher subject than the quarrel of two chieftains about
a female slave.” Now, we wish the worthy Doctor had told us
what is the sort of dignity which a modern looks for in an
Epic poem—and that he had furnished us with a few speci¬
mens. The Doctor is not orthodox here—he is a heretic—
and were he to be brought to trial before the General Assem¬
bly of the Critical Kirk, his gown would, we fear, be taken
from his shoulders, and himself left to become the head of a
sect which assuredly, unlike some others, would not include
any considerable quern 1 of womenfolk. What higher subject
of quarrel between two chieftains would Dr Blair have sug¬
gested, than a beautiful woman ? That Briseis was so—an
exquisite creature — is proved by the simple fact of her
having been the choice of Achilles. The City-Sacker, from
a gorgeous band, culled that one Flower, who filled his tent
with “ the bloom of young desire, and purple light of love.”
The son of Thetis tells us that* 1 he loved her as his own wife.
Nay, she was his wife—he had married her, just as if he had
been in Scotland, by declaring that they two were one flesh,
in presence of Patroclus, and then making a long honeymoon
1 Quantity.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
105 ,
of it in the innermost heart of the tent. True, Briseis was a
slave; hut how could she help that circumstance, and was it
not the merest trifle in that age? For hundreds of miles
round, while Achilles Poliorcetes was before Troy, there was
not a king’s daughter who in a day might not be a slave.
Ovid, we believe, or some other liar, says that Briseis was a
widow, and that Achilles slew her husband when he ravaged
Lyrnessus. But she never was a widow in her life, till that
fatal flight of the arrow of Paris. Till Achilles made her his
own, she was a virgin princess.
But say that Briseis was, in matter of fact, a “Female
Slave.” She was not a maid of all work. Her arms were not
red, nor her hands horny ; her ankles were not like bedposts ;
huggers she wore not, nor yet bauchles. Her sandals so suited
her soles, and her soles her sandals, that her feet glided o’er
the ground like sunbeams, as bright and as silent, and the
greensward grew greener beneath the gentle pressure. Her
legs were like lilies. So were her arms and hands—her
shoulders, neck, and bosom ; and had the Doctor but once
looked on her, he would have forgot his clerical dignity, and
in place of calling her “ a female slave,” have sworn, though
a divine, by some harmless oath, that she was an angel. “ A
rose,” Shakespeare says, “ by any other name would smell as
sweet.” True, men call her the Queen of Flowers. And she
is so. But were all the disloyal world to join in naming her
the Slave of Weeds, still would she be sole sovereign of her
own breathing and blushing floral kingdom. We defy
divine right, and holds, by a heavenly tenure, of the sun, on
humanity to discrown or dethrone her—for she is queen by
condition merely of presenting him with a few dewdrops every
dawn, during the months she loves best to illumine with her
regal lustre. Just so was it with her whom Dr Hugh Blair
chose to call 11 female slave.” She was free as a fawn on the
hill, as a nightingale in the grove, as a dove in the air—a
bright bird of beauty, that loved to nestle in the storm-laid
bosom of the destroyer. Achilles was the slave. Briseis
captived the invincible—hung chains round his neck, which
to strive to break would have been the vainest madness : the
arrow of Paris, it is fabled, smote the only vulnerable spot of
the hero—his heel, and slew him; but Briseis assailed him with
the archery of her eyes, and the winged wounds went to the
106
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
very core of his heart, inflicting daily a thousand deaths, alter¬
nating with life-fits that in their bliss alone deserved the name
of being. And what signifies it to Achilles, that Dr Blair
persists, like a Presbyterian as he is, in calling his Briseis a
female slave ? The Professor should have said a seraph.
The Doctor forgot that the loss of a mistress is sadly felt
by a general on foreign service. Had Agamemnon been at
Argos, he might not—though there is no saying—have been
so savage on the forced relinquishment of a Chryseis. Had
Achilles been in Peleus’ palace in Pthia, he might have better
borne the want of a Briseis. In the piping times of peace,
people’s passions are not so impetuous as in the trumpeting
times of war. Dr Blair admits that Agamemnon loved Chry¬
seis better than Clytemnestra; indeed, we have the king of
men’s own word for it; and Achilles, who was the soul of
truth and honour, tells us that he adored his Briseis, who,
though in childhood betrothed to one of her own princes, fell
into his arms a virgin, and that on his return to Pthia he
intended to make her his queen. Alas ! such was not his
fate! He chose death with glory, rather than life with love.
And as for Agamemnon, he indeed returned to Argos ; but if
those Tragic Tales be true that shook the stage with terror
under the genius of iEschylus, better for the king of men had
he too died before Troy; for the adulterous and murderous
matron slew him, even like a bull, with an axe before the
domestic altar. Oh! that bloody bath! As for his lovely
and delicious leman, the uncredited prophetess, the long¬
haired Cassandra, Clytemnestra killed her too, smiting her on
the broad white forehead, with the same edge that had drank
the gore of Agamemnon. But ere long came the avenger—
and beneath the sacred sword of her own son, the murderess
“ stooped her adulterous head as low as death.” Then from
the infernal shades arose the Furies to dog the flying feet of
the distracted parricide. But at last the god of light and the
goddess of wisdom stretched the celestial shield of their pity
over Orestes, and at their divine bidding, the snaky sisters,
abandoning their victim restored to reason and peace, thence¬
forth Furies no more ! all over Greece were called Eumenides !
But let us for a moment make the violent supposition that
Briseis was a black—a downright and indisputable negro.
Jove, we shall suppose, made Achilles a present of her, on his
ROMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
107
return from one of his twelve days’ visits to the blameless
Ethiopians. What then ? Although Thetis had white feet,
that is no reason in the world against her son’s being par¬
tial to black ones; for surely a man is not bound to love
in his mistress what he admires in his mother. Neither is
there any accounting for taste—nobody dreams of denying
that apothegm. As for blubber-lips, we cannot say that we
ever felt any irresistible inclination to taste them; yet a
negress’s lips are rosy, and her teeth lilies. And therefore,
had Briseis been a negro, and Achilles so capricious as to
prefer her, black but comely, to paler beauties, the quarrel
consequent on her violent abreption from his arms, by the
mandate of Agamemnon, might not have given the opening
of the Iliad that sort of dignity which a modern—that is,
Dr Blair—looks for in a great epic poem ; but still, as the act
would have been one of most insolent injustice, unstomach-
able by Achilles, who was not a person to play upon with
impunity, the quarrel would at least have been natural, and
so would the opening of the Iliad ; in which case, perhaps, we
might have dispensed with the dignity, just as we do on see¬
ing a delicate white Christian lady get married and murdered
by an immense monster of a Moor, the very pillow becoming
pathetic, and the bed-sheets full of ruth and pity as a shroud
prepared for the grave.
Well would it be for the world, lay and clerical, civil and
military, were kings and kingdoms to go together by the
ears, for no less dignified cause than that which produced the
quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. Indeed, we may
safely defy Dr Blair, or anybody else, to produce an instance
of an equally dignified cause of quarrel between crowned
heads with that which ennobles the opening of the Iliad.
Ambassadors keep hopping about at much expense from court
to court all over Europe, and Asia too at times, not to mention
America and Africa, maintaining the honour of their respec¬
tive sovereigns, insulted, it would often seem, by such senile,
or rather anile, indefinable drivelling, as would have ashamed
the auld wife herself of Auchtermuchty; while state-papers,
as they are called, present such a gallemaufry of gossip as
was never equalled in the hostile correspondence of a broken-
up batch of veteran village tabbies, > caterwauling in conse¬
quence of having all together set their caps at the new minister.
108
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Not one war in twenty that originates in any more dignified
dispute than, in a vegetable market, a squabble about a con¬
tested string of onions, or, in a fish one, about the price of
some stinking baddies. What even is the right of search ?
But let us not disgust ourselves by the recollection of the
sickening sillinesses that have so often drenched Europe in
blood. We do not abhor a general war, for we despise it.
The quarrels which cause general wars in our times, would
indeed make pretty openings for great epic poems. They
would possess, we presume, all that sort of dignity which a
modern looks for in such noble compositions. Homer had no
idea of dignity; Dr Blair had : Achilles and Agamemnon
went almost to loggerheads about Brise'is ; we could mention
kings who deluged their lands in blood, tears, and taxation,
about a beer-barrel.
The excellent Doctor talks with uncommon nonchalance
about honest people’s undignified daughters. The daughter
of the Priest of Apollo, “ in the plunder of a city, had fallen
to Agamemnon’s share of booty.” She had; and the old
gentleman (as dignified as if he had been Moderator) not at
all relishing it, complained to the god he served, who sent a
plague into the Grecian camp. Now a plague, up to the
time of Dr Hugh Blair, had uniformly been considered a very
dignified visitation—and, begging the Doctor’s pardon, it is
considered so still—sufficiently so to satisfy the mind of any
moderate modern meditating on what may be fit matter for the
opening of a great epic poem. The plague Apollo sent was
a very superior personage to Cholera Morbus, although even
he is not to be sneezed at, even when, on his arrival at Leith
from Biga, merely performing quarantine. Why, Apollo was
himself the plague. He descended from heaven to earth
vux77 loniojg. The sun became a shadow—day grew night
—and life was death. Is not that dignity enough for the Doctor?
Throughout the whole passage you perceive the Doctor
fumbling at the facetious. Having determined that the open¬
ing of the Iliad should be deemed deficient in dignity, he
sketches it sneeringly and sarcastically, and yet it lours upon
us, in spite of his idle derision, as something prodigious and
portentous-—black with pestilence and war, disunion, despair,
and death.
But ere we dismiss Death and the Doctor, observe, that
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
109
while the latter somewhat pedantical personage is supposing
himself to he criticising in this passage the opening of the
Iliad, and pointing out how undignified it is, why, he is
sketching, without being aware of it, the plan of the whole
poem—beginning, middle, and end. Is it all undignified
together ? If not, at what point, pray, does the meanness
merge into the dignified, and the march begin of the majesti-
cal ? “ Such is the basis of the whole action of the Iliad,”
he continues, meaning thereby to say, that it is all as insigni¬
ficant in itself as the opening with the quarrel of two chief¬
tains about a female slave. “ Hence,” he well says, “rose all
those 1 speciosa miracula/ as Horace terms them, which fill
up that extraordinary poem; and which have had the power
of interesting almost all the nations of Europe during every
age since the days of Homer. The general admiration com¬
manded by a poetical plan so very different from what any
one would have formed in our times ought not, upon reflec¬
tion, to be matter of surprise. For besides that a fertile
genius can enrich and beautify any subject on which it is
employed, it is to be observed that ancient manners, how r much
soever they contradict our present notions of dignity and re¬
finement, afford, nevertheless, materials for poetry superior in
some respects to those which are furnished by a more polished
state of society. They discover human nature more open and
undisguised, without any of those studied forms of behaviour
which now conceal men from one another. They give free
scope to the strongest and most impetuous motions of the
mind, which make a better figure in description than calm and
temperate feelings. They show us our native prejudices,
appetites, and desires; exerting themselves without control.
From this state of manners, joined with the advantage of that
strong and expressive style which commonly distinguishes
the composition of early ages, we have ground to look for
more of the boldness, ease, and freedom of native genius, in
compositions of such a period, than in those of more civilised
times. And accordingly, the two great characters of the
Homeric poetry are, Fire and Simplicity.”
The one great original error of supposing that the subject-
matter of the Iliad is in itself undignified, and that its poeti¬
cal plan is, on that account, so very different from what any
one would have formed in our times, runs through the whole
110
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
of the passage we have quoted from. Blair, and vitiates the
philosophy of its criticism. Had any one in our times chosen
the subject for an epic poem in the heroic ages of Greece, he
would have been puzzled to find one different from that of the
Tale of Troy Divine, unless, perhaps, he had been at once a
Homer and a Shakespeare, and then there is no saying what
he might not have done ; and had any one in our times chosen
to choose a subject from our times, or from any other times
intermediate between that heroic and this unheroic age, he
might have stretched his brain till the crack of doom, ere he
had found one more dignified; even though the Iliad begins
with the wrath of Achilles for sake of a female slave, Briseis, is
conversant about the middle with his furious grief for loss of
a male friend, Patroclus, draws to a close with the lamenta¬
tions of two old people, Hecuba and Priam, and ends with the
funeral rites of Hector the Tamer of Horses.
But making allowances for that first and fatal error, all
must admit that Blair speaks truly and finely towards the
close of the paragraph; and that he says as much in a few
simple sentences, and more too, than both the Schlegels put
together, in their shadowy style, would have said in a whole
essay written in Cloudland. The good Doctor warms as he
walks—and finally escapes out of the ungenial gloom of heresy,
declaring, with an inconsistency that does him infinite credit,
“ that the subject of the Iliad must unquestionably be admitted
to be in the main happily chosen.”—“ Homer has, with great
judgment, selected one part of the Trojan War, the Quarrel
betwixt Achilles and Agamemnon, and the events to which
that quarrel gave rise.” In short, the Professor forgets all
his former folly about want of dignity and so forth, and ex¬
presses the admiration natural to so fine a mind, of the miracle
wrought by Homer.
We said that we should seize on Sotheby, as a subject for
six critiques—that is to say, on his translation of the Iliad, as
affording us fine opportunities of launching out upon Homer.
In the present utter dearth of poetry, caused by a drought—
u in the Albion air adust ”—by the political dog-star which
not only looks so exceedingly Sirius, but foams at the mouth
like the Father of Hydrophobia, if not Hydrophobia himself,
we see nothing left for us but to take a flight of a few thou¬
sand years back into antiquity ; and being partial to the epic,
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
Ill
we propose prosing away thereupon—when wearied, taking a
tift at Tragedy—and occasionally laying our lugs into a cup
of Lyrics.
Having descanted on the First and Sixth Books of the Iliad,
in a style not unsatisfactory to those who perused our articles,
and inoffensive to those who, with a skip, gave them the go¬
by—both classes numerous—suppose, gruff or gentle reader,
that we take a glimpse of what is going on in the Ninth.
Some of the Books of the Iliad are, as you know, each in itself
a poem. The Iliad is a river, that expands itself into Twenty-
Four Lakes. Each Lake is a beautiful or magnificent watery
world in itself, reflecting its own imagery all differently divine.
The current is perceptible in each that flows through them all
—so that you have always a river as well as a lake feeling;
in the seclusion of any one are never forgetful of the rest; and
though contented, were there neither inlet nor outlet to the
circular sea on which you at the time may be voyaging, yet
assured all the while that your course is progressive, and will
cease at last, only when the waters on which you are wafted
along by heavenly airs shall disappear underground among
some Old Place of Tombs.
Now the Night-scene in the Ninth Book is bright with
Achilles—an apparition, who vanished from our bodily eyes
in the first, although he continued to move through the suc¬
ceeding seven—and especially in the sixth—before those of
our imagination. A night-scene in Homer, even without
Achilles, is worth looking at—and therefore let us look at it
without him. Lo, here it is !
OJ (tiyx (p^oviovns ccya. rfroXt/xoio yz7 Xsvxov IgiTTO/xzvoi xx ) oXugxs,
'Etrrxons kx^ Ivfyovov riu pl/xyov.
—VIII. 553-565.
112
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
CHAPMAN.
“ And spent all night in open fields ; fires round about them shined,
As when about the siluer moone, when aire is free from winde,
And stars shine clear, to whose sweet beams high prospects and the
brows
Of all steepe hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for showes ;
And even the lowly vallies joy, to glitter in their sight,
When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light,
And all the signes in heaven are seen, that glad the shepheard’s harts :
So many fires disclosde their beames, made by the Troian part,
Before the face of 11 ion ; and her bright turrets show’d.
A thousand courts of guard kept fires ; and every guard allow’d
Fiftie stout men, by whom their horse eate oates and hard white
corne,
And all did wilfully expect the siluer-throned morne.”
POPE.
“ The troops exulting sat in order round,
And beaming fires illumined all the ground,
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O’er heaven’s clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene ;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber’d gild the glowing pole,
O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain’s head ;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies ;
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xantlius with their rays,
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires.
A thousand piles the dusky honours gild,
And shoot a shady lustre o’er the field ;
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umber’d arms by fits thick flashes send ;
Loud neigh the coursers o’er their heaps of corn,
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.”
COWPER.
“ Big with great purposes and proud, they sat,
Not disarray’d, but in fair form disposed
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
113
Of even ranks, and watch’d their numerous fires.
As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendour, and the winds are hush’d,
The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland heights
Stand all apparent, not a vapour streaks
The boundless blue, and ether open’d wide;
All glitters, and the shepherd’s heart is cheer’d.
So numerous seem’d those fires, between the stream
Of Xanthus blazing, and the fleet of Greece,
In prospect all of Troy, a thousand fires,
Each watch’d by fifty warriors, seated near ;
The steeds beside the chariot stood, their corn
Chewing, and waiting till the golden-throned
Aurora should restore the light of day.”
SOTHEBT.
“ But Troy elate, in orderly array
All night around her numerous watch-fires lay.
As when the stars, at night’s illumined noon,
Beam in their brightness round the full-orb’d moon,
When sleeps the wind, and every mountain height,
Eock, and hoar cliff, shine tow’ring up in light,
Then gleam the vales, and ether, widely riven,
Expands to other stars another heaven,
While the lone shepherd, watchful of his fold,
Looks wondering up, and gladdens to behold.
Not less the fires, that through the nightly hours
Spread war’s whole scene before Troy’s guarded towers,
Flung o’er the distant fleet a shadowy gleam,
And quivering play’d on Xanthus’ silver stream.
A thousand fires ; and each with separate blaze
O’er fifty warriors cast the undying rays ;
Where their proud coursers, saturate with corn, .
Stood at their cars, and snuff’d the coming morn.”
There you see, most classical of readers, is the close of the
Eighth Book, in the original Greek—and there are four dis¬
tinguished translations, by four of our true poets. The
Trojans, with Hector at their head, have, as you know, given
the Greeks a total—Agamemnon dreacls a fatal—overthrow ;
and at sinking of the sun, the whole Trojan army, fifty thousand
strong, are lying on their arms beside their watch-fires, fifty
warriors round each; so altogether, without aid of John
Cocker or Joseph Hume, there are, you perceive, a thousand
blazes.
VOL. VIII. H
114
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Now this is, perhaps, the most celebrated simile in the
Iliad. It has been lauded to the skies, of which it speaks, and
from which it is sprung, by scholars who will here see no
beauty but in the original Greek, and in it all beauty ; while,
by the same scholars, the heaven reflected in Pope’s transla¬
tion is declared to be not only not Homer’s heaven, but no
heaven at all—a night-scene, say they, such as never was
seen on this planet, and such as on this planet is impossible.
People again, who are no scholars, admire Pope’s picture as
celestial, and without pretending to know that language,
devoutly believe that it is all one in the Greek. Now, ob¬
serve, most perspicacious of perusers of Maga’s face, and of
the face of heaven, that three separate questions are submitted
to your decision—first, What is the meaning and the merit of
the said simile, as it stands in Homer ? secondly, What is the
merit or demerit of the said simile, as it stands in Pope ? and,
thirdly, What is its character as it stands there, viewed in the
light of a translation ?
As it is not impossible you may have forgot your Greek, or
improbable that you may never have remembered it, allow us,
with all humility, to present you with a literal prose transla¬
tion.
NORTH.
“ But they, greatly elated, upon the space between the two armies
Sat all the night; and many fires were burning to them.
But as when the stars in heaven, around the shining moon,
Shine beautiful, when the air is windless,
And all the eminences appear, and pinnacles of the heights,
And groves ; and the immeasurable firmament bursts (or expands)
from below,
And all the stars are seen : and the shepherd rejoices in his heart:—
So numerous, between the ships and the streams of Xanthus,
The fires of the Trojans burning their fires appeared before Troy.
For a thousand fires were burning on the plain ; and by each
Sat fifty (men) at the light of the blazing fire.
And the horses eating white barley and oats,
Standing by the chariots, awaited the beautiful-throned Aurora.”
We are now all ready to proceed to form and deliver judg¬
ment. Taking, then, Homer’s Greek and Christopher’s Eng¬
lish to be one and the same, what was the object of the
old Ionian in conceiving this vision of the nocturnal heaven ?
Why, aim and impulse were one. Under the imagination-
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
115
moving mental perception of a thousand fires burning on the
earth between the Grecian ships and the stream of Xanthus,
Homer suddenly saw a similar, that is, for the time being, a
kindred and congenial exhibition, up aloft in the heavens.
That was the impulse. But the moment he saw the heavenly
apparition, he felt it to be kindred and congenial with the one
on earth ; and under the influence of that feeling he delighted
to describe it, in order to glorify the one on earth—that was
his aim—in four and a half hexameters, which have won the
admiration of the world. •
But the world often admires without knowing why, any
better than the wiseatjres who, in their pride, would correct
the world. Why then has the world—meaning thereby that
part of it that could or can read Greek—admired so prodigi¬
ously this passage ? Simply, because heaven%nd earth, the
starry sky and the field with its thousand fires, appeared
mutual reflections of each other ; for pleasant it is for us mortal
creatures, high and low, rich and poor, to recognise a resem¬
blance between our limited and evanescent scenery,—espe¬
cially if the work of our own hands, which watch-fires are, the
same being of wood we ourselves have gathered and heaped
up into piles,—and the scenery of everlasting infinitude. De¬
pend upon it, this emotion was in the very rudest minds when
they kindled beal-fires. To the most beggarly bonfire it
brings fuel. Homer felt this ; and he knew that all who
should ever listen to his rhapsodies, either from his own lips,
or from the lips of aoidoi singing their way on continent or
isle, would feel it; for he had no forewarning given him of the
invention of printing, or of Pope’s or Sotheby’s translation, or
of this article in Maga.
So much for the spirit of the simile, almost identifying for
the time the scenery of earth and heaven. If it does almost
identify them, then it is successful, and the admiration of the
world is legitimate. But when we come to analyse the pas¬
sage, which is the self-same thing as to analyse our own per¬
ceptions, what do we find ? Difficulty and darkness in what
we thought facility and light—and our faces are at the wall.
We believe that we can see as far into either a mill or a mile¬
stone as ever Homer could ; but we doubt if we can see as far
into heaven. For, simple as it seems to be, we do not believe
that the man now lives who thoroughly understands that simile.
116
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
In the first place, take the line,—“ As when the stars in
heaven around the bright moon shine beautiful/’—with what
object on earth does the “bright moon” correspond in heaven ?
With none. The thousand watch-fires are like the thousand
stars. But no great central queen watch-fire, that we are told
of, burned below—therefore the moon, wanting her counter¬
part, had perhaps no business on high. Would not a starry
but a moonless sky have better imaged the thousand fire-
encampments ?
This natural, nay, inevitable feeling, has suggested the
reading of a' _ yt
vrippayn curvriros ccit/ng.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
125
and there is great grandeur in the line,
“Expands to other stars another heaven.’
4
That, unquestionably, is the vision seen by Homer. Would
not “for,” in place of “ to,” perhaps be better? The riving
up from below of the boundless ether expands another heaven
for (or with) other stars. In that expansion they have room
for all their multitudes—then and there seems to be infinitude.
With the concluding lines, fine as they are in themselves, we
are not satisfied. Sotheby knows as well as any man wherein,
lies the power of Homer’s immortal half-hexameter. Cowper
caught it, and embodied it in equal bulk. Chapman likewise
seized its spirit. Pope, unaffected apparently by that scripture,
or betrayed into forgetfulness of its manifest character by the
ruling passion in which he wrote, ambition to excel Homer,
diluted the simple sentiment of the shepherd, which is indeed
nothing else than natural religion, into feeble metaphysics
and a cold philosophy. “ Conscious swains,” is silly ; and
“ bless the useful light,” is absolutely the doctrine of the
Utilitarians applied to the gratitude of the shepherd,
“ Where he doth summer high in bliss upon the hills of God !”
Our objections to Sotheby’s lines, over and above the main
one, amplification of simplicity, are different from those urged
against Pope’s, but nearly as strong. “ Watchful of his fold,”
is an idea always interesting, but “watchful ” is, to our ear,
needlessly intense. In that beautiful chapter of the New Tes¬
tament, the shepherds “were watching their flocks by night.”
“Watchful” could never have entered into that verse. On
so serene a night as that Homer describes, when all was peace,
the shepherd could have had no fears about his fold. He was
sitting or lying beside them, but not “ watchful; ” he merely
felt that they were there; for their sakes too, as well as his
own, his heart was cheered by the heavens he looked on; and
happier even than he knew at that hour was the pastoral life.
This is but a slight matter; but slight matters affect the
delight of the soul in poetry. Pope had said, “ eyes the blue
vault,” and Sotheby, betrayed into imitation by admiration,
says, “ looks wondering up.” That the shepherd looked up,
there can be no doubt. Homer took it for granted that he
did; for the shepherd was not asleep. The truth is, that he
had been looking up for a long time—had seen the moon rise,
126
ESSAYS *. CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
and the stars—and perhaps had been composing a song on a
white-footed girl filling her urn at the fountain. To suppose
that he had been looking down, would be a libel, not only on
that anonymous shepherd, but on all Arcadia, and the golden
age. But we object more stoutly to the word, “ wondering.”
May this be the last line we shall ever write, if he did “ look
wondering up.” Shepherds from their infancy are star-gazers.
They are familiar with the skies—for on the hill-tops they
live, and move, and have their being, in the immediate neigh¬
bourhood of heaven. At a comet they w r ould wonder—for he
is a wild stranger of a hundred years. But they do not
wonder even at meteors, for the air is full of them, and they
go skyring through the stars, and dropping down into disap¬
pearance, like the half-assured sights seen in dreams. But
the moon and the planets, and the fixed stars, are to the shep¬
herd no more wonderful at one time than at another ;—in one
sense, indeed, they are to him always wonderful — for he
wonders, and of his wondering finds no end, how and by whom
they were made ; or he wonders at them in their own beauti¬
ful eternity. But Sotheby’s words do not imply this ; they
merely imply that the shepherd wonders to behold such a
night as that described by Homer. Why should he? ’Twas
but one of thousands that had canopied his solitary grass-bed,
and its sole power was the peaceful power of accustomed glad¬
ness—still renewed, and never fading in his heart— yVyv\Os d's
rs tpo'ivu ‘Troi/j.Tjv. The truth is, that three words of Sotheby’s
two lines do of themselves produce the whole desired effect—
“ gladdens to behold.” All the rest are superfluous. That is
wholly nature, and almost wholly Homer. Sotheby, as an Athe¬
nian, knew what was right—he should have been a Lacede¬
monian too—and practised it.
It is only with distinguished writers, like Sotheby, that such
criticism as this would be endurable ; with them, it is impera¬
tive on us ; nor, unless we much mistake, is it without instruc¬
tion. Poetry is indeed a Fine Art — fine as the pellucid air,
in which you may see a mote. The perusal of his composition,
generally so exquisite, sharpens all our inmost senses, and
makes us critical as eagles floating over a valley. And now
we pounce down on our prey — the poor word “ lone ” — and
swallow it. Let nobody pity it, for it “had no business
there.” In Homer cro//x?jv has no epithet. No need to tell us
he was alone. The one word of itself does that—that he was
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
127
all alone, is felt to be essential to that gush of gladness.
Homer, during that description, was not thinking of any shep¬
herd. He had the heavens to himself; but no sooner was the
beauty of the scene consummate, than arose one image of
solitary life. He saw a being—and that his heart was glad;
and so dear a thing is human happiness, that sufficient for
Homer was the joy of one simple shepherd beneath the starry
cope of the oignsrog uMfy. Another great poet knew, on an
occasion somewhat similar, but not the same, the proper use
of the word “ alone.” Thus, in “ Eob Roy’s Grave,” Words¬
worth, speaking of the remembrance 9 or traditions of that out¬
law, says,
“ Bear witness, many a pensive sigh
Of thoughtful herdsman, when he strays
Alone upon Loch Yeol’s heights,
And by Loch Lomond’s braes ;
And, far and near, through vale and hill,
Are faces that attest the same,
The proud heart flashing through the eyes
At sound of Eob Roy’s name.”
Here the bard had room to employ epithets—and he had like¬
wise leisure—for he was quietly ruminating; “thoughtful,”
and“ alone.” “Loch Veol’s heights,” and “ Loch Lomond’s
braes,” carry us along with the herdsman on his day-long
world of dreams-; and descending from these solitary heights,
we find ourselves among “ faces ” in the vales, many faces far
and near, all kindling at “ sound of Eob Roy’s name,” a name
there pronounced and heard,—but up among the mountains,
silent’in the herdsman’s heart, as he walks “ thoughtful and
alone,” in his uncommunicated memories.
By the way, we cannot help thinking, that all the trans¬
lators we have looked at have mistaken the meaning of the
important words ,— u ava, a.o'u a-Tivoi^uv ‘ivri 'A^yuoitn uirnitiot.
—IX. 13-16.
J
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
129
north ( literal prose).
“ They sat down therefore in the assembly, sad ; but Agamemnon
Stood up tears-shedding—as a fountain dark-water’d,
Which down a steep (goat-defying, or rather leaving) rock pours
mist-emitting water:
Thus did he, heavily groaning out words—among the Greeks
harangue.”
CHAPMAN.
“ They sadly sate ; the king arose and pour’d out tears as fast
As from a lofty rock a spring doth his black waters cast.
And deeply sighing, thus bespake the Argives.
POPE.
“ These surround their chief
In solemn sadness and majestic grief.
The king amidst the mournful circle rose ;
Down his wan cheek a living torrent flows :
So silent fountains, from a rock’s tall head,
In sable streams soft-trickling waters shed.
With more than vulgar grief he stood oppress’d ;
Words, mix’d with sighs, thus bursting from his breast.”
COWPER.
“ The sad assembly sat; when weeping fast,
As some deep fountain pours its rapid stream
Down from the summit of a lofty rock,
King Agamemnon in the midst arose,
And groaning, the Achaians thus address’d.”
SOTHEBT.
“ Bow’d by grief,
The summon’d leaders gather’d round their chief.
In tears Atrides stood ; thus ceaseless flow
The dark streams gushing from a rocky brow.
He spake and groan’d, ‘Ye Argive leaders ! hear !’ ” &c.
A simpler, shorter, apter simile than this is nowhere to be
found ; let, then, all these qualities be preserved by the trans¬
lator. Chapman, as he thinks, preserves them all—and he is
almost as good as Homer. In the original, we have fieXandgog
and dvopspov vdwe —both signifying, as many say, “black water ”
VOL. VIII. ’ i
130
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
—intensifying the gloomy aspect of Agamemnon. Perhaps
in English such synonymes could not have been used—and
Chapman confines himself to the one word “ black.”
But the truth is, that /isXavvdpog means a fountain black-
watered, because hidden from the light by overhanging rocks,
or in some great depth. The water is not in itself black, or
even drumly when smitten “ by touch ethereal of heaven’s fiery
rod ”—but pure as diamonds. In falling over the face of the
inaccessible rock, it is not black, although the face of the rock
may be, and probably is ; indeed we do not remember ever to
have seen black water when fairly poured out, unless you
choose to call ink so—and we are sorry to say that the ink
we are dribbling at this moment is light-blue ; or unless you
choose to call tea so—and we are still sorrier to say that the
tea we are sipping at this moment is a faint green ; while
ovoipezbv, though misnamed in lexicons dusky, and so forth,
assuredly is “ spray-shedding,” or “ mist-emitting,” or “ va¬
poury,” or something of that sort—for which if there be an
English word, we cannot recollect its phiz. All the transla¬
tors, therefore, are mistaken who call the falling water dark,
or dusky, or sable, or black—confounding an accident of its
source with the quality of the stream—and libelling Agamem¬
non’s tears. The source from which they flowed may be said
figuratively to have been “black”—his heart—and his face
was gloomy; just as that other source and that other face in
and of the rock—but his tears were clear, and glistened, just
as the vdojs to which Homer likened them ; and, though the
expression is strong, so were they mist-emitting, for his grief
was very great.
It is not easy to read Pope’s paraphrase without anger.
Determined was he to improve upon Homer; and therefore
will he spin out—beat out—his four lines into eight, not
giving us one word in English exactly corresponding to one
word in Greek. Tsr/riorsg —afflicted— excruciantes se, as Heyne
gives it, he changes into—
“ In solemn sadness and majestic grief.”
How, that is a downright lie. The Argive leaders were not
in “ solemn sadness,” though we daresay their countenances
were considerably elongated; and if they were “in majestic
grief,” it is more than Agamemnon himself was, for he wept
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
131
and groaned, though we daresay that his presence was not
without dignity. Here, then, is an absurd attempt to impose
upon us, and to win from us that sympathy for a set of pom¬
pous magnificoes, which we give at once to men nrir/jrn;.
“ Mournful circle ” is surely needless after “solemn sadness
and majestic grief.” Then Agamemnon’s cheek is super¬
fluously said to be “wan;” and “briny torrent” is unhappy,
for though tears are salt, they are here likened to a fresh-water
spring, and therefore we have no business with “ brine.”
Why would not Pope say, shedding tears, or weeping, as
Homer does ? Is it not excessively childish to translate hcr/.yj-
yjuv,
“ Down his wan cheek a briny t-orrent flows ” 1
Proceed on that principle throughout, and the Iliad will reach
from this to London.
“ So silent fountains, from a rock’s tall head,
In sable streams soft-trickling waters shed.”
Why silent ? Then observe how very awkward fountains,
plural, and a rock’s tall head, singular! Homer is not speak¬
ing of fountains in general, hut of one “ fountain black-
watered;” “soft-trickling” is not the right word, for yh/,
stillat , means simply “ sheds,” and sheds by itself is sufficient.
“ With more than vulgar grief he stood oppress’d,”
is a foolish interpolation. Who the deuce ever thought the
king of men vulgar ? But, after all, Pope has not been able
by this line to put him on a par with his subordinates who
surrounded him
“In solemn sadness and majestic grief”
Agamemnon among them looks like an old woman. “Words
mixed with sighs ” we must not complain of, for they are
Milton’s ; but we want Homer’s—and he gives us groans, and
deep ones—6 fiaev crevdyuv. However, that line will do. But
is not the whole a wilful wickedness and a feeble failure ?
Cowper is concise and vigorous. “ The sad assembly sat ”
is so especially. There is much majesty in the rising of Aga¬
memnon, “ weeping fast;” and the lines about the fountain do
finely show us the king. Cowper has, chosen to sink the
colour black. He calls the fountain “ deep;” and as most
132
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
deep fountains look black, deep let it be ; but “rapid ” we do
not like, for water falling down a rock must be rapid whether
it will or not—we defy it to help itself—and Cowper should
have given us dvopsfov, if he had even said “ dismal.” Homer’s
dvocpseov is a strange word; and though we choose to believe *
that it denotes spray, Cowper may have seen cause to call it
rapid. “ Groaning ” is good—for he who sighs deeply, groans.
The picture is in Cowper’s hands Homeric.
Sotheby is strong —perhaps too concise ; but that in a
translator of Homer is a fine fault. “ In tears Atrides stood”
is in itself excellent; but it hardly comes up to the meaning
of lararo dazgv%6cov. That epithet implies an active, a profuse,
a prodigal pouring out of tears—and such pouring out there
must have been to suggest the simile of the dark-watered
fountain shedding its gloomy, or rapid, or sprayey stream,
down the cheek of a lofty rock. Homer’s heroes, when they
weep, do so in right good earnest. At the same time, they
groan, or they roar, or they roll themselves on the ground.
So did Achilles. Andromache wept smilingly; and her eyes,
we ween, looked lovelier through their tears—her whole face
—herself—Love, Grief, and Pity, in one. “ Ceaseless ” is not
the right word, for Agamemnon’s tears did cease, while the
black-watered fountain Homer had in his eye may be flowing
down the face of the lofty rock at this very hour.
“ The dark streams gushing from a rocky brow,”
strikes us as very fine. Perhaps they were dark after all—
and even the word “ brow ” has here a beauty not to be found
in the Greek. For it shows us Agamemnon’s; and it too was
rocky, for the broad bone above his eyes was rugged—we see
it now—as Sotheby did when he dropped that eloquent line on
paper. “ He spake and groaned ” ought to be transposed
thus—He groaned and spake. Judging by ourselves, a man
ceases to groan almost as soon as he begins to speak. ’Tis
well if his hearers do not then take up what he has laid aside;
though in this case, if the Argive leaders gave a groan accom¬
paniment, ’twas in dismal sympathy with the sufferings of
their king.
Atrides then conducts the great chiefs of Greece to his
pavilion ; and after feasting them in kingly fashion, awaits
advice. Nestor rises, and thus harangues :—
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
133
“ Ar^zibri xvbitrrz, xvx\ xvbgcov 'Ayx/xz/xvov,
’Ey (To) (M£v Xrii'M, trio £’ xgfeofxai, ovvzxx oroXXuv
Axrov \ffcr) xvx\ xxi rot Zzv; zyyvxXi^zv
1x.rsVT(>ov r s^£ d'zfjuirrxf, ’ivx trtyim fhovXzvriy) or'z^i fliv tyxo6xt i-ros ho' zrrxxovrrxi,
K (>nY)vxi xxi xXXy : or xv nvx Sufxof xvuyn
EioreTv iif xyxD'ov x'zo b' z^zrxi o rri xev oc^X>\ j.
Avrxo lycov zgzco oof uoi boxz7 zivxi x^tffrx.
Ob yx[> rif voov xXXov x/xeivovx roube vohxei,
O V > \ f i \ / y\y if \ ~
igv iyco vosco, nftiv ^ocAcci no en zoci vuv,
’El ’in rob ore , bioyevzg, Bgixtiibx xov^zjv
Xuo/xzvof 'A%iXhog zfins xXitriyOev xTougXf
Oil n xx$ ri/xzrzgov ye voov- [xxXx yxg rot zyuye
li'oXX ’ xwz/xufab/xnv’ ’e^ztf y'zgxg. ’AXX ’ ’in xx) vvv
^^x^cii/u.zx^’ iif xev fxiv x^zinrxfxzvoi crzTr'iSufxzv
Augoicr'iv r xyxvoixiv ’irrerr'i re /xziXi^ ) ioixiv. ,>
Tov b’ xvre T^otrezi-rev xvx\ xvb^uv ’A yxfxifjcvuiv’
“ r fl yzgov, oil n ^/zvbo; z t uxg xrxg xxreXz^xg.
’Axffoc/xnv, obb’ xlrof xvxtvofxxi. ’Avri vv croXXuv
Axuv zxnv xvrig ov re Zzbg xhj(vi tpiXhjev
Triv agir l| tvagav, aroXni ’Htrfavos oXtacras'
T y o yt dufcov ertoartv, at/bi b’ agx xXta avb^uv.
IT dr^oxXos Vi oi olo; tvavrlos r\/rro /notary,
AtyfJLtvoi Aiaxlbtjv, baron Xri%titv dttbav.
T d Vi fbarnv argortga, riyuro £l b7os ’ Obv/rmus,
2t«v argo/rd' alro7o. TaQav S’ xvogov/rtv ’A%iXXtu;
Aury avv pog/xiyyi, Xtardv tbos 'tv6a 6datnrtv.
"Oj b’ auras TldrgoxXos, tart) ’ibs paras, dvt/rrai.
T a xa) btixvuptvos argotrtpn aromas dxvs ’A%iXXtus.
—IX. 182-196.
north (tliteral prose).
“ They two, therefore, went along the shore of the much-resound¬
ing sea,
Many things very much praying to the earth-encircling earth-
shaker,
That he would easily bend the mighty mind of the grandson of
ffEacus.
And they came to the tents and the ships of the Myrmidons :
And there found him soothing his spirit by means of the sound¬
ing harp,
Beautiful, of exquisite workmanship, and it had a silver £vyov,
Which he took from the spoils, when he destroy’d the city of
Eetion.
With it he was soothing his spirit, and was singing the glorious
deeds of heroes.
But Patroclus alone sat opposite to him in silence,
Waiting till the grandson of iEacus should cease singing.
142
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
And they two went farther ben ( Scotice), and the illustrious
Ulysses led the way,
And they stood before him. Amazed, Achilles started up,
Leaving his seat, along with his harp, where he was sitting.
In the same manner also Patroclus, when he saw the men, stood up:
Them both receiving kindly, address’d the swift-footed Achilles.”
CHAPMAN.
“ The quarter of the Myrmidons they reacht, and found him set,
Delighted with his solemn harpe, which curiously was fret
With works conceited, through the verge : the bawdricke that
embrac’t
His loftie neck, was silver twist: this (when his hand laid waste
Eetion’s citie) he did chuse, as his especiall prise,
And (louing sacred music well) made it his exercise:
To it he sung the glorious deeds of great heroes dead,
And his true mind, that practice fail’d, sweet contemplation fed.
With him alone, and opposite, all silent sat his friend
Attentive, and beholding him, who now his song did end.
Th’ ambassadors did forward preasse, renown’d Ulysses led,
And stood in view : their sodaine sight his admiration bred,
Who with his harpe and all arose : so did Menetius’ sonne
When he beheld them : their receipt, Achilles thus begun.”
POPE.
“ Through the still night they march, and hear the roar
Of murmuring billows on the sounding shore.
To Neptune, ruler of the seas profound,
Whose liquid arms the mighty globe surround,
They pour forth vows their embassy to bless,
And calm the rage of stern Hlacides.
And now arrived, where on the sandy bay
The Myrmidonian tents and vessels lay,
Amused at ease, the godlike man they found,
Pleased with the solemn harp’s harmonious sound.
(The well-wrought harp from conquer’d Thebe© came,
Of polish’d silver was its costly frame).
With this he soothes his angry soul, and sings
Th’ immortal deeds of heroes and of kings.
Patroclus only, of the royal train,
Placed in his tent, attends the lofty strain :
Full opposite he sat, and listen’d long,
In silence waiting till he ceased the song.
Unseen the Grecian embassy proceeds
To his high tent; the great Ulysses leads.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
143
Achilles starting, as the chiefs he spied,
Leap’d from his seat, and laid the harp aside.
With like surprise arose Mensetius’ son :
Pelides grasp’d their hands, and thus begun.”
COWPER.
“ Along the margin of the sounding deep
They pass’d, to Neptune, compasser of Earth,
Preferring numerous vows, with ardent prayers,
That they might sway with ease the mighty mind
Of fierce ^Eacides. Arriving soon
Among the Myrmidons, their chief they found
Soothing his sorrow with his silver-framed
Harmonious lyre, spoil taken when he took
Eetion’s city : with that lyre his cares
He sooth’d, and glorious heroes was his theme.
Patroclus silent sat, and he alone,
Before him, on HCacides intent,
Expecting still when he should cease to sing.
The messengers advanced (Ulysses first)
Unto his presence ; at the sight, his harp
Still in his hand, Achilles from his seat
Started astonish’d ; nor with less amaze
Patroclus also, seeing them, arose.
Achilles seized their hands, and thus he spake.”
SOTHEBT.
u On their high charge the delegated train
Pursued their way along the sounding main,
And to appease the Chief, devoutly pray’d,
And oft implored the Ocean monarch’s aid.
But when they came, where, camp’d along the bay,
Pelides and his host in order lay,
They found him kindling his heroic fire
With high-toned strains, that shook the sounding lyre ;
That silver lyre that erst the victor bore
His chosen prize from sack’d Eetion’s store.
There, as the hero feats of heroes sung,
And o’er the glowing chords enraptured hung,
Alone Patroclus, list’ning to the lay,
Watch’d till the impassion’d rapture died away.
They forward march’d, Ulysses led them on ;
They came, and stood before famed Peleus’ son.
Achilles, wondering, started from his seat,
Sped forth, his lyre in hand, the chiefs to greet:
144
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Patroclus rose : and strait Achilles press’d
Their hands in his, and kindly thus address’d.”
We have always thought this one of the most beautiful
pieces of poetry in the whole world. It seems to us indeed
to be perfect. How solemn the Mission moving along the
margin of the sounding deep, preferring prayers to Neptune
that its issue might be fortunate, for well they knew the
character of fierce iEacides! Not a word is said about the
night; and that shows that Homer never repeats himself,
except when he has some purpose to serve by the repetition.
A thousand Trojan watchfires were blazing ; but Phoenix,
Ulysses, and Ajax, all absorbed in their prayers to Neptune,
saw them not—and Homer himself had forgotten now the
vision of the moon and stars. No time is lost, and we see
them already among the Myrmidons. Had it been put before¬
hand to any person of loftiest temper, who, knowing the cha¬
racter of Achilles, had yet no knowledge of this interview, how
he might imagine the goddess-born would be found em¬
ployed, think ye that he could ever have made such a noble
guess as the truth ? Never. Homer alone could have thus
exalted his hero. Not many suns have yet gone down on his
wrath, and you remember how at its first outburst it flamed
like a volcano. It smoulders now in that mighty bosom—
but the son of Thetis is not sitting sullen in his tent—he has
forgotten the ungrateful, injurious, and insulting Agamemnon,
and all his slaves. His soul is with the heroes. Achilles is
a savage—a barbarian, forsooth—but half-civilised, though
Nereus himself was his grandsire ! There he sits, the bravest
and most beautiful of mortal men, a musician, perhaps a poet,
for Homer tells us not whether the Implacable is singing his
own songs, or those of the ’Aoidoi. Yes, the Swift-footed is a
man of genius; and among all the spoils he won when he
sacked the city of Eetion, most he prized that harp on which
he is now playing—the harp with the silver cross-bar, and
beautiful in its workmanship, as if formed by Daedalus, and
fine-toned its strings, as if smitten by the Sun-god’s hand.
His proud soul would disdain to harp even to Princes.
Patroclus alone, still and mute, is listening, hero to hero.
But how have our translators acquitted themselves here ?
—let us see. Chapman drops the epithet croXi/pWcf/3o/o, and
merely says the shore, which was wrong, the noise of the
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
145
sea being essential to a maritime night. “ The god that
earth doth bind in brackish chains,” are poor words—sorry
substitutes for those two extraordinary ones yairjoy^oj 'Evvo Tore, as it trail’d, that soil which gave him birth.
So Jove, who oft had o’er him stretch’d his hand,
Dishonour’d Hector in his native land.”
Ay—this was indeed “ purposing unseemly deeds against
the illustrious Hector,” and horridly carrying them into exe¬
cution. But one single moment before, and Achilles was
commanding his Myrmidons to lift along the body of Hector
to the hollow ships, himself leading the song of triumph.
252
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
14 Great glory have we won—we have slain the illustrious
Hector—to whom the Trojans, throughout the city, as to a god
were wont to offer prayers! ” Now whelmed in dust, the
corpse is dragged at his chariot wheels — while the mother-
queen, standing on the battlements, fills the air with shrieks,
and casting far aside her lucid veil, flings her hairs by hand¬
fuls from the roots, and his father weeps aloud, and all around,
long, long lamentations are heard through the streets of
Troy,
“Not fewer, or less piercing, than if flames
Had wrapt all Ilium to her topmost towers! ”
And Andromache, who, in her chamber at the palace-top, was
framing a splendid texture, on either side with flowers of vari¬
ous hues all dazzling bright, and had given command to her
maidens to encompass an ample vase with fire, that a bath
might be prepared for Hector on his return from battle, hears
the voice of the queen-mother! so piercing-shrill it was, in
her agony the shuttle falls from her fingers, and she knows of
a truth that her Hector is dead. She crests the tower — and
then indeed she sees him in front of Ilium, whirled in such
shameful guise, away towards the Grecian fleet. But what
cared Achilles for all that mortal misery ? He knew it not.
Deaf in his own distraction, he heard not theirs ; his passion
was concentrated on two dead bodies—Patroclus and Hector;
love and hate, ruth and rage, pity and ferocity, each with its
scalding tears ; unforgiving was he, without mercy and with¬
out remorse ; and as the axle of his chariot glowed, and unim¬
peded were the wheels by the accursed corse, so burned his
spirit in the terrible turmoil of its insatiate revenge.
Let us take relief from all this misery in a small bit of what
is called Philosophical Criticism. Aristotle, the best of critics
—and Eustathius, not on'e of the worst — have made each a
remark on this combat, which seem to us scarcely worthy such
philosophers. Aristotle says, according to Pope, “ the wonder¬
ful ought to have place in Tragedy, but still more in Epic
Poetry, which proceeds in this point even to the unreasonable ;
for as in Epic Poems one sees not the persons acting , so whatever
passes the bounds of reason is proper to produce the admirable
and the marvellous. For example, what Homer says of Hector
pursued by Achilles, would appear ridiculous on the stage;
for the spectators could not forbear laughing to see on one side
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
253
the Greeks standing without any motion, and, on the other,
Achilles pursuing Hector, and making signs to the troops not
to dart at him. But all this does not appear when we read the
poem ; for what is wonderful is always agreeable, and as a
proof of it, we find that they who relate anything usually add
something to the truth, that it may the better please those
w r ho hear it.” This is miserable murder of Aristotle-*-espe-
cially the barbarity in italics—and we quote it as an example
of the style of treatment it has been his fate to receive alike
from friends and foes. Take Twining’s version—which is
sense. “ The surprising is necessary in Tragedy; but the Epic
Poem goes farther , and admits even the improbable and incredible ,
from which the highest degree of the surprising results , because
there the action is not seen .” What follows it is needless to
quote, as Pope’s translation gives, generally, the sense of the
original, with considerable confusion. But the question is,
would the Flight and Pursuit appear ridiculous on the stage ?
Twining thinks “ the idea of stopping a whole army by a
nod or shake of the head” (a circumstance, he says, distinctly
mentioned by Homer, but sunk in Mr Pope’s version), “ was
perhaps the absurdity here principally meant; and that, if
this whole Homeric scene were represented on our stage, in
the best manner possible, there can be no doubt that the effect
would justify Aristotle’s observation. It would certainly set
the audience in a roar.” Pye again, who is in general empty,
and on Twining extremely crusty, says sensibly enough here,
that he “ cannot possibly conceive that the idea of stopping
an army by the nod of a head, could be the absurdity meant
by Aristotle, or that there could have been anything more
absurd in an army stopping at a nod of the head in the
theatre, than by the single word halt in Hyde Park.” Pope
seems to have entirely missed the meaning of Aristotle,
whatever that may have been—who, he says, “ was so far
from looking on this passage as ridiculous or blamable, that
he esteemed it admirable and marvellous.” True, he did so
esteem it, occurring as it does in the Epopee; but had it
happened in Tragedy, then, he says, it would have been
ridiculous ; and the question is, why ? The answer seems
to be, “ it would have been ridiculous to see on the stage the
army standing stilland so it would, thinks Twining—so it
would not, thinks Pye—and so it would not, thinks North.
254
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Pye gives the rationale. “ The defect mentioned by Aristotle
lies deeper; for he, in the next chapter, mentions this identi¬
cal circumstance as a general error against probability, ex¬
cusable only as it renders the scene more interesting. To
us, who are used to the point of honour in military affairs,
this improbability does not appear. But the ancients made
war on a different plan.The ancients looked
on this action of Achilles as censurable on the ground of
rashness—which appears from a remark on it in Plutarch's
Life of Pompey, where, speaking of a rash action of Pompey,
in assisting the Cretan pirates merely to deprive Metellus of
a triumph, he compares this action—which he calls rather
the exploit of a mad boy, intoxicated with the love of fame,
than of a brave man.” Pye adds, “ In deference to the
opinion of Plutarch, it does not appear that Achilles was
actuated by the love of fame, but the wish to monopolise the
revenge of his friend's death.” And we, in deference to the
opinion of Pye, say that Pye is mistaken, for we have seen
that Achilles is inspired by both passions, which Homer
makes him tell us in the clearest and boldest words. There¬
fore, Aristotle, Plutarch, Pope, Twining, and Pye, are all
wrong—Homer and North, as usual, all right; for, though it
is true that it was not exactly a pitched single combat, in
which case any assistance from the army would have been
wicked, and not ridiculous, yet it was very like one indeed,
and therefore, again begging Aristotle’s pardon, we really can¬
not yet see how the non-interference of the army would have
been ridiculous on the stage, any more than on the field.
Eustathius, who, if we mistake not, was a bit of a bishop,
says that this is not a single combat of Achilles against
Hector, but a rencontre in a battle; and so Achilles might
and ought to take all advantage to rid himself, the readiest
and surest way, of an enemy whose death would procure an
entire victory to his party. Wherefore does he leave the
victory to chance? Why expose himself to the hazard of
losing it? Why does he prefer his private glory to the public
weal, and the safety of all the Greeks, which he puts to the
venture by delaying to conquer, and endangering his own
person? We grant it is a fault, but it must be owned to be
the fault of a hero.
All the above is given us by Pope, through Dacier, from
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
255
Eustathius. And is it not pretty considerable stuff? Achilles
ought to have killed Hector by hook or crook—by the spears
and swords of the soldiers! (Loud cries of oh! oh! oh !)
The Greeks, it has been observed, were no favourites with
the feudal writers on the Trojan war, and to depreciate the
character of Achilles, they have made him in that way
murder Hector. See Shakespeare’s “ Troilus and Cressida,”
where Achilles is at once a sumph and a savage. As to his
leaving the victory to chance, and exposing himself to the
hazard of losing it, the answer is, that the Greek army
would have laughed in your face, had you hinted such a
suggestion, and taken you for Thersites.
Stop—we all at once see the meaning of Aristotle. He
alludes neither to the shaking of the brows of Achilles
(which was almost equal to the nod of Jupiter), nor to his
rashness in exposing himself to be killed by Hector in single
combat (a stupid charge, worthy of that Boeotian, Plutarch),
but to the circumstance of the whole army standing stock-still
during the flight thrice round the walls, instead of intercept¬
ing the fugitive (which fifty thousand men could surely have
done, without putting themselves into a sweat), and thereby
enabling Achilles to get to in-fighting. Now, in the Epopee,
this absurdity—and it is one—escapes notice, because the
scene is not submitted to our sight. And Homer is eulogised
by Aristotle for his genius in so narrating it, that there is
produced by it on our minds a sense of the wonderful. Had
the scene been exhibited before our eyes on the stage, it would,
for the reason assigned, have beerf ridiculous; — and thus,
after all, Aristotle is right, and so is North, while Plutarch,
and Eustathius, and Twining, and Pye, are wrong, though
each in his degree no contemptible philosophic critic.
But let us return to the agonies of Achilles. He has
reached the ships, with Hector at his chariot wheels, all the
power of passion within his mighty heart more savagely
inflamed by the motion of that horrid race. Let there be
due pomp in the celebration of the ritual of revenge; and let
Thetis’ self, who brought him the armour in which he con¬
quered, come again from the sea to inspire all their hearts
with the rage of grief. The Myrmidons shall fiercely partake
of the funeral banquet—and the body of Hector shall be
given to the dogs, that they may tear to pieces and devour
256
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
it. Agamemnon may send the chiefs to bring Achilles to the
royal tent, and he will go; bnt not to sit down with the king
of men, not to cleanse from his homicidal hands the clotted
gore—not to purify his person—if such blood be pollution—
“ in the large three-footed caldron,” but to demand that the
old trees may be hewn on the mountain for the funeral pyre
of his Patroclus. It is a dreadful picture.
NORTH.
“Thus were they groaning throughout the city ; but the Greeks,
When they had come to the ships and the Hellespont,
Went-dismiss’d each to his own ship ;
But Achilles permitted not the Myrmidons to go dispersed ;
But among his war-loving companions (thus) spoke :—
‘Ye swift-riding Myrmidons, my beloved companions,
Let us not yet from the chariots unyoke the solid-hoof’d horses,
But with the horses themselves, and the chariots nearer ap¬
proaching,
Let us weep for Patroclus; for this is an honorary-tribute to the dead.
But when we-have-had-our-full of sorrowing lamentation,
Having unyoked our steeds, we shall sup here altogether.’
Thus he spoke; together-brought, they lifted-up-their-lamentation,
and Achilles took the lead.
1 Thrice around the corpse drove they their beautiful-maned
horses,
The Myrmidons, and among them did Thetis stir up the longing-
love of lamentation ;
Moisten’d were the sands, moisten’d was the armour of heroes,
With tears, such a panic-causing hero did they desiderate.
Among them did the son of Peleus take the lead in the closely-
thronging wailings,
Placing his homicidal hands on the breast of his friend.
‘ Bejoice with me, Patroclus, even in the mansions of Ades ;
For everything shall I now fulfil, which I formerly promised,
That having dragged Hector hither, I would give him to dogs to
be torn raw ;
That at the pyre I would decollate 1 2 twelve
1 This passage is borrowed by Virgil, in jEneid, lib. xi. 186. Imitated by
Chaucer in the “ Knight’s Tale.”—
“ Ne how the Greeks with an huge rout,
Thrice did riden all the fire about,
Upon the left hand, with a loud shouting,
And thrice on the right, with their speares clattering.”
2 Comes nearer the etymological meaning of Um>^n^orofx.viiiv, than “behead.”
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
257
Illustrious sons of the Trojans, being enraged for thy having been
slain.’
Thus he said, and against the illustrious Hector unseemly deeds
he purposed,
Beside the bier of the son of Menoetius having stretch’d him prone
In the dust; and each put-off-his-arms and accoutrements,
Brazen (and) bright ; and unloosed the shrill-neighing horses.
Down sat they by the ship of the swift-footed grandson of ^Eacus
In great numbers (lit. ten thousand); but he laid out for them a
desire-gratifying funeral-feast.
Many a slow 1 moving ox was extended on the iron (spits)
Slaughter’d, many a sheep and bleating she-goat,
Many a bright-tusk’d boar, blooming with fat,
"Were extended to be roasted over the flame of Yulcan.
Meanwhile, on all sides around the corpse flowed the blood, as-if-
from-vessels-outpour’d, (kotvXtjpvtov.)
But the Prince, the swift-footed son of Peleus,
To the illustrious Agamemnon, were the chiefs of the Greeks con¬
ducting,
With urgency, artfully-persuading him, enraged at heart on ac¬
count of his friend.
When they then h; d in their course come to the tent of Agamemnon,
Forthwith the shrill-soUnding heralds he commanded
To surround with fire a large three-footed caldron , 2 might they
persuade
The son of Peleus to Wash away the clotted gore.
But he stubbornly refused, and moreover swore an oath,
‘ No—not, by Jupiter! who of gods is the loftiest and best,
Until I shall have placed on the pyre Patroclus, and thrown up a
sepulchral mound,
And shorn off my locks ; since never again a second time thus
Shall grief pervade my heart, whilst I shall be among the living.
But yet let us now obey (celebrate) the hateful repast.
At-to-morrow’s-dawn, king of men, Agamemnon, urgently-com-r
mand
1 It is difficult to determine whether the epithet should here be trans¬
lated “ white,” or “ swift,” or “slow’ 5 (in the sense in which Homer often
uses uX'ixtha pots —trailing-footed, an epithet very descriptive of the way in
which they drag after them their hind-legs)—or “idle”—quasi kt$yb t .
2 To prepare a bath.
It is argued by some that white animals were never sacrificed to the dead ;
but perhaps the living had no objection to the colour of the animal—provided
the flesh were good—and Homer is here describing the trtg/iumoy -—or funeral
repast given to the living. Another critic is determined to have the oxen
white, even at the expense of their skins. “ After they are flayed,” says he,
“ they are white from their fatness.”
VOL. VIII.
R
258 :
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Wood to be collected and piled up, as is beseeming
For a corpse having ( these ho?iours ) to go down to the gloomy
darkness ;
That the unwearied fire may burn it up
Quickly away from my eyes, and the soldiers turn themselves to
their labours.’
Thus said he ; and they to him earnestly listen’d and obey’d him,
And each and all having eagerly girded themselves to prepare supper,
Feasted, nor lack’d their hearts an equal repast.”
And what shall still for a while the storm in the destroyer’s
soul ? No power on earth or in heaven. It keeps feeding on the
black atmosphere—the grim clouds come sailing along inces¬
santly in tempestuous procession—broken but by flashes of
lightning; never was there seen such a dreadful mental sky.
But the soul is the slave of the body, and over-wearied nature
yields to the access of sleep. Like a calm that enchains the
fluctuating sea, sleep seizes on Achilles, and his huge frame
is stretched motionless along the shore. Then is he visited
by a dream.
NORTH.
“ But Pelides, on the shore of the much-resounding ocean,
Lay heavily-groaning amid a multitude of Myrmidons,
In a purified 1 place, where the billows were dashing 2 on the shore,
When sleep, unbinding the cares of the mind, seized him,
(Sleep) sweetly pour’d around (him)—(for wearied much were his
beautiful limbs
By rushing after Hector at wind-exposed Troy).
(Then) the spectre of the hapless Patroclus approach’d,
In all respects resembling him in stature, in beautiful eyes,
And voice, and similar garments clothed its body ;
O’er his head it stood, and in these words address’d him,—
‘ Sleepest thou, and forgetful of me art thou, Achilles %
Of me when living, not neglectful; but now, when dead,
Bury me with all speed, that I may pass the gates of Ades.
The spectres, the shadows of the slain, keep me afar,
Nor allow me to mingle with them beyond the river ;
To-no-purpose wander I about the wide-gated mansion of Orcus.
Give me thine hand, with-tears-I-implore thee, for never again
hereafter
1 K xOagu may here mean a place not usually frequented.
2 KM&o-xov, some interpret, “ were sounding others, “ washing.” Perhaps
Homer means that the dashing of the waves washed away the blood, and con¬
sequently purified the place.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
259
Shall I return from Ades, after you shall-have-given-me-my-por-
tion of the pyre.
Never again apart from our beloved companions, shall we alive,
Sitting, hold counsel together ; but me, hath Destiny,
The hideous, and ordain’d to me at my birth, yawning wide,
devour’d.
And even of thee thyself, oh godlike Achilles, the fate is
To perish under the walls of the nobly-born Trojans.
This other ( request ) will I communicate and enjoin, if perchance
you will grant it;
Place not my bones apart from thine, Achilles,
But together ; that as we were brought up together at your
house—
(Since me then young Menoetius from Opoeis
To your (house) had conducted, on account of a mournful man¬
slaughter,
On that day, when I slew the son of Ampliidamas,
Unwittingly, unwillingly, being angry about dice :
Me, did the equestrian Peleus, having then received me into his
house,
Nurture zealously, and name your attendant:)
So also let the same urn enclose your bones,—
That golden vase, which thy venerable mother gave thee.’
Him, the swift-footed Achilles answering, address’d,—
( Why, beloved one, hast thou come hither,
And on me enjoin’d all these things ? To thee, will I
Faithfully perform them all, and grant as thou orderest.
But stand nearer me, that having embraced for a little while
One another, we may-take-our-full of sorrowing grief.’
Thus having said, he stretch’d himself out with his hands,
But grasp’d not; for the spectre, down under the earth, like smoke,
Pass’d shrill-wailing ; amazed, Achilles started up,
Made-a-clattering-noise with his hands struck together, and spoke
these sorrowful words,—
‘ Ha ! ye gods, verily there are in the mansions of Orcus
The spirit and the semblance, but nothing substantial 1 is there
there at all;
For of my hapless Patroclus, all-the-night has
The spirit, moaning and wailing, hover’d o’er me,
And has given me orders about everything ; wonderfully like
was it to himself.’ ”
Most beautiful example of the power of the deepest passion
of sorrow which men know—the sorrow for the dead—to awaken
1 QiexiXov, may also be translated “ god-like.”
260
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
creative imagination! Nothing will satisfy it here "but the
ghost of Patroclus. From the lips of the phantom falls but
the expression of those ideas and feelings which the heart of
the living hero has indeed brought forth in the visions of its
own'grief. And how profound the hush breathed over all that
distracting passion from the tender interview of sleep! Achilles
awakes with a spirit tranquillised for the funeral. So passed
the night—and u rosy-palm’d Aurora found them all mourning
afresh the pitiable dead.” Then up rose Meriones, friend of
the virtuous chief Idomeneus, and led the mules and mule-
driver to the groves of Ida fountain-fed; and down fell the
towering oaks with crash sonorous ; and ere long they were
cast on the beach in order, where Achilles had designed a
tomb of ample size for Patroclus and for himself—fo< in death
he desired that they should not be divided. Round the pile
of fuel sat down all the warlike throng; till Achilles issued
orders that his warriors should gird on their armour, and yoke
their steeds to their chariots. On a sudden all in bright arms
stood arrayed; mounted the combatants and charioteers;
first moved the chariots, and then came the foot, dense as a
cloud. In the midst, between his companions in arms, was
borne the body of Patroclus. But behold the funeral-rites
in Sotheby’s exquisite translation :—
“ Behind, Achilles held the hero’s head,
And groan’d amid the pomp that graced the dead—
The mourners, where he bade, deposed the bier,
And urged their toil the enormous pile to rear.
Then Peleus’ son, alone, from all apart,
Mused on the solemn vow that swell’d his heart,
And severing from his head the golden hair,
That, to Sperchius vow’d, flow’d full and fair,
Deep-groaning on the world of waters gazed,
And thus his voice of lamentation raised :
‘ Peleus to thee, Sperchius, vow’d in vain
This offering, if his son return’d again,
This consecrated hair, when hail’d my home,
And with this gift his votive hecatomb,
And fifty rams that at thy fount should bleed,
And in thy sacred wood the altar feed—
Thus Peleus pray’d ; but thou hast scorn’d his pray’r ;
Not thine, Sperchius, this devoted hair.
Ne’er shall the son of Peleus greet his sire,
And this shorn lock falls on Patroclus’ pyre.’
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
261
He spake : and bowing down, tlie corse embraced,
And in Patroclus’ hands the offering placed.
All grieved : and thus the daylight had declined,
Had not Achilles then reveal’d his mind :
‘ Atrides ! thee all willingly obey ; —
Grief has its season ; now send these away :
Dismiss them from the pyre, the feast prepare,
Hites yet unpaid be my appropriate care.
I, and my host, the last sad charge sustain,
Yet let with us the leaders here remain.’
Atrides heard, and utter’d his command,
And to their ships dispersed each separate band.
The assistants there remained : the pile prepared,
And paced on every side the structure squared,
An hundred feet: then, on his funeral bed,
On that high summit, weeping, placed the dead.
There many a sheep and bullock slew and flay’d,
And, heap’d before the pyre, each carcass laid:
From all alike the fat Achilles drew,
Spread o’er the corse, and wholly hid from view:
Then piled their limbs, and hung, with many a tear,
Jars of rich oil and honey round the bier.
Then Peleus’ son cast quickly on the pyre,
Four steeds, proud-crested, foaming in their ire ;
And from nine household dogs, his hand had fed,
Cast two, that on the pile, fresh slaughter’d, bled:
Then twelve brave youths of Troy, in sternest mood,
Slew with revengeful blade that drain’d their blood.
Last, on the structure hurl’d the force of flame,
And deeply groaning, named Patroclus’ name :
i Patroclus ! hail! Oh hear, though dead, my voice !
All that I vow’d is perfected. — Rejoice !
Twelve high-born sons of Troy, in youthful bloom,
The fire at once shall with thy corse consume,
But ne’er shall fire on Hector feed, the hound
Shall, fattening on his carcass, search each wound.’
He, threat’ning spoke : but by high heaven o’erpower’d,
No ravenous hound the Hectorean corse devour’d,
By Jove’s fair child, by Yenus, driven away,
Who watch’d the corse, and guarded night and day :
With roseate oil ambrosial bathed him o’er,
That smooth’d, when dragg’d, each lacerated pore.
And a dense cloud from heaven Apollo drew,
And where the corse reposed deep darkness threw,
That not the fierceness of the solar ray,
The tendons bare, and dry the flesh away.”
262
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
What is wanting to the magnificence of such a funeral ?
Nothing is wanting—our imaginations are satisfied, and we
feel it to be sublime. But the imagination of Homer was not
satisfied; greater grandeur still was due to the funeral rites
performed to his friend by Achilles; and the elements must
be called to give the finishing glory to the work. No fire
kindled on the pile. It remained, without a spark, sullen in
its mighty mass. It seemed unwilling to be consumed.
Therefore, Peleus’ son withdrew a short distance in prayer,
and, vowing to each large sacrifice, invoked Boreas and
Zephyrus, pouring out libation from a golden cup, and thus
imploring their coming, that the flames, kindling, might in¬
stantly consume the dead. Iris heard his supplication—and
the Kainbow—“she that wears the thousand-colour’d hair”
—flung herself from heaven into the hall of the heavy-blow¬
ing West, where all the Winds sat feasting; and the moment
she alighted on the threshold, they all starting rose at once,
and each invited Iris to his side., “ Borne over ocean’s stream
again, I go to Ethiopia, where with ‘the rest’ I wish to share
in hecatombs offered to the gods. But Achilles sues for the
aid of Boreas and Zephyrus, vowing to you large sacrifice, if
ye will fan the pile on which now lies his Patroclus, by all
Achaia wept.” Even in our prose, the description bears
perusal well; in Sotheby it is superb.
NORTH.
“ Thus having spoken, she (Iris) departed; but they (the winds) rush’d
With magnificent sound,—driving the clouds before them !
Instantly to the sea they came to blow ; uprose the billows
By the shrill-sounding blast. To rich-glebed Troy they came,
Upon the pyre they fell, and the magnificently-burning flame
crackled aloud.
All-night verily indeed did they, at one and the same time, uplift
the blaze around the pyre,—
Blowing shrilly : and all-the-night did the swift Achilles,
From a golden goblet, having a double-handled cup,
Draw the wine, pour it on the ground, and moisten the earth,
Invoking the spirit of the hapless Patroclus.
As a father bewails (when) burning the bones of his son
Betrothed, who, by his death, hath render’d wretched his miserable
parents,
In like manner bewail’d Achilles when burning the bones of his
friend,
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
263
Gliding along by the burning-pyre— groaning chokingly ; 1
But when the morning-star arose—the harbinger of light upon the
earth,
After which the saffron-robed Aurora is diffused over the sea,
Then did the pyre-blaze languish, and the flame ceased.
Back went the winds again to return homeward,
Athwart the Thracian deep : but it groan’d, boiling with its swell¬
ing (waves).
But Pelides, turning away to the other side, apart from the pyre-
blaze,
Lay down, worn-out; and upon him sweet sleep came.
But Atrides and his followers in numbers were assembled,
Of whom passing to and fro the noise and disturbance awoke
(Achilles) ;
Upright therefore he sat, and these words address’d to them,—
‘ Atrides, and ye others, ye nobles of all the Greeks,
First extinguish down with dark wine the pyre-blaze
Wholly, as far as the fury of the fire hath seized it ; and
next
The bones of Patroclus Menoetiades let us gather together,
Distinguishing them carefully; for easily recognised they are,
Since they lay in the midst of the pyre, but the others apart,
On the outermost verge, were burn’d, horses and men promiscu¬
ously :
Those in a golden urn, and in twice-folded fat 2
Let us deposit,—till I myself be conceal’d in Ades.
I wish not now to elaborate a very large tomb,
But of moderate and befitting dimensions — thus : it hereafter,
ye Greeks,
Both broad and high you may make, you who after me
Shall be left behind in the many-bench’d ships.’
Thus spoke he : and they obey’d the swift-footed son of Peleus.
First then did they extinguish down with dark wine the pyre-
blaze,
As far as the flame had come, down-fell the deep ashes :
The white bones of their gentle companion, with tears,
They collected into a golden vase, and twice-folded fat:
In the tent having placed it, they veil’d it with delicately-woven,
fine linen :
The circumference of the mound they form’d, and laid the founda¬
tion
1 Ahva., closely pressed—from j», to satiety.
2 “Notabile inventum ad excludendum aerem et cum eo putorem.”—
Heyne.
264
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Around the funeral pile : i and raised the heap’d-up earth.
Having raised the mound, they return’d. But Achilles
Detain’d the people there, and made-to-sit-down a wide-encircling
assembly.
From the ships prizes he brought, caldrons and tripods,
Horses and mules, and the vigorous heads of oxen,
And women with-lovely-waists, and grey iron.”
SOTHEBY.
“ Swift at the word, the winds with mighty roar
Flew, and far drove the gather’d clouds before,
Swept o’er the sea, while far and wide the deep
With all its billows swell’d beneath their sweep :
Then Ilion reach’d, there rushing on the pyre,
Heard at their blast loud roar the blaze of fire.
The pyre, in every part, throughout the night,
Spread, as they shrilly blew, large flakes of light :
And, all that night, Pelides, the divine,
Held with pure hand a bowl of votive wine,
And fill’d it from a beaker framed of gold,
Then pour’d the offering on the hallow’d mould;
And ever as he pour’d it from the bowl,
With solemn voice invoked Patroclus’ soul.
As when a father, lone, with grief half-wild,
Consumes the bones of his beloved child,
A youth just plighted, whose untimely death
Dooms to unsolaced woe his closing breath :
Thus as Achilles burnt Patroclus’ bones,
Slow pacing nigh the pile, groans burst on groans.
Thus pass’d the night ; but when with dawning ray
Pose the fair morn-star, harbinger of day,
And saffron-robed Aurora onward came,
Sank on the wasted pile the dying flame—
Home rush’d the winds, and with returning blast
Swell’d up the Thracian billows, as they past :
Then worn Pelides from the pile withdrew,
And sleep her soothing mantle o’er him threw.
But when the host, a still increasing throng,
Tumultuous, to Achilles flock’d along,
Their din aroused him from refreshing rest :
He rose, and thus assembled Greece addrest:
“ Si recte assequor, tumulus in ipso rogi loco exstruitur,” ut sup. H. 336.—
Heyne.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
265
c Atrides ! and ye chiefs, my voice attend !
First, to Patroclus’ pile your footsteps bend,
And there extinguish, far as spread the fire,
With copious wine the yet half-smouldering pyre.
Next, let us gather up each hallow’d bone
Of Mencetiades, distinctly known :
In the mid pyre he lay ; but, round his bed,
Far off the steeds and men confus’dly spread.
In a gold vase, with double cauls enclosed,
Place we his bones, till mine are there deposed.
I will not now a mighty mound upraise ;
Yours be that hallow’d charge in after days ;
Ye, the survivors of our hapless doom :
There the large mound extend, and pile a loftier tomb.’
He spake : the host Pel ides’ word obey'd,
Pour’d the dark wine, and all the flame allay’d,
Far as the fire had spread its strength around,
And the heap’d ashes sank, and strew’d the ground ;—
Then tearful gathering up, the bones reposed
In the gold vase, with double cauls enclosed :
Bore to the tent, and hiding it from view,
O’er all a veil of finest linen drew.
Then, circling round the place, mark’d out the mound,
And there the broad foundation firmly bound,
Earth heap’d on earth, to raise the structure, laid,
And back return’d, that last sad duty paid.
Achilles then the multitude detain’d ;
And all spectators of the sports remain’d.—
Forth from his ships, along the crowded shore,
His train the great rewards of contest bore :
Caldrons and tripods, and the proud-neck’d steed,
Mules, and large bodies of the bovine breed,
And lovely girls, that richest vesture wore,
And the bright splendour of his iron ore.”
In this way has imagination at all times blended itself with
the passion of sorrow. The strong feeling in which the mind
begins to work is the wound of its own loss. But immediately
its wider feelings are opened up, and from all its stores of
thought, from all its sources of passion, images and desires
begin to crowd in, which belong not to that particular afflic¬
tion, but to the universal constitution of our nature, and to its
common lot. Such has been the origin of the funeral honours
and consecration of the dead. The soul in its sorrow was not
satisfied to mourn. But awakened by its own anguish to the
266
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
vivid realisation of all those conceptions which the living
spirit has gathered upon the name of death, it went down into
the regions to which the ghost was gone, and found it shiver¬
ing on the shores of the unnavigable river, till its funeral rites
were paid. It found the departed soul yet troubled with the
passions it had left on earth, and still communicating, by its
mysterious sensibility, with the affections and the acts of the
living. Hence stately obsequies were made, to solace with
the last tribute of love that shadowy being; warriors circled
thrice with inverted arms the figure of the warrior slain ; wine
was shed on the flame ; and blood was poured from human
bosoms to gladden the immortal spirit with earthly revenge.
Wailings and shrieks were raised around the pile, to thrill for
the last time unhearing ears ; and the farewell of the living to
the dead was duly spoken, as if he were but then departing
from the coasts of life.
“ Sjdve seternum, mihi, maxime Palla!
AEternumque vale ! ”
Delightful is it thus to recall to memory a parallel passage
from Virgil the divine—the Funeral of Pallas. The same pas¬
sionate spirit breathes over that beautiful picture—coloured
by a gentler and more pensive genius. From Homer's
“Golden Urn ” Virgil “ drew light; ” and poets there have
been, who, at the farthing rushlight of some poetaster, have
kindled their own huge pine-torch, that far and wide has
illuminated the horizon. What is the use of making compari¬
sons between Homer and Virgil ? Of each it may be said, in
the mystic language of Wordsworth—
“ Thou—thou art not a child of Time,
But offspring of the Eternal Prime.”
Virgil, according to “the whisper of a faction,” is an
imitator. So is every great poet. Shakespeare was a thief,
and Homer was a robber. Sympathy is one of the strengths
of a poet’s soul; and sympathy, at its height and depth, works
into imitation. Imitation, therefore, is proof, power, test, trial,
growth and result, cause and effect, of original genius. “ The
same ! but oh ! how different! ” What a fund of philosophy
in these few words! iEneas is not Achilles—Pallas is not
Patroclus. But each illustrious pair were Knights-Commanders
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
267
of the Order of the Stainless Shield—and theirs were immortal
friendships. Achilles and Patroclus were nearly of an age.
But iEneas was like the elder brother of Pallas, who had been
committed to his care by old Evander, that his princely boy
might learn the last lessons of chivalry from the great Trojan.
When Pallas fell, iEneas mourned with a twofold passion of
grief. Nor had he the fiery spirit of Achilles. Therefore there
is the most touching tenderness, but no startling intensity, in
his sorrows. The anguish—and the agony—these are reserved
for Evander; and our bosoms are rended by his lamentations
as sorely as by those of Priam. Nothing can be more affecting
—more pathetic—than the following Yirgillan strain sounded
through the fire-touched lips of Dryden.
“ Thus, weeping while he spoke, he took his way,
Where, now in death, lamented Pallas lay :
Acoetes watch’d the corpse ; whose youth deserved
The father’s trust, and now the son he served
With equal faith, but less auspicious care :
The attendants of the slain his sorrow share.
A troop of Trojans mix’d with these appear,
And mourning matrons with disheveil’d hair.
Soon as the prince appears, they raise a cry ;
All beat their breasts, and echoes rend the sky.
They rear his drooping forehead from the ground ;
But when H£neas view’d the grisly wound
Which Pallas in his manly bosom bore,
And the fair flesh distain’d with purple gore :
First, melting into tears, the pious man
Deplored so sad a sight, then thus began.
Thus having mourn’d, he gave the word around,
To raise the breathless body from the ground ;
And chose a thousand horse, the flower of all
His warlike troops, to wait the funeral:
To bear him back, and share Evander’s grief
(A well-becoming, but a weak relief).
Of oaken twigs they twist an easy bier ;
Then on their shoulders the sad burthen rear.
The body on this rural hearse is borne,
Strew’d leaves and funeral greens the bier adorn.
All pale he lies, and looks a lovely flower,
New cropt by virgin hands, to dress the bower:
268
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Unfaded yet, but yet unfed below,
No more to mother earth or the green stem shall owe.
Then two fair vests, of wondrous work and cost,
Of purple woven, and with gold embost,
For ornament the Trojan hero brought,
Which with her hands Sidonian Dido wrought.
One vest array’d the corpse, and one they spread
O’er his closed eyes, and wrapp’d around his head :
That when the yellow hair in flame should fall,
The catching fire might burn the golden caul.
Besides the spoils of foes in battle slain,
When he descended on the Latian plain :
Arms, trappings, horses, by the hearse he led
In long array (the achievements of the dead).
Then, pinion’d with their hands behind, appear
The unhappy captives, marching in the rear :
Appointed offerings in the victor’s name,
To sprinkle with their blood the funeral flame.
Inferior trophies by the chiefs are borne ;
Gauntlets and helms, their loaded hands adorn ;
And fair inscriptions fix’d, and titles read,
Of Latian leaders conquer’d by the dead.
Accetes on his pupil’s corpse attends,
With feeble steps ; supported by his friends :
Pausing at every pace, in sorrow drown’d,
Betwixt their arms he sinks upon the ground.
Where grovelling, while he lies in deep despair,
He beats his breast, and rends his hoary hair.
The champion’s chariot next is seen to roll,
Besmear’d with hostile blood, and honourably foul.
To close the pomp, HSthon, the steed of state,
Is led, the funeral of his lord to wait.
Stripp’d of his trappings, with a sullen pace
He walks, and the big tears run rolling down his face
The lance of Pallas, and the crimson crest,
Are borne behind ; the victor seized the rest.
The march begins : the trumpets hoarsely sound,
The pikes and lances trail along the ground.
Thus, while the Trojan and Arcadian horse
To Pallantean towers direct their course,
In long procession rank’d ; the pious chief
Stopp’d in the rear, and gave a vent to grief.
‘ The public care,’ he said, ‘ which war attends,
Diverts our present woes, at least suspends ;
Peace with the manes of great Pallas dwell;
Hail, holy relics, and a last farewell! ’ ”
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
269
iEneas did not act well towards Dido. We do not mean
in leaving her, for his departure was inevitable, it being
doomed; and had he stayed at Carthage, what had become of
the iEneid ? but in allowing her to indulge in u loving not
wisely, hut too well; ” especially in that cave. Electricity
is always perilous ; and hence knight and lady fair have
seldom escaped scathless from such seclusion during a thun¬
derstorm. We forgive them both. But iEneas redeems his
character from the charge of selfishness, by his whole conduct
towards Pallas and Evander. He had a good heart. He
remorsefully reproaches himself for having suffered the young
hero to encounter danger and death in his war. He fears to
look again on the face of the good old king, whom he has
made sonless.
“And what a friend hast thou, Ascanius, lost l ”
That is the last line of his heroic elegy over the corpse; and
afterwards, on the decisive day, what are his words to Turnus ?
“ Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas
Immolat! ”
Yes ! iEneas was a hero.
Say not that Virgil is often pathetic, hut never sublime.
For believe thou with us that the pathetic is the sublime,
as it comes pouring purely forth from the ether of a poet’s
soul. Thus,—
“ The morn had now dispell’d the shades of night:
Restoring toils, when she restored the light;
The Trojan king, and Tuscan chief, command
To raise the piles along the winding strand :
Their friends convey the dead to funeral fires ;
Black smould’ring smoke from the green wood expires ;
The light of heaven is choked, and the new day retires.
Then thrice around the kindled piles they go
(For ancient custom had ordain’d it so).
Thrice horse and foot about the fires are led,
And thrice with loud laments they hail the dead.
Tears trickling down their breasts bedew the ground ;
And drums and trumpets mix their mournful sound.
Amid the blaze, their pious brethren throw
The spoils, in battle taken from the foe ;
Helms, bits embost, and swords of shining steel,
One casts a target, one a chariot-wheel:
270 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Some to their fellows their own arms restore :
The falchions which in luckless fight they bore :
Their bucklers pierced, their darts bestow’d in vain,
And shiver’d lances gather’d from the plain :
Whole herds of offer’d bulls about the fire,
And bristled boars, and woolly sheep, expire.
Around the piles a careful troop attends,
To watch the wasting flames, and weep their burning friends.
Lingering along the shore, till dewy night
New decks the face of heaven with starry light.”
The ancients—Hebrews, Greeks, Romans—had all noble
ideas and feelings in their friendships. David and Jonathan
-—Achilles and Patroclus-—Pylades and Orestes—Damon and
Pythias—Nisus and Euryalus—and many others—real or
phantoms—of the sages or the heroes. What is such friend¬
ship, when flowering on the battle-field, but peace-in-war!
Profoundest repose of all the heart’s best affections in the
midst of its most tempestuous passions! A lown hour in
midst of a day of storms !
Virgil pours his entire heart into the episode of Nisus and
Euryalus—Homer all his into that loftier brotherhood. Both
alike, under such inspiration, must have felt confident of
immortality. The consciousness in the soul of genius of its
own imperishable greatness, meets our perfect sympathy,
when that genius exercises itself in the finest and most
famous arts. We are easily able, for example, to imagine
that the sculptor or the painter, while he looks with delight
himself on the beautiful forms that are rising into life under
his hand, feels rejoicingly that other men, formed by nature
with souls like his own, will look with the same emotion on
the same forms, and thank him to whose genius they owe
their delight. We can conceive, without difficulty, the con¬
sciousness which Virgil felt of the delight which his verse
would inspire, when, having celebrated, in that perhaps the
most beautiful passage in all his poetry, the perilous and
fatal adventure of those two youthful warriors, and closed
their eyes in death, he adds, rejoicingly,—
“ Fortunati ambo ! si quid mea carmina possunt,
Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximet sevo,
Dum domus HCnese Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque Pater Romanus habebit! ”
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
271
He prophesied falsely of the duration of the Koman greatness ;
but he committed no error in prophesying his own fame ; and
the delight which he felt himself in the tender and beautiful
picture he had drawn, is felt, as he believed it would be,
by numberless spirits. He was not deceived, then, in the
assurance he felt of an undying sympathy among men with
his own emotions ; in his certainty that he should touch
their hearts with a pensive pleasure, &nd win from them,
along with love for his fallen heroes, some fond and grateful
affection to him who had sung so well the story of their
fortunes.
And think ye not that Homer, too, exulted in the conscious¬
ness that he had won himself an immortal fame, when he was
conceiving for Achilles the tender desire that his body should
lie in the same tomb with that of his Patroclus ? “ The time
may come,” said the hero, u when Greece may decree us a
vaster monument.” There spake Homer’s own heart, in the
fulness of the pride of inspiration. Millions yet unborn would
visit that mound, because of the glorifying song that illumi¬
nated its verdure with immortal light. Achilles was either to
return home, and live and die obscurely happy, or to “ fall in
the blaze of his fame ” before Troy. And the bard, in his
prescience, knew that congenial spirits, in the after-time,
would think it happiness enough for Achilles that he had
been sung by Homer. Not else had Alexander the Great
sought the tomb of the hero whom he admired and resembled
—though Homer’s Achilles never saw the light of our day,
but was in the air-world of imagination an ideal phantom,
glorified by genius into the life that never dies.
■ From this unintended digression we now hasten back to the
close of the funeral rites of Patroclus.
Those magnificent rites are followed duly by the funeral
games—and who should preside over them—but Achilles ?
Agamemnon himself is there—and all the chiefs. But Achilles
is king to-day; and he has received his sceptre from the
hand of sorrow. How heroic his bearing from first to last!
COWPER.
a Atrides, and ye other valiant Greeks !
These prizes, in the circus placed, attend
The charioteers. Held we the present games
272
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
In honour of some other Grecian dead,
I would myself bear hence the foremost prize ;
For well ye know my steeds, that they surpass
All else, and are immortal; Neptune’s gift
To my own father, and his gift to me.
But neither I this contest share myself,
Nor shall my steeds ; for they would miss the force
And guidance of a charioteer so kind
As they have lost, who many a time hath cleansed
Their manes with water of the crystal brook,
And made them sleek, himself, with limpid oil.
Him, therefore, mourning, motionless they stand,
With hair dishevell’d, streaming to the ground.
But ye, whoever of the host profess
Superior skill, and glory in your steeds
And well-built chariots, for the strife prepare !”
So spake Pelides, and arose the charioteers for speed re¬
nowned : Eurpelus, accomplished in equestrian arts ; Diomede,
the son of Tydeus—he yoked the coursers won by himself in
battle from iEneas, what time Apollo saved their master ; the
son of Atreus with the golden locks, Menelaus, who joined to
his chariot the mare of Agamemnon, swift iEthe, and his own
Podargus; and Antilochus, son of Nestor, his bright-maned
steeds prepared, of Pylian breed. At the sight, grief for the
dead fades before the glory of the living—yet with what noble
pathos does Achilles here remember his friend!
Tydides is victor; and the prizes are delivered in order;
the last of all to—Nestor, by Achilles himself, the Flower of
Chivalry and Courtesy, in honour and reverence of Old Age.
“ Take thou, my Father! and for ever keep this in store, that
thou mayst never forget the funeral of my friend ! accept it as
a free gift: for, fallen as thou art into the wane of life, thou
must wield the cestus, wrestle, at the spear contend, or in the
foot-race, henceforth no more ! ”—“ My son ! I accept thy gift
with joy ;—glad is my heart that thou art evermore mindful
of one who loves thee, and that now thou yieldest me such
honour as is due to my years, in sight of all the Greeks. So
may the gods immortalise thy name! ” Such the princely
bearing of Achilles on the first contest; and look on him now
at the proposal of the last. In the circus he places a ponder¬
ous spear and caldron yet unfired, and around embossed with
flowers—and uprise at once the spearmen, Agamemnon and
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
273
Meriones, when Achilles thus addresses the king of men—nor
is Sotheby’s English inferior to Homer’s Greek:
“Achilles spake—‘King ! thy surpassing art
All know, far far o’er all to hurl the dart,
And—if thy will, Atrides !—such is mine—
# The lance be that brave chiefs—the caldron thine.’
He spake : and Atreus’ son, with joyful mind,
The lance to brave Meriones resign’d’:
And bade Talthybius to his tent convey
The beauteous caldron, to record the day.”
Old Homer was indeed a perfect gentleman. In the noblest
of all warlike arts, that of the spear, he makes Agamemnon’s
self rise to contend, in honour of Patroclus—the brother of
him he had so outrageously wronged—but whom he has now
gloriously righted in the presence of all Greece. The mutual
forgiveness is now complete—complete the reconciliation.
Both heroes stand now in each other’s estimation as they did
before that fatal quarrel. Achilles, indeed, needed no vindi¬
cation ; but Agamemnon did; and in that incident, closing
the games with such dignity, we feel that he was indeed the
King of Men,—such a king as even Socrates himself—in that
divine dialogue of Plato which Cicero asked who could read
without tears—hoped,
“ When he had shuffled off this mortal coil,”
to converse with in Elysium.
The games are over—the army is broken up—and to re¬
past and sleep have gone all the people. Night and silence
once more invest the camp ; and again begins the passion of
Achilles. His thoughts are like the rage Leonum vincula
recusantum.
“The assembly broke up, and to the swift-sailing ships the
people all
Dispersed went: for mindful were they of repast,
And of sweet sleep to have their full: but Achilles
Wept, calling to mind his beloved friend ; nor him did sleep,
The all-subduing, seize, but now here, now there he toss’d,
Desiderating the manhood and the vigorous might of Patroclus ;
What toilsome labours he had terminated along with him, what
distresses he had endured,
VOL. VIII.
S
274 ESSAYS *. CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
While passing through the battles of heroes, and dangerous
waves :
Remembering all this—he let fall abundant tears.
One while reclining on his sides,—at another
Supine, and now on his face, then, standing up aright,
He saunter’d about sorrowing, along the shore of the sea: him
not the morn,
When dawning on the sea and on the shore, missed :
But he, when he had yoked the swiftest horses to the chariot,
Bound Hector, to be dragg’d behind his chariot:
Thrice having dragg’d him around the mound of the dead Mence-
tiades,
Again he paused in his tent, him (Hector) he left
Extended prone in the dust: but Apollo from his
Body warded off all unseemliness 1 (putrefaction), pitying the man
Even though dead : all around he veil’d him with his iEgis
Of gold, that when dragging him along he might not lacerate
him.”
The Fury will not leave his heart; she still glares in his
bloodshot eyes—and through that ghastly light, discolouring
and disfiguring, Achilles still sees the character and the
corpse of Hector. Would that his rage suffered him to chop
the slayer of Patroclus into pieces, and devour him raw!
That savage desire is dead, but it gave way but to another,
satiated—if his hate be not insatiable—by thus dragging the
body at his chariot round the mound of Menoetiades. 'He
sees not in that body the son of Priam, the Prince of the
people, the defender of his country, the worshipper of the
gods, but a wretch accursed—a hound abhorred—trampled
on, stabbed, mutilated, but not yet enough insulted, and
punished, and excommunicated from humanity ; as is its
ghost from all other ghosts in the world of shadows. ’Tis
thus that in his insanity he has looked on Hector, living or
dead—thus that he has thought on him, ever since Patroclus’
death. And thus it is that rage, and hate, and revenge,
kindled in war, or haply in peace, separate the souls of us
mortal beings in bitterest enmity, whom nature graciously
framed to live in the bonds of brotherhood. Had Helen and
Paris never sinned, how heroic might have been the friend¬
ship of Achilles and Hector ! The heir-apparent of the throne
1 ’Aeast/jjv, “ ne corpus foedaretur nec ulceribus et livoribus, nec putresceret,”
says Ileyne.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
275
of Troy might have visited the son of Peleus in his father’s
court of Phthia, and hards immortalised the mutual affection
of the heroes. For prodigally endowed were they both by
the gods with the noblest gifts of nature, and to Achilles
Hector might have been Patroclus. Such is the mystery of
this life ; but in the Elysian Fields they may repose together
in immortal love on the meads of Asphodel.
While thus Achilles in his wrath disgraced his noble foe,
looking down from heaven the Immortals pitied him; all but
Juno and Pallas—remembering how Paris in his rural home
had disdained them, and preferred to theirs the charms of
Venus—and the sovereign power of Ocean, the earth-encir¬
cling Earth-shaker. Apollo pleads with Jove for the restora¬
tion of the body of his beloved Hector to Priam; and Iris
summons Thetis to heaven from her lamentations for her noble
son, ordained to die at Troy far distant from his home. She
is commissioned by the Thunderer to tell the Implacable that
it is the will of heaven he should now relent, and receive the
ransom.
COWPER.
“ So spake the God, nor Thetis not complied :
Descending swift from the Olympian heights
She reach’d Achilles’ tent. Him there she found
Groaning disconsolate, while others ran
To and fro, occupied around a sheep
New-slaughter’d large, and of exuberant fleece.
She, sitting close beside him, softly stroked
His cheek, and thus, affectionate, began :
‘ How long, my son ! sorrowing and mourning here,
Wilt thou consume thy soul, nor give one thought
Either to food or love ? Yet love is good,
And woman grief’s best cure ; for length of days
Is not thy doom, but, even now, thy death
And ruthless destiny are on the wing.
Mark me—I come ambassadress from Jove.
The gods, he saith, resent it, but himself
More deeply than the rest, that thou retain’st
Amid thy fleet, through fury of revenge,
Unransom’d Hector. Be advised, accept
Hansom, and to his friends resign the dead.’
To whom Achilles, swiftest of the swift:
‘ Come then the ransomer, and take him hence ;
So be it, if such be the desire of Jove.’ ”
276
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
And now Iris, “ who to her feet ties whirlwinds,” is des¬
patched to Troy, to enjoin Priam to repair unto Acliaia’s fleet
with such gifts as may assuage Achilles. The old king sets
out on his journey, and, under the guidance of Hermes, who
meets him in shape of a “princely boy, now clothing first
his ruddy cheek with down, which is youth’s loveliest season,”
reaches in his car, with the glorious ransom-price of Hector,
the tent of the Destroyer. See it in Sotheby, who has a fine
eye for the picturesque :—
“ Then to the tent of great Achilles came,
Whose wider amplitude, and loftier frame,
To grace their king his Myrmidons had made,
With trunks of pine on pine in order laid,
And, from the marshes, for the shelt’ring roof,
Mow’d many a reed, and firmly rear’d aloof,
And compassing the court’s wide spreading bound,
Girt it with fence of thickest stakes around.
One bar, a pine, immense in size and weight,
From free intrusion fenced the guarded gate ;
Three Greeks alone, with all their strength amain,
Could draw it back, or forward force again ;
Achilles singly heaved it.—There the god
Gave Priam entrance to the chief’s abode.”
And will the wretched old man indeed venture into such a
presence ? Yes—and without fear. For he has yet a kingly
spirit—though, for his dear Hector’s sake, willing with his
hoary locks to sweep the dust. Hermes had told Priam from
Jove not to dread Achilles.
“ The Argicide shall guide, shall onward lead,
Till to Achilles’ presence thou proceed :
There boldly enter, nor Pelides dread,
That hero will not wound, but guard thy head.
For Peleus’ son, not senseless, rash, unjust,
But prompt to raise the suppliant from the dust.”
So Hermes spoke to Priam in his own palace; and now that
they have reached the tent of the Terrible, before reascending
the Olympian heights, he comforts him with the same assur¬
ance, bidding him enter, and seize fast the knees of Achilles,
and adjure the hero to compassionate him, by his aged sire,
by his beauteous mother, and his darling son.
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
277
We shall venture to give in our literal prose, from begin¬
ning to end, the whole of this immortal scene. It is mani¬
festly impossible for us to quote the poetical versions of the
Four. Suffice it to say, that Sotheby, in this severest trial of
skill and power, sustains his high character, and is inferior to
none of his rivals.
NORTH.
“ Right on to the tent march’d the old man
In which Achilles was sitting, beloved of Jove : in it himself
He found: but his companions were seated apart: these two
alone,
The hero Automedon, and Alcimus—a shoot of Mars,
Minister’d, standing near : for he had newly ceased from food,
Having eaten and drank : and the table still stood near :
The huge Priam having enter’d, escaped the notice of these, and
standing near,
With his hands Achilles’ knees he grasp’d, and kiss’d (those)
hands
Terrible, homicidal, which had slain so many of his sons.
As when an overwhelming calamity hath taken hold of a man,
who, in his own country,
Having slain a human being, hath come among another people,
To a rich man’s (house), amazement seizes those looking upon
him !
In like manner stood Achilles aghast, when beholding the godlike
Priam:
Aghast, too, stood the others,—gazing on each other.
But him Priam, supplicating, address’d :
‘ Think on thy father, oh, Achilles, like to the gods !
Who is of the same years as I, on the mournful threshold of
old age :
Him, peradventure, some neighbouring (rivals) dwelling around
him,
Are oppressing, nor is there one to avert evil and destruction :
Yet he, indeed, hearing that thou art alive,
Rejoices in his soul, and every day hopes
To see his beloved son return’d from Troy:
But I (am) thoroughly ill-fated, for I begat most valiant sons
In wide Troy—of them not one can I say to have been left.
Fifty they were to me, when the sons of the Greeks arrived :
Nineteen were from one womb,
But all the rest (my) concubines brought forth to me in the
palaces.
Of many of these did impetuous Mars unnerve the knees ;
But him who was my alone one, and defended my city and them,
278
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Him hast thou lately slain, while defending his native land,
—Hector: on his account now come I to the ships of the
Greeks,
To redeem him of thee, and bring an unbounded ransom.
But, oh ! Achilles, reverence the gods, and pity me,
Calling to mind your own father ! truly still more pitiable am I,
For I have endured what never did any other earth-inhabiting
mortal,
—To draw to my mouth the hand of the man that-slew-my-
children.’
Thus spoke he : and in him he stirr’d up the longing of grief
for his father,
And, having taken him by the hand, he gently push’d away the
old man.
Both call’d to remembrance (the past); the one, Hector the
manslayer
Lamented incessantly, prostrate at the feet of Achilles :
But Achilles bewail’d his own father, and, by turns,
Patroclus ; and their groans rose up throughout the house.
But after Achilles had had his full of bewailing,
And the longing for it had departed from his mind and from his
body,
Forthwith from his seat started he, and by the hand upraised the
old man,
Taking pity on his hoary head, and hoary beard ;
And, addressing him, spoke (these) wing’d words,—
‘ Ah, wretched one! many evils hast thou endured in thy mind.
How didst thou dare to come alone to the ships of the Greeks,
Into the presence of a man who thy many and brave
Sons slew ? Surely thou hast a heart of steel!
But come, sit down beside me on the seat; and our sorrows alto¬
gether
Let us allow to lie down in our minds—grieved though we be ;
For there is no profit in freezing lamentation.
Thus, then, have the gods spun the destiny of miserable mortals
To live mourning ; but they themselves are without cares.
In the threshold of Jove lie two casks
Of gifts which he gives, the one of evils, but the other of
blessings;
(He) on whom Jupiter, who delights in thunder, having mingled
(them), shall bestow (both),
At one time is in evil, at another in good :
(But) to whom he shall give of the bad, him hath he made subject
to reproach ;
Him ravenous misery persecutes on the gracious earth,
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
279
And he goes about, neither honour’d by gods nor mortals.
So, indeed, on Peleus did the gods bestow splendid gifts
From his birth : for he was distinguish’d among all men
For plenty and wealth, and ruled over the Myrmidons ;
And to him, though a mortal, they gave a goddess to wife :
Yet even on him hath God inflicted an evil, in that no
Offspring of sons has been born in his house, to rule after him,
But an only son hath he begot, destined-to-perish-untimely ; nor
him indeed
Do I cherish in his old age, since very far from my native land
Do I sit before Troy, saddening thee and thy children.
Thee, too, old man, have we heard, as once abounding in as much
riches
As Lesbos southward, the seat of Macar, contains within itself,
And Phrygia eastward, and the far-extended Hellespont—
All these, old man, they say, didst thou surpass in riches and in
sons.
But from the time when the celestials have inflicted on thee this
calamity,
Battles and man-slayings have continually beset thy city.
Endure, nor unceasingly mourn in thine heart,
For nothing will it profit thee to be sad for thy son,
For thou shalt not raise him up again, before some new evil shalt
thou suffer.’
Him then answer’d the old man, the godlike Priam,—
‘ Do not at all make-me-to-sit-down on a seat, Jove-nourish’d one,
in so long as Hector
Lies uncared for (unburied) in the tents, but quick as possible
Bansom’d-restore him, that with (these) eyes I may behold him ;
and do thou receive the ransom
Magnificent, which we bring to thee: and mayst thou enjoy it,
and return
To thy fatherland, since thou hast first permitted me,
Myself, both to live and to look upon the light of the sun.’
Him the swift-footed Achilles, sternly-eyeing, address’d,—
‘ Provoke me no more, old man ; I myself purpose,
Ransom’d-to-restore Hector: from Jove to me came as a mes¬
senger
The mother who bore me, the daughter of the sea-dwelling old
man ;
But, Priam, I know thee in my mind, nor deceivest thou me,
In that some god hath conducted thee to the swift ships of the
Greeks ;
For no mortal might dare to enter, not even though very youth-
vigorous,
280
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
The camp ; since neither could-he-escape-the-notice-of the guards,
nor the bars
Of our gates easily unbolt.
Therefore, no more rouse thou my soul in (its) sorrows,
Lest thee, old man, even thee I endure not in the camp,
Suppliant though thou be, and offend against the behests of Jove.’
Thus spoke he : the old man fear’d, and obey’d the command.
But the son of Peleus from the house like a lion sprang forth ;
Not alone : along with him two attendants follow’d,
The hero Automedon, and Alcimus, whom chiefly indeed
Of his companions Achilles honour’d, since Patroclus was now
dead,—•
They then from the yoke unloosed the horses and mules,
And introduced the summoning herald 1 of the old man,
And placed him on a seat: from the beautifully-polish’d car
They took the unbounded ransom of Hector’s head.
But two robes they left, and a fine-woven tunic,
That covering the corpse, he (Priam) might give it to be carried
home.
Calling to him his maid-servants, he order’d them to wash, and to
anoint all around
(The corpse)—taking it apart, so that Priam might not behold
his son,
Lest he should not in his sorrowing heart restrain his anger
When looking on his son, and rouse up the heart (wrath) of
Achilles
To slay him, and violate the behests of Jove.
It, when the hand-maidens had wash’d, and anointed with oil,
Around it they cast the beautiful mantle and the tunic,
And Achilles himself having lifted up, placed it in the couch,
And along with him his attendants raised it up into the beauti¬
fully-polished car.
Then groan’d he, calling-by-name on his beloved friend,'—
‘ Be not angry with me, Patroclus, if perchance thou mayst hear,
Even in Ades, that ransom’d-I-have-restored the illustrious Hector
To his father ; since no unbeseeming ransom hath he given,
Of which I verily on thee will bestow as much as is befitting.’
He said, and to his tent return’d the illustrious Achilles,
And sat down on his splendidly-Dsedalian reclining-chair, from
which he had uprisen,
From the opposite wall, and to Priam these words address’d,—
1 Priam, still distrusted,
294
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
and that the impatience of the old king threatened to deprive
him of all opportunity of doing gracefully what he could not
he expected to do willingly .” He was about to do it willingly ;
for Thetis had told him, that such was the will of Jove. But
a sudden flash of memory came across him—and he said,
u No more arouse thou my soul in its sorrows.” Achilles, all
his life long—at least all through the Iliad— took his own way
in all things ; and he could not bear to be baffled in his own
mode of mercy, even by the unhappy father of the prince
whose body he was about—ransomed—to restore.
MHNJN Yl'/iXvtiabiu ’A%i\yo;.
But an end to all criticism—alike of others and our own—
on the immortal interview. That was the last cloud that
passed across the countenance of Achilles. u The son of
Peleus from the house (tent) like a lion sprung forth.” Yes,
like a lion—though it was to order in the herald—“ to take
from the beautifully-polished car the unbounded ransom of
Hector’s head”—to enjoin the women to wash the corpse apart
from Priam, that the passionate old man might not, by giving
sudden vent to his agony, provoke him (Achilles, who knew well
his own Wrath) “ to slay the king, and violate the behests of
Jove”—and to lift it with his own hands up upon the bier on
the car that was to convey it to Troy. In the tenderest offices
of humanity to the living and to the dead, aware of the danger
of his own fiery spirit! In self-knowledge, if not in self-con¬
trol—a philosopher—and a hero.
MHNIN uudt, 0-«, UtiXyiuz'biu ’ A%iXyo;.
That Wrath has now blazed its last, yet “ even in its ashes
live its wonted fires;” and he asks forgiveness of Patroclus,
that even now, and thus, has been quenched his Revenge.
u But large, 0 beloved Shade! hath been the ransom—nor
shalt thou not receive thereof thy due even in Hades.” Now
all in the Tent shall be perfect peace. Priam must partake
of the repast. Famished is the Woe-begone, but he must eat
and drink—even as Niobe did in the midst of all her dead
children. “ Then indeed did the Dardanian chief gaze-with-
admiration on Achilles, how large, and what kind he was
(his stature and beauty); for he seemed in presence like the
gods : And Achilles gazed with admiration on the Dardanian
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
295
Priam, contemplating his benevolent countenance, and listen¬
ing to his words!” They retire to sleep—Priam on a couch
graciously provided for him by the “ great lord"’’ in a place
safe from all intrusion of the Greeks, that he may take his
departure—without an eye to see him—early in the morning,
with the body of his son, to Troy; Achilles in the bosom of
Briseis, wherein not often will the hero lay his head,—for we
remember the dying words of Hector,
“ Phoebus and Paris shall avenge mv fate,
And stretch thee here, before the Scsean gate.”
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
CRITIQUE VI.-THE ODYSSEY.
[JANUARY 1834 ]
The Iliad was written by Homer. Will Wolf and Knight tell
ns how it happened that all the heroic strains about the
war before Troy, poured forth, as they opine, by many bards,
regarded but one period of the siege? By what divine
felicity was it that all those sons of song, though apart in
time and place, united in chanting the wrath of Achilles?
The poem is one—like a great wood, whose simultaneous
growth overspreads a mountain. Indeed, one mighty poem,
in process of time, moulded into form out of separate frag¬
ments, composed by a brotherhood of bards—not even coeval
—may be safely pronounced an impossibility in nature.
Achilles was not the son of many sires ; nor was the part
he played written for him by a succession of “ eminent
hands,” all striving to find fit work for their common hero.
He is not a creature of collected traditions. He stands there
—a single conception—in character and in achievement; his
absence is felt like that of a thunder-cloud withdrawn be¬
hind a hill, leaving the air still sultry; his presence is as
the lightning in sudden illumination glorifying the whole
field of battle. Kill, bury, and forget him, and the Iliad is
no more an Epic.
No two men at the same time ever yet saw a ghost; be¬
cause a ghost is an Eidolon begotten by the imagination on
the air of night, or some night-like day, and is visible but to
his own frightened father. Now, Achilles was an Apparition;
and his seer was a blind old man, with a front like Jove’s, and
a forehead like Olympus. 11 All power was given him in that
dreadful trance; ” and Beauty and Terror accompanied the
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
297
Destroyer. He haunted Homer, who no longer knew that he
had himself created the sublimest of all Phantoms. But the
Muse gave the maker command over his creature ; and, at the
waving of his hand, the imaginary Goddess-born came and
went obedient, more magnificent than any shadowy form that
at the bidding of sunlight stalks along mountains into an
abysm of clouds.
The Odyssey—also and likewise—was written by Homer,
and the proof lies all in one word—Ulysses. There he is
—the self-same being as in the Iliad, and the birth of one
brain. Had Homer died the day he said, “ And thus they
celebrated the obsequies of Hector the Tamer-of-Iiorses,”
before no mortal eye would have stood on the threshold of his
own hall, pouring out from his quiver all the arrows at his feet,
that vision of a ragged beggar, suddenly transfigured into an
Avenger more glorious far than Apollo's self transfixing the
Python,—for Lartiades stretched along his ancestral floor the
whole serpent brood.
The opening of the Iliad is very simple—and so is the
opening of the Odyssey ; and both openings are, you will
agree with us in thinking, sublime. In the one you are
brought in a moment into the midst of heaven-sent death
threatening the annihilation of a whole host; and, in pacify¬
ing Apollo, Agamemnon incenses Achilles, whose wrath
lowers calamity almost as fatal as the visitation of the
Plague. Men's minds are troubled—there is debate of doom
in Heaven—nation is enraged against nation—and each trusts
to its auxiliar gods. In the other there is no din below—the
earth is silent—and you hear not the sea. Corn grows where
Troy-Town stood—and you feel that Achilles is dust. All
the chiefs who fought there and fell not, as Sotheby solemnly
says—
“ At home once more
Dwell free from battle and the ocean roar ”—
and there is an almost melancholy peace. There is myste¬
rious mention of shipwreck on account of sin—and one guilt¬
less and great Survivor is spoken of and then named—who
is to take the place in our imaginations of all the other heroes
living or dead—affectingly named—for he has been and is to
be a Sufferer — u All but Ulysses ! ” And shall the Celestial
Synod care for that One Man! Ay, Minerva says to Jove,
298
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
“ With bosom anguisli-rent I view
Ulysses, hapless chief! who from his friends
Remote, affliction hath long time endured
In yonder woodland isle, the central boss
Of ocean. That retreat a Goddess holds,
Daughter of sapient Atlas, who the abyss
Knows to its bottom, and the pillars high
Himself upbears which separate Earth from Heaven.
His daughter there the sorrowing chief reclaims,
And ever with smooth spirit, insidious seeks
To wean his heart from Ithaca, meantime
Ulysses, happy might he but behold
The smoke ascending from his native land,
Death covets. Canst thou not, Olympian Jove,
At last relent '( Hath not Ulysses oft
With victims slain amid Achaia’s fleet
Thee gratified, while yet at Troy he fought 1
How, therefore, hath he thus incensed thee, J ove ? ”
At once we love the Man of whom the Muse is to sing—
longing for his home, his wife, and liis son—and pitied at
last by Jove, at the intercession of Minerva, because of his
piety. That she should fly to Ithaca, and that Hermes should
wing his way to the Isle of Secresy—on behalf of Ulysses—
seems demanded of the justice of heaven. And simple as
all this is—we said it was sublime—for our sympathies are
already awakened for
“ A good man struggling with the storms of fate.”
Ulysses longs for Ithaca—but knows not what may have
passed, or may be passing there—if Penelope and Telemachus
be alive or dead. All we are told is, that year after year he
has been lamenting for his native Isle—sighing for a sight of
its ascending smoke, ere he dies—unforgetful of Ithaca even
in Calypso’s arms.
How finely Sotheby has given Minerva’s 11 alighting,” and
the sudden showing of the scene—the first sight of which
reveals to us all the lawless life of the Suitors, and the evils
to which the kingless Island has been so long a prey 1 We
are at once in the heart of it all—and the thought comes
across us in the midst of the revelry, u if Ulysses were
here ! ”
“ Then on her feet her golden sandals laced,
With bright ambrosial wings divinely graced,
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
299
Wings that o’er earth and sea the Goddess bear
And challenge in their speed the viewless air—
Then grasp’d her brass-edged lance, of matchless strength,
Vast, massive, ponderous, whose far-shadowing length,
When the mail’d Goddess in her fury burns,
Rank after rank heroic chiefs o’erturns.
Then downward flew from steep Olympus’ height,
And on Ulysses’ island deign’d alight,
And at the threshold of his portal staid
Beneath the vestibule’s protecting shade :
Held in her grasp the spear, and took her stand
Like Mentes, leader of the Taphian band :
There found the suitors festively array’d,
Who, gay, at dice before the palace play’d,
Their seats on hides of many a numerous herd,
Slain at the dictates of their haughty word :
Heralds, and minist’ring menials stood around,
Some who with temper’d wine their goblets crown’d,
With many a porous sponge some cleansed the board,
And with carved meat their proffer’d chargers stored.
Her first the young Telemachus perceived,
Who ’mid the wooers sat, and inly grieved,
Bright picturing in his mind, how, home again,
His sire would put to flight the wassail train,
Resume his honours, and ancestral right,
And, musing thus, the Goddess caught his sight.
Forward he sprung, in wrath, that nigh their feast
A stranger stood, an uninvited guest:
Then clasp’d her hand, received the brazen spear,
And pour’d his welcome in her gladden’d ear :
‘ Hail ! stranger—welcome—now the banquet share,
Then, feasted, wherefore here—thy wish declare.’
He spake—and at the word, the blue-eyed Maid
Where the prince led the way not loth obey’d.
Now, ’neath his dome, within the channel'd height
Of a vast column, towering on the sight,
He fix’d the lance, where, ranged in order, stood
Ulysses’ war-spears, like an iron wood :
Then, on a stately seat the Goddess placed,
With linen spread, and with a footstool graced,
And near it drew his own resplendent throne,
At distance from the suitors placed alone,
Lest the contemptuous rioters molest,
And vex with noise and insolence the guest,
Nor yield him peaceful leisure to inquire,
And hold free commune of his long-lost sire.
300 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
From a gold ewer, a maid, their hands to lave,
Pour’d in a silver bowl the cleansing wave,
And a bright table brought, where, largely spread,
The sage dispenseress heap’d the food and bread.
The sewer with flesh, all kinds, the plates supplied,
And golden goblets placed each guest beside,
Which oft with wine the busy herald crown’d ;
Then, rushing in, the suitors gather’d round,
And on their separate seats and thrones of state,
Where heralds wash’d their hands, in order sate :
The attendant maids in baskets piled their bread,
On the carved dainties as the feasters fed;
And youths oft crown’d their goblets o’er and o’er,
Till thirst and hunger, satiate, sought no more ;
Then other joys inflamed their keen desire,
The song and dance, that charm the festive choir.
The herald gave to the reluctant hand
Of Phemius, leader of the minstrel band,
A silver lyre. By force the bard obey’d,
And, preluding the song, the measure play’d.”
Telemachus is no favourite with many critics. But we
hope you admire and love the Princely Boy—for he was
assuredly a great favourite with Homer. So well did Homer
know his worth, that he is at no great pains to describe his
character. He puts him, however, into some situations that
serve to show what is in him—and he behaves, we think, like
heir-apparent to the throne. Here he allows the dicers to
shake their elbows undisturbed—in their pastimes perhaps
playing for the Queen. But he is picturing in his mind
another kind of game—in which his father will play the Lion,
and he the Lion’s Whelp. Mentes, the leader of the Taphian
Band, though no vulgar stranger, is disregarded by the
Suitors, heralds, and menials — but how courteous is the
Prince! “Manners maketh the man,” and Telemachus, we
feel, will be a hero. He takes not his guest into some nook
or corner, to question him of his Sire—but places him on a
stately seat, with a footstool, “ and near it drew his own re¬
splendent throne.” Let all the Suitors behold them two in
converse—nor dare to intrude upon their privacy—apart but
open — and confidential during the measure preluding the
Poet-Laureate’s song. Minerva must have been pleased with
such graceful and dignified reception—and how wisely does
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
301
slie insinuate into liis heart, by half-truth and half-fable,
hopes even of his sire's return ! True that Telemachus speaks
like one that will not be comforted; but his looks belie his
words, for we see his face brightening as he listens to the
stranger’s counsel. Who does not see that he believes his
father will return, as Minerva, after foretelling that return,
says,
“ But this I urge—now truly this declare,
Art thou, for such thou seem’st, Ulysses’ heir 1
Thy features such, thy eyes so beaming bright,
Such as the chief oft tower’d before my sight,
Ere with their bravest heroes, Argos’ boast,
The Warrior moor’d his fleet on Phrygia’s coast.”
Pallas was not a goddess addicted to the complimentary—
and she loved Ulysses too well to be easily satisfied with his
son. But she was satisfied with his beaming eyes—nor at all
dissatisfied with his answer about his mother, though it has
given serious offence in certain quarters, not in the contem¬
plation of Telemachus. The Prince said, “ my mother assures
me that I am the son of Ulysses—but I know it not.” In
this, says Pope, “ there seems something very shocking; ”
but as Minerva approved of it, and said cheeringly, “ heaven
shall one day grace thee, not nameless, nor of a nameless race,.
sprung from Penelope,” there can be no doubt that it was
the answer usually returned to such a question, in that simple
age, a sort of apothegm, that conveyed no imputation on
any mother’s fidelity to her husband, but, on the contrary,
entire reliance on every mother’s truth. That Telemachus in
this conversation expresses no tenderness for his mother, has
been foolishly said to show a want of due filial affection. But
he knew she was pretty well, up-stairs—while he feared his
father was dead or in misery—and that was the thought that
wrung his heart. It would have been exceedingly silly to
begin puling about Penelope to a person who was not much
troubling his head about her—but who had paid her, never¬
theless, a high and just compliment. There can be no doubt
that he loved and honoured her—but he was now in his
twentieth year—and at that age sons are shy of seeming before
strangers too fond of their mothers—nay even before their
mothers themselves—especially when surrounded by suitors.
But hear him on his father :—
302 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
“ Once I had hope while here my sire remain’d,
That wealth and virtue had our house sustain’d ;
But heaven, devising ill, not' this design’d,
And left his fate obscurest, ’mid mankind ;
Nor could his death so sharply have impress’d
The sting of sorrow in my filial breast,
If, with his brave compeers, in Phrygia slain,
Or, ’mid his friends from Troy return’d again.
Then all the Greeks had raised his funeral mound,
And by his father’s fame the son renown’d.
But him the Harpies from the light of day
Unknown, unseen, unheard, have swept away.”
The noble boy listens with delight to the recital of his
Father’s prowess, and the eagerness with which he embraces
the advice of Mentes to sail to Pylos, and travel thence to
Lacedemon, to inquire if Nestor or Menelaus can give him
any tidings of his lot, gives assurance not only of a confiding
and an affectionate, but of an adventurous and heroic spirit.
He weeps to emulate Orestes, who had so nobly avenged his
murdered Sire; and on the stranger suddenly vanishing, in
awe and wonder he feels that his guest was a god, while
heroic fire is more strongly kindled in his heart. Is not this
a picture—in a few bold bright strokes—of the characteristic
virtues of youth ? What is wanting here that should have
been seen in the son of Ulysses ?
But where is Penelope ? Guess. Walking with her maids
of honour on the beach, eyeing the sea for a sail, or blindly
listening to the idle dash of waves ? No—guess again. Sit¬
ting among the rocks, in some small secret glen, wdiere twenty
years ago she used to take an evening walk with Ulysses ?
No. Wandering sad and slow in the woods once wont to
echo to that hunter’s horn—while she, fair as Diana,
“ A sylvan huntress by his side,
Pursued the flying deer ” ?
*
Not now. In her chamber weaving that famous web ? That
artifice has been detected, and the shuttle is still. Sunk in
stupor there, or aimlessly employing her hands on embroi¬
dery in the listlessness of a long despair? Not far off the
truth—yet hardly are you Homer. She is in her chamber—
but not in stupor nor despair—her senses are all wide-awake—
her ear has caught the measure wild of the aged harper—into
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303
her soul sinks the strain that sings of the return of the chiefs
on the downfall of Troy ! That mournful inspiration is more
than she can bear; the music is but an insupportable memory
of her husband—a dirge for the dead. She fears not the face
of the Suitors in their feasting—and appears before us in all
the tenderness, the affection, and the dignity of a wife, a
mother, and a queen.
“ The Prince the wooers sought, who, seated, hung
In silent rapture as the minstrel sung,
Sung the chiefs’ sad return, when to and fro,
By Pallas’ will, they sail’d from Troy’s o’erthrow.
While thus he sung, Icarius’ daughter heard,
Lone in her upper room, his chanted word :
Down stepp’d, and where she moved, attendant came
Two faithful damsels, on their royal dame.
Onward she went, and nigh the revel throng,
Now hush’d to silence by the minstrel’s song,
Beneath her lofty palace porch reclined,
Hid her fair brow the fine-wove veil behind,
And, as on either side a maiden stood,
Wept, and the bard address’d in mournful mood :
‘ Bard, thy sweet touch can temper to the lyre
All deeds of men or gods that bards inspire.
Sing thou of these, and so enchant the ear,
That e’en these feasters may in silence hear.
But cease that strain which bids my sorrow flow,
Which searches every spring that feeds my woe,
And racks keen memory for that godlike chief
Whose fame through Greece but echoes back my grief.’
‘My mother ! why displeased V the Prince rejoin’d,
‘ Leave to the bard free mastery of his mind.
’Tis not the minstrel, ’tis the will of Jove
That breathes the inspiration from above—
Then blame not Phemius, whose recording lay
Mourns their sad fate who steer’d from Troy their way.
More grateful far their song which all admire
When novelty attunes the awaken’d lyre.
Brace thou thy mind to hear : for not alone
Ulysses strays to Ithaca unknown,
But many a Grecian strews the Trojan plain,
And many a chief ne’er hails his hearth again.
But thou return, thy household cares resume,
Look to thy maids, the spindle, and the loom :
To men, as fit, discourse with men resign,
And—where I rule— that office chiefly mine.’
304
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Penelope, astonish’d, back return'd.
Nor his wise counsel negligently spurn’d,
Went with her maids, her loved Ulysses wept,
Till the tired mourner, soothed by Pallas, slept.”
Music—poetry—love—grief—comfort—repose of passion
—and to the afflicted heaven-sent sleep not unvisited, let us
hope, by soothing dreams ! The song sung to the harp did
of itself still the souls of the Suitors ; for though fit for mur¬
ders, stratagems, and plots, they were high-born men—and
had they fought at Ilium, not a few of them would have been
heroes. A lawless and despotic life had not wholly quenched
their hereditary fire—and the Ithacenes were by nature a noble
race. Laertes had been a warrior in his youth—in his prime
of manhood a king. But old age had subdued the regal spirit
—and where and what is he now ? In the palace, ’tis affect-
in gly said,
“ he now resides,
But in his fields afar his misery hides,
With one who serves his board, an aged dame,
While sore fatigue comes o’er his toil-worn frame,
When, from slow-creeping through his vineyard rows,
The old man seeks his dwelling’s still repose.”
His wife, too, had died of “ love and longings infinite,” and
the suitors had long had their sway. Dulichium, Samos, and
Zacinthus sent their princes—accomplished men many of
them—nor unworthy altogether of a widow's love. Fierce as
fire, and as bright, is Antinous—and Eurymachus, with pas¬
sion not less strong but more controllable, is a chief that might
prevail on one less tender and true than Penelope to change
the garments of grief for the saffron robe of joy. The de-
vourers of that widow’s house were not dancing bears, but
leaping leopards—they knew how to fawn—and hoped to
“ hold her with their glittering eyes ” till she became a prey.
Descending in stately sorrow the flight of steps leading down
to the great hall, in hushed admiration they beheld the Queen.
No interruption is attempted of her pathetic address to the
Bard—no insult, while she is present, to her Son. Their
bad nature is rebuked and abashed by the Matron still
beautiful in her fidelity to her godlike Lord—their better
nature feels how “awful goodness is,” “Virtue in her own
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
305
shape how lovely/’—conjugal, maternal, and filial love Lave
their hour of triumph—and on the cheek of old Phemius
bending over his silent harp, may be seen the heart-sprung
tear.
And is there any harshness—as has been often said—in the
behaviour of Telemachus ? None. His soul was elate. He
had sought the Suitors, the moment after having held converse
with a Divinity—and his Hope hushed, impatiently, but not
unkindly, his mother’s fears. Now he felt himself a man,
commissioned by heaven for a holy quest. He would fain
that the Bard had prolonged his Lay^-for his inspiration too
was from the will of Jove. Ulysses is not dead, he is but a
wanderer—and that harp shall ring through all its chords
congratulation on the King’s return. His looks and his tones
reconciled his mother’s heart to all his words—astonished,
she obeyed the child whom till that hour she had commanded ;
and if her high heart was satisfied, who, after the lapse of
three thousand years, shall be offended with her noble progeny
for the first expansion of his pride in the consciousness of
being about to enter on a destiny that) ere another moon had
waned, was to be gloriously fulfilled in a shower of blood !
See and hear him among the Suitors now—passive no more,
but flashing far-sighted scorn. Their outrages break out
again on the disappearance of Penelope—‘but he beards them
all. u Banquet in peace—cease your brawls, listen to Phemius,
‘ this gifted minstrel’s heaven-attemper’d song.’ To-morrow
meet me in council—and I will dismiss you to your own
homes. If thither you go not at my command, I warn you
that vengeance is preparing against you in heaven, and that
no hand will be outstretched to save you when its hour is
come. You are all doomed to die ! ” They too are astonished
—gnaw their mute lips, and are sore afraid. But there is
not a coward among them—and they recover courage to gibe
and jeer—yet are they tamed—and their eloquence wants fire.
Antinous himself, even in the war of words, is now no match
for Telemachus. The fearless Youth, in the joy of hope, lies
to his insulter. He believes his father will return—for he
trusts to the “ veiled divinity,” but he calls her by the feigned
name of the feigned Taphian chief, and inly exulting, says,
“ My sire will return no more.” The close of the scene is as
perfect as its opening and its progress; and how delightful to
VOL. VIII. u
306
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
ns of these artificial and civilised days is the picture of the
domestic life of the simple heroic age!—
“ Now in sweet interchange of song and dance,
The suitors revell’d till eve’s swift advance,
Then, tired with song and dance, at daylight’s close
Each in his separate mansion sought repose.
The Prince departing, went, where tower’d in sight
Of that vast hall, his roof’s conspicuous height,
And Euryclea, child of Ops, upbore
In either hand a torch his step before.
Her, erst Laertes bought, a blooming slave,
And for her purchase twenty oxen gave :
Like his chaste wife revered her, but suppress’d
Each wish that might his household peace molest.
She lit his way, she watch’d his lightest word,
And more than all his females loved her lord ;
Loved like a son, and more and more endear’d,
Hung o’er the youth by her from childhood rear’d.
The Prince the door unclosed, and sought his rest,
And loosed the fine-wove tunic from his breast,
And gave it to his nurse, whose careful hand
Hung nigh his couch its nicely-folded band.
She onward passing where the youth reposed,
Drawn by a silver ring, the portal closed,
With bolt and brace secured :—the Prince, there laid
On the smooth couch with finest wool array’d,
Throughout the night with deep-revolving mind
Ponder’d the course that Pallas had enjoin’d.”
One great purpose nobly conceived changes the whole
character, by showing the whole of life under a new aspect.
Say, rather, it brings out the character, and makes the man
feel and know what he is, as he firmly plants his foot on the
threshold of his own house, which a high destiny calls on
him to leave, and to go forth in power on a career that
must have a glorious end. Look on the Telemachus of the
Mom of Hope. Is he not
u attired
With sudden brightness like a morn inspired” ?
Homer rejoices to look on him—he lavishes beauty on his
head; but not from his own hands—the glory there is shed
by Pallas. It is an emanation from the young hero’s own
awakened heart. So Ulysses looked, when, but a few years
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
307
older, lie set sail for Troy. How his nurse must have gazed
on him going forth in the morning sun—Euryclea, whom his
grandfather purchased when a virgin for twenty oxen, but
respected her virginity from fear of his wife. She nursed, too,
Ulysses ; yet never loved she him so dearly as Telemachus,
—for love descends, and settles on its latest, its last object—
soft as snow and sweet as light—accumulated and accumulat¬
ing there till the eyes wax dim and the heart scarcely beats
—at the last gasp of life. His nurse loved him more than did
even his own mother ; for his own mother was a Queen, and
his nurse was a slave. Penelope had been lamenting for
twenty years her absent, or her lost lord—and the stream of
sorrow kept flowing on from the fountain of love, that needed
not to be fed—inexhaustible in a woman’s heart as the sea.
There was an affection, holiest of the holy, which she could
not transfer but to the assured place of his lifeless rest. It
had imagined a hundred graves for her Ulysses—it had been
haunted far oftener by his ghost. But his ship too had often
sailed through her dreams—and often had sleep laid her in
her hero’s bosom. The face, the form of her son, had a thou¬
sand times troubled her—so like those of him who was not—
or was somewhere, known but to the Ruler of the Skies. By
fits and starts to her must her Telemachus have been all in
all. But she had dignities to guard, and indignities to endure,
and duties to perform, and suits to repel, and temptations
to resist, and fears to banish, and hopes to bring from afar—
and all because she was faithful to the husband of her youth
—to him for whose sake she had covered her face with her
veil, and to whom she had said in a sweet low voice, when
her father Icarius asked her would she go or stay—“ I go to
Ithaca, Ulysses, with Thee ! ” But Euryclea was, as you
know, a mere aged slave. She may have had some swineherd
groom for a husband, half a century ago, and a swarm of chil¬
dren ; but we hear nothing of them—only of two sons of hers
do we hear—and they are, Ulysses and Telemachus. Perhaps
she once loved Laertes, when they were in their prime—
she in the bloom of purchase—and from fear an unenjoyed
handmaid that decked the nuptial couch. Both old now, and
weak, and miserable—but she the happier far, because repin¬
ing not now very painfully even for Ulysses, and having no
care—no love—nothing to live for—but that bright Boy
308
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
climbing up to manhood, and now standing majestically as on
a hill-top between her and the sky. She the slave belonged
to him, Prince Telemachus; but he belonged to her, Nurse
Euryclea; and now that he is about to sail in search of his
Father, it is to her he confides the secret—for in that still,
simple, sworn heart of hers he knows it will lie buried beneath
a weight bf wishes for his safe return, nor be confided even to
the air, that might repeat the whisper, if one word of it were
joined with the name of her Telemachus even in her prayers.
Twelve days is a long time to keep a secret—in fear and
trembling too; but Euryclea kept it, and would have kept
it against all instruments of torture angrily seeking to tug it
out of her heart. Her trustful silence was proof alike against
fear and joy. Think for a moment—but no more now—of her
discovery of the scar, and whose feet they were that it was
' at last given her in that bath to embrace !
But here is Telemachus walking to the Council in the light,
as we said, of the Morn of Hope *-
“ Ulysses’ son, when first Aurora spread
O’er earth her roseate splendour, left his bed :
Athwart his shoulders his sharp falchion braced,
On his fair feet his radiant sandals laced ;
And like a god from his ancestral hall
Went forth, and bade the herald’s loud-voiced call
Summon the chiefs to council: they obey’d,
Nor the long summons of the Prince delay’d.
The Prince, when all were met at his command,
Went with a brazen spear that arm’d his hand,
And two fleet faithful dogs : as on he pass’d
Pound him celestial glory Pallas cast.
Awed to mute wonder through the admiring throng
The youth divinely graced thus stepp’d along,
Then ’mid the yielding elders pass’d alone,
And sat unquestion’d on his father’s throne.”
Nothing can be more finely illustrative of the character in
the first book shown to belong to Telemachus, than his whole
conduct during the council that is held in the second ; yet
his speeches, as they are reported by Homer, have not
escaped criticism. It was, certainly, an admirable first
appearance. Till now, no council had been called in Ithaca
since the departure of Ulysses. It must have been rather
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
309
a formidable tiling for so young a person to rise up and
arraign the Suitors before the peers. Telemachus does not
rise till old iEgyptius asks by whom the council had been
summoned; and then he indeed does rise, and majestically,
and answers—“ Behold him who convened the council—I am
he ! ” We have heard it said by an apostate Tory, now fallen
from Whig into Radical, that his speech has no bones. But
no speech had ever a more pithy spine. Only its spine is
straight, and the speech itself clothed with flesh-and-blood
life. Bones are only observable in distortion or the rickets—
but deformity is seldom strength—abrupt, awkward, angular
osseous projections do not constitute a speech, but a skeleton.
What had he to, prove? Nothing. They knew all it was
possible he could have to say; but he was desirous to ascer¬
tain if they, the peers, were insensible to shame—tongue-
and-hand-tied—that is, gagged and manacled by fear. Was
the house swamped ? Or basely waiting to see who should
be at the Head of Affairs ? He, in a few touching words,
reminds them of his noble father, who once governed them
all, even as a father his children ; he speaks of the imminent
ruin of his house, and of his mother’s persecution by the
Suitors, which he calls 11 a more alarming ill ” than the loss of
his father; for were the palace freed, and the island under
law, he might, without offence to nature, weep for Ulysses no
more, and be indeed happy as a king. We say so—not Tele¬
machus. But there has been a conspiracy among critics to
accuse and convict the young prince of selfishness, and want
or weakness of natural affection ; and as a painful proof of
their charge, they point to this passage, of which the good
sense, say we, is as conspicuous as the right feeling—and
altogether worthy the heir-apparent. There is no exaggera¬
tion of any grief or grievance, and he speaks fervently the
simple truth. He had never seen his father. His feelings
were those of love, and honour, and reverence, and awe,
towards a being whom his heart and imagination created and
called Father—created, if we may say so, of attributes fur¬
nished to fancy by all the voices of the Isle that sighed for
Ulysses. 'Yet him fain would he seek over land and sea—
and for his sake was he now sounding the souls of the
Peers in Council to ascertain if any generous sentiments slept
there, that might be awakened by his return, and rise up to
310
ESSAYS CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
the rescue. Cowper here is very Homeric—far more so than
Sotheby.
“ ‘ Resent, yourselves, this outrage ; dread the blame
Which else ye must incur from every state
Around us, and the anger of the gods,
Lest they impute these impious deeds to you.
I next adjure you by Olympic Jove,
By Themis, who convenes and who dissolves
All councils, that ye interpose, my friends !
To check them, and afford to my distress
A solitary and a silent home.
But if Ulysses, my illustrious sire,
Hath injured any noble Grecian here,
Whose wrongs ye purpose to avenge on me,
Then aid them openly; for better far,
Were my condition, if yourselves consumed
My revenue ; ye should compensate soon
My sufferings at your hands ; for my complaints
Should rouse all Ithaca to my redress,
Nor cease till I were satisfied for all;
But now, conniving at the wrong, ye pierce
My soul with anguish not to be endured !’
He spoke impassion’d, and to earth cast down
His sceptre weeping.”
His tears were tears of disappointment, shame, indignation
and rage. He had shown he did not fear the suitors — while
he bitterly confessed he had not power to rid his house of
them, or put them all to death. But he called on the Council
to raise up all Ithaca to redress his wrongs—they sat mute—
and therefore he dashed down his sceptre, and wept. And
what ensued ? u Pity at that sight seized all the people.”
But what is the use of pity ? To dry a maiden’s tears. And
who were the people? Not knowing, we cannot say ; but we
suppose the Suitors, natives and aliens, had their adherents
in that assemblage : a course of connivance generates falsehood
and fear—kills loyalty and patriotism—deadens, if it does not
destroy, all sense of justice—bends the necks of nobles as if
they were serfs or villains—and
“ Slips the slave’s collar on, and snaps the lock.”
Up starts Antinous to answer him whom he scornfully calls
“ high-sounding orator,” and we admire his speech. In it he
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
311
narrates the pious fraud of Penelope in weaving and unweav¬
ing the famous web, a funeral robe—so feigned she—for the
ancient Laertes—and we can imagine that Telemachus listened
with a smile. Nor displeased could he have been to hear even
from such lips such a character of his mother.
“ Studious alone to merit praise for arts
By Pallas given her largely : matchless skill
To weave the splendid web ; sagacious thought;
And shrewdness such as never fame ascribed
To any beauteous Greek of ancient days,
Tyro, Mycene, or Alcmena loved
By Jove himself, all whom the accomplish’d Queen
Transcends in knowledge, ignorant alone,
That, woo’d long time, she should at last be won ! ”
Noble English of noble Greek, dear Cowper; and it must
have been difficult for Telemachus, hearing such eulogium, to
hate Antinous with all his heart—so filial was it as well as
heroic—nor yet implacable, had the Suitors ceased to devour
his house. He would have forgiven them even at the eleventh
hour ; but there was one—Penelope’s own dear Dread—inaces-
sible to forgiveness ; and though he was now far-off—not long
the time till he was to be near —and then —but now the Prince
hears Antinous tell him, that either his mother must be dis¬
missed from the palace and forced to w T ed, or that they will
all continue to banquet at his cost; and if you are not satis¬
fied with the burst of filial affection that glows through his
righteous rage, and makes it more withering in its intensity,
you must look for nature and the truth of nature where you
choose, but can never hope to find them in Homer.
The reply of Telemachus electrified even that abject assem¬
bly, and astounded the profligates who had made it base.
But it did more than move the timid and the tyrannical—it
stirred the sky and was heard by Jove. We know not how
the passage may look in prose, but in the Greek it is as por¬
tentous poetry as ever flashed luridly from a gloomy shrine.
CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
{Literally, and line for line with the Original.)
“Thus spoke Telemachus : but to him, the far-seeing Jupiter two
eagles
Sent-on from aloft, to fly from the summit of a mountain.
312
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
They for a while skimm’d along with the blast of the wind,
Abreast of each other, outstretch’d on wing :
But when they indeed came to the midst of the many-voiced
7 ro\v(pT]finv) assembly,
There sweeping round they shook their numerous plumes,
And gazed on the heads of all, and look’d destruction :
And with their talons having lacerated-their-own jaws, and their
necks around,
They rush’d to the right through (over) their {thepeople of Ithaca's)
houses and city.
They (the people) were-stunn’d-with- amazement at the birds, as
they gazed with their eyes,
And they ponder’d in their hearts, what this was to bring-about.
Them, however, address’d the venerable hero Halitherses
Mastorides, who alone excell’d his years-mates
In the knowledge of birds (angaries), and in interpreting porten¬
tous omens,
He, judging wisely, harangued and thus address’d them :
4 Listen to me verily, ye people-of-Ithaca, in what I shall say :
The wooers above-all I single-out in this my speech,
Since for them great destruction is revolving : Ulysses not
Long apart from his friends shall be, but even now somewhere
Near at hand he is, and for these very men is he planning
(vreleL, planting) slaughter and destiny,
( Yes) for-all-of-them : and evil shall come on many more of us
Who inhabit Ithaca favourably-situated-towards-the-west (or con¬
spicuous) ; but long before
Let us deliberate how we shall put a stop to this, and let them ( the
wooers) too
Cease ( from their doings), for straightway this will be better for them.
Not inexperienced (in omens) I prophesy, but from full knowledge :
For on that man (Ulysses), I say, has everything been brought
about—
Just as I declared to him, when for Ilium embark’d
The Greeks, and along with them went Ulysses fertile-in-ex¬
pedients,
I declared that {after) having suffered many evils, (after) having
lost all his associates,
Unknown to all, in the twentieth year,
Home should he come ;—and now truly is all this being-brought
about.’ ”
Eustathius — as we find him in Pope — for we have not him¬
self at hand—says well, u This prodigy is ushered in very
magnificently, and the verses are lofty and sonorous. The
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
313
Eagles are Ulysses and Telemackus: by Jove’s command
they fly from a mountain’s height: this denotes that the two
heroes are inspired by Jupiter, and come from the country to
the destruction of the suitors. The eagles fly with wing to
wing conjoined; this shows that they act in concert and unity
of councils : at first they float upon the wind ; this implies
the calmness and secresy of the approach of those heroes : at
last they clang their wings, and hovering beat the skies ; this
shows the violence of the assault: with ardent eyes the rival
train they threat. This, as the poet himself interprets it,
denotes the approaching fate of the suitors. Then sailing over
the domes and towers, they fly full towards the East; this
signifies that the suitors alone are not doomed to destruction,
but that the men of Ithaca are involved in danger, as Hali-
therses interprets it.” Good. But why did the Bishop—if
he wrote this at all, which we doubt, our faith beingsm all
in the notes furnished to Pope by Brome—omit mention of
their tearing one another’s necks ? Because, perhaps, he did
not understand it. Why did the Royal Birds, imaging Father
and Son, take a turn up in the sky ? Was it because they
saw no other mode of letting the wretches beneath see that
there was to be a fight in the Palace? Or was it merely
in mirth and glee that the Eagles, full of might and fight,
joined combat in the air, by w r ay of a spree ? Or was it to
show the Suitors how Eagles fought ? Everything in Homer,
and in every other Great Poet, has a meaning ; and you may
adopt whichever of our conjectures you will—but as you love
us, do not slur the tussle over as a mere tissue of words.
Halitherses, as an augur, said enough to frighten all but the
infatuated ; but he was not bound to explain all the omen—
enough that he predicted dismay, disaster, and death.
How do the translators handle the two Eagles ? Let us
see. Brome did Beta for Pope—and here is Brome :
BROME.
“ With that the Eagles from a mountain’s height,
By Jove’s command, direct their rapid flight;
Swift they descend, with wing to wing conjoin’d,
Stretch their broad plumes, and float upon the wind ;
Above the assembled Peers they wheel on high,
An d clang their wings, and hovering beat the sky;
essays: critical and imaginative.
With ardent eyes the rival train they threat,
And, shrieking loud, denounce approaching fate.
They cuff, they tear, their cheeks and necks they rend,
And from their plumes huge drops of blood descend :
Then sailing o’er the domes and towers, they fly
Full toward the East, and mount into the sky.”
COWPER.
“ So spake Telemachus, and while he spake,
The Thunderer from a lofty mountain-top
Turn’d off two Eagles ; on the winds awhile,
With outspread pinions ample, side by side
They floated ; but, ere long, hovering aloft,
Right o’er the midst of the assembled Chiefs
They wheel’d around, clang’d all their numerous plumes,
And eyeing with a downward look the throng,
Death boded, ominous ; then rending each
The other’s face and neck, they sprang at once
Toward the right, and darted through the town.”
SOTHEBY.
“ Thus spake Telemachus ; and thundering Jove
Sent earthward down two Eagles from above.
They, side by side, on level pinions flew,
And floated with the wind that smoothly blew.
But o’er the Forum, when to all reveal’d,
Fierce clanging their dense plumes, in circles wheel’d,
Eyed all beneath, and glaring death around,
Rent each the other’s neck with many a wound ;
Then upward soar’d, and wheeling to the right,
Wing’d through the city their portentous flight.”
M. J. CHAPMAN. (TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.)
“ And lo ! far-seeing Jove two Eagles sent,
Which from a mountain-brow far and aloft
Came flying down ; whiles with th’ impulsive wind
They flew, flapping their outstretch’d mighty wings,
One near the other ; but the midway space
Over the crowded Session once attain’d, •
They wheel’d, and their thick-feather’d pinions shook,
And look’d upon the heads of all, and voiced
A boding death ; then with their talons tore
Their jaws and necks, and with a right-hand flight
Over their houses and their city rush’d.”
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
315
%
Which, is best? Brome is bad. Dr Johnson said no man
could distinguish Brome or Fenton from Pope. All men may
—most women, and some children. A wishy-washy imitation
of the style of Pope cannot be very like Homer. Onr belief
is, that though Pope may have brushed and burnished up a
bit his coadjutors’ versions, he was pleased to let them remain
in their manifest inferiority to his own. They were two good
foils. “Rapid” and “swift”—to say nothing of the tauto¬
logy—are wretched epithets, applied here to eagles—and of
course not in Homer. Nothing is said in the Greek about
“ descending.” That they did descend, we see. “ Stretch
their broad wings,” seems to imply that they had not stretched
them from the first. “ Float on the wind ” is not quite right.
“ Wheel on high ” is very poor indeed : nobody supposes they
were very low—and yet they were lower than they had been
by some thousand feet at least — for the people saw the
sparkles of their eyes. “ And clang their wings, and hovering
beat the sky,” is no great improvement on our truthful prose—
which, by the way, we perceive, is a verse, and a good one—
“ There sweeping round, they shook their numerous plumes.”
The line that follows is a mean version of the magnificent.
Not a syllable in Homer about “ shrieking ”—they yelled not.
“ They cuff—they tear ”—Brome must have thought very
fine—so fine that he must like a fool say something still finer.
“ And from their plumes huge drops of blood descend,” which
does not happen even when a tercel gentle strikes a heron-
skew into what seems a fortuitous congregation of atoms. The
concluding lines are sonorous—but ambitious over-much—
and the whole the failure of a man who never saw even a
buzzard. Cowper is almost as good as possible—and shows
that a poet may keep tame hares, and yet admire wild eagles.
In Sotheby we are sorry to miss the mountain ; and there
seems a “ they ” wanting for grammatical construction ; but
the flight coming and going is finely given, and so is the
threatening and the portent. Sotheby has seen many eagles.
Chapman (not old, but young Chapman) is admirably Homeric.
But “Voiced a boding death,” we promise a crown to any
man who shall explain. Cowper and Chapman are “ both
best.” Of the rest of the passage, Brome makes very weak
work—Cowper rather heavy work—and Sotheby rather imper¬
fect work—so let their versions sleep. At present there really
316
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
seems to be nothing in English so like the Greek as our
own prose. No merit that of ours—’tis all Homer’s. A
few words, with your leave, about this Portent.
To know Fear, you must either live, or imagine you live,
in an age of soothsaying and superstition. Prognostications
of a direful event are sublime, seen shadowy on a strange-
clouded sky—typical of retribution, in all ghastliest shapes—
shifting to and fro, and of a bloody colour. Seers stand star¬
ing there, till they shudder to pronounce the doom declared
by the troubled heavens, and wander, wild-eyed, up and down
a mountainous country, mad and miserable, and wishing they
were dead. You can think with what Fear they may inspire
a lone Highland glen by a few woeful words—of old withered
maniacs, almost naked, cowing chieftains, even when “ plaided
and plumed in their tartan array.” In the ancient world,
seers, and soothsayers, and prophets (surely they were not
all deceivers), for the revelation of the Fates were under
obligations, which it was impossible they could ever repay, to
birds. Yet they were no great ornithologists. The science
of augury was high, but not apparently very complicated ; and
the flight-inspired man had in truth but to know his left hand
from his right. Yet the people, with a firm faith in his in¬
spiration, awfully heard his interpretation of the omen, to com¬
mon sense seemingly as simple as sublime—as in those two
eagles. Halitherses gave utterance but to the thoughts of
the people, gazing on the birds—for amazement and fear had
fallen on them—and they all felt that the rushing of wings
and the glaring of eyes were ominous of death. But he, they
believed, was “ endowed with clear credentials from above ”—
and that utterance was to them not merely confirmation, but re¬
velation. In his prophetic exultation he became unconsciously
a Liar of the first magnitude, yet spoke Jove’s truth. That
Ulysses and Telemachus were to come flying wing to wing
like eagles, he saw and said, as he heard aloft the whistling
plumes; but that twenty years ago he had told Ulysses of
his fated return to Ithaca, we no more believe than that he
told Us, at the era of the French Kevolution, that Christopher
North was to be the Editor of Maga yet unconceived in the
womb of Fate. But he held that strange tale devoutly true,
and so did all who heard him ; for he threw his feelings of the
present on his feelings of the past, and they all so bandied
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
317
themselves back and forward, that by collision they kindled
into a new birth—the feeling of the Future. No wonder
there were awe and amazement,—nor can there be a doubt
that all felt Fear. But as a heroic character, in Burns’s “ Hal¬
loween,” under the influence of superstitious fear, “whistled
up 1 Lord Lennox’ March,’ to keep his courage cheery,” so now
did the bold Eurymaclius burst out into abuse of Halitherses,
and, with a quaking heart, resumed his countenance and
speech—pale and faltering—for the nonce, to simulate scorn.
Cowper felt that well—
“ Hence, dotard ! hence
To thy own house ; there, prophesying, warn
Thy children of calamities to come.
Birds, numerous, flutter in the beams of day,
Not all predictive. Death, far hence remote,
Hath found Ulysses ; and I would to Heaven,
That, when he died, thyself had perish’d too.
Then hadst thou not with these prophetic strains
O’erwhelm’d us, nor Telemachus impell’d,
Already thus incensed,” &c.
His mind is ill at ease—he is not self-consistent—and he
must have felt the weakness of his own logic. “ Go, dotard,
and prophesy to children ; for thou hast o’erwhelmed us, and
compelled the mind of Telemachus.” That showed Hali¬
therses was a prophet fit to speak before men. The whole
harangue is fierce and furious, but Eurymachus keeps harping
on one string, and the discordant twanging disturbs not the
spirit of the young hero. He demands a twenty-oared bark,
that he may seek sandy Pylos, and thence hasten to Lacede-
mon, to obtain tidings of his sire. “ If I hear he lives, one
year I shall be patient for his return. If I hear he is dead, I
will perform his funeral rites with such pomp as his great
name demands, and raise at home his tomb, and then give my
mother to—whom I choose.” Then rose Mentor, illustrious
Ulysses’ friend, to whom, on liis departure, he had consigned
the care of his household, and speaks like a wise man.
“ Hear me, ye Ithacans, be never King,
From this time forth, benevolent, humane,
Or righteous ; but let every sceptred hand
Rule merciless, and deal in wrong alone,
Since none of all his people, whom he sway’d
318
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
With such paternal gentleness and love
Remembers the divine Ulysses more.
That the imperious suitors thus should weave
The web of mischief and atrocious wrong,
I grudge not ; since, at hazard of their heads,
They make Ulysses’ property a prey,
Persuaded that the hero comes no more.
But much the people move me ; how ye sit
All mute, and though a crowd opposed to few,
Check not the suitors with a single word.”
Alas ! all was rotten in the State of Ithaca. Twenty years
is a long minority—and misrule, during half that time, can
sadly change the character of a people.
“ Injurious Mentor ! headlong orator !
How darest thou move the populace against
The Suitors ? ”
So asks Liocritus ; but the populace are palsied—dead is the
quickening spirit of love and loyalty—and so utterly have
they forgotten Ulysses that they see nothing of him in his
blooming son. ’Tis this that makes Telemachus feel his
weakness; his native modesty induces him to think and
speak humbly of his own immature powers; his native hero¬
ism inspires him with resolution to face all dangers ; but the
sight of his own people’s degradation forces him to confess
that in Ithaca he must succumb to the crew whom, were
Ithaca what once it was, the Land of the Leal, he could
mow and swathe" like grass. "Where w T as this assemblage
held ? In a building, or in the open air ? If in a building,
the council-hall had no roof, for the eagles were seen coming
and going in the sky. It was, therefore, no Hole-and-Corner
Meeting—and the sun saw the sin and shame of all the people,
and of all the peers.
The council—a pretty council indeed—breaks up—and
where goes Telemachus ? To lave his hands in the surf of
the grey deep. They have refused to give him a twenty-oared
bark—and shall they thwart the designs of Minerva ? He
calls upon the goddess, and she appears in the form of Mentor.
There, by the sounding sea, commune the seeming old man
and the young—and ere nightfall they will embark. The
.Suitors’ renewed showers of scorn now glance off the Prince’s
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
319
mind like kail from sunbriglit armour; and Pallas fools that
drunken multitude, dashing the goblets from their hands,
drenching their eyes in drowsiness, and driving them, blind
and deaf, staggering through the streets. Meanwhile the sun
had set, and twilight dimmed all the ways—the bark was in
the bay impatient for the Prince.
M. J. CHAPMAN. (TRIN. COL. CAM.)
“ This said, he led the way : they follow’d him,
And placed the sea-stores in the w'ell-bench’d ship,
As bade Ulysses’ son. On ship-board went
Telemachus, Athene going first;
She sat down at the stern ; he near to her.
The mariners, meanwhile, the shore-ropes loosed,
And on the benches went and took their seats.
Grey-eyed Athene sent a favouring breeze,
A full strong west-wind with a rushing sound
Ruffling the dark sea ; then Telemachus
Bade them handle their tackle, cheering them ;
They cheerful heard ; and in the socket first
They fix’d the fir-mast, and secured it well
With the fore-braces ; then with twisted thongs
They raised the white-sails, and the mid-sail full
Bellied the wind ; and as the ship went on,
Around the keel loud roar’d the purple wave.
Along the wave she ran, making her way.
Then having made all fast in the dark ship,
Goblets they brimful crown’d with wine, and pour’d
Libations to the ever-living gods,
And first of all to Jove’s own grey-eyed child.
All night and through the following dawn she ran.”
We perceive, from Pope, that Rapin is very severe on
Minerva and Jupiter, who contrive the action of the Odyssey.
That action, it seems, is very imperfect; because it begins
with the voyages of Telemachus, and ends with those of
Ulysses. Why, surely a son stands in a pretty close relation
to his own father. A son voyaging to find his father, and
even if possible bring him home, appears to us to be helping
the action as much as can be reasonably expected of him,
especially when the action is being helped on still more
effectually by the father himself, whose whole soul is set on
getting home to find his son. But of the two divinities, the
old gentleman is most crusty on Pallas. She knew that
320
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Ulysses was in Ogygia—and that Jove had promised to let
him return to Ithaca. True—hut what did that amount to ?
To much less than the old gentleman seems to suppose—for
Pallas did not know that Neptune was to dash him, after
ever so many miseries on a raft, on Phaeacia—that Nausicaa
was to fall in love with him—that he was to hear Demodocus
harping and singing in the gardens of Alcinous—and that he
was to be landed sound asleep on his own beloved shore.
All she did know was, that Jove had promised he should
return. Calypso, for aught Minerva knew, might send him
to Pylos; or Neptune, on his return from Ethiopia, might
drive the slayer of his son Polyphemus to the Hyperboreans.
What if Ulysses had been sitting with old Nestor at a sea¬
shore feast? Papin might have been dumbfoundered, and
Minerva somewhat surprised; but nothing is impossible in
poetry of which the machinery is not spinning-jennies but
Gods.
Old Rap likewise thought honour, duty, and nature ought
to have moved Telemachus to seek tidings of his Father,
without the instigation or guidance of a goddess. That
acute remark cuts in pieces the whole poetry of Homer, and
makes shreds and patches of the whole Greek religion. But
it would be well if all youths would act like Telemachus,
even at the bidding of a superior power, human or divine.
Minerva takes him, quoth Rap, to all the most improbable
places ;—to the houses of Nestor and Menelaus ! Would he
have had her to take him to Ogygia ? But we must be con¬
tented with Homer's Odyssey—however much we may regret
that it was not rewritten by Rapin.
We know and love Telemachus as well as if we had been
for years with him in Ithaca. What he may end in, no man
who has studied human nature may pretend to say—but now
his character is as transparent as the purest well he ever
stooped to drink at, with a dead deer, or boar, or wolf, lying
at the young hunter’s feet on the greensward among the rocks.
Never, we may venture to say, will he be so fertile in ex¬
pedients as his Father—nor so eloquent nor so wise—for in
genius Ulysses was the greatest of all the Greeks; but as
brave, as affectionate, and as faithful to all old loves, will be
the son as the sire—and one day as good a king.
How delightful to land with him on the shore in sight of
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
321
the old city of Peleus, and witness his delight on beholding
—so Sotheby finely calls what we dolly construed seats—the
Nine Green Theatres ! In each, five hundred men feasting on
nine bulls. Four thousand five hundred men, good and true,
in the act of devouring eighty-one bulls. All the fourscore
and one bulls had been coal-black, without one single ashy
spot, wdien alive in their hides, and now are all done brown
on the sacrificial fire. All the thighs—‘-one hundred and
sixty-two—are laid on the altar of Neptune ; all the other
flesh, not sinking offal—for the entrails are especially men¬
tioned — consumed, we are willing to believe, by his wor¬
shippers. On the approach of the strangers, “all arose” to
welcome them—not all the four thousand five hundred men—
but all the 0/ $rg£/, a noble band, conspicuous among them all
the young Pisistratus, who has already embraced the Prince
of Ithaca, and welcomed him-—his birth and name unknown—
to Pylos. And old Nestor is not only alive still, but as fresh¬
looking and hale as he was some ten years back before Troy!
What a trump for a Tontine ! and as garru--as eloquent as
ever! Pisistratus sure must be his great-grandson. By no
means. And in the palace perhaps there is a rocking-cradle.
Bernember we are now flourishing in the heroic age, and in the
presence of a Patriarch. In good time Telemachus tells his
name and purpose-‘—but Nestor, alas! knows nothing of
Ulysses whom he loved, and pronounces matchless. Then,
with what a fine sense of propriety does Telemachus, instead
of mourning for the darkness that shroud’s his father’s fate,
modestly put such questions to the Old in Days as may lead
him to narrate events in his own history, and in that of other
heroes—his friends—after the fall of Troy. The young
Prince’s own sentiments and sympathies suggested indeed
the theme—and the aged king had by a few words awakened
his desire to hear again the oft-repeated tale,—
“ Ye, too, far off have heard Atrides’ death,
By fell iEgisthus’ will, how closed his breath ;
But rightly has the base adulterer paid
Dire vengeance due to Agamemnon’s shade :
’Tis glorious when heroic sons remain
The great avengers of their fathers slain ;
Such as Atrides’ heir, whose righteous ire
Slew the base murderer of his far-famed sire ;
VOL. VIII.
x
322
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Such thou ; so match by deeds thy stately frame,
That ages yet to come extol thy name.”
The example of Orestes had been set before him by
Minerva’s self, ere they left Ithaca; and Menelaus—brother
of the murdered King of Men—again tells him the dreadful
tale in the words of the ever-changing Proteus of the sea.
Not a word anywhere (are we mistaken ?) about Orestes kill¬
ing his mother. Telemachus resembled the son of Agamem¬
non only in being called on by earth and heaven to avenge
his parent’s wrongs ; but his father was blessed with a faith¬
ful wife—so said the shade of Atrides to Laertiades beside
the trench of blood in that doleful region where he had
not forgot the fatal bath—and called Ulysses happy in all his
woes,—for the Phantom thought of Penelope and then of
Clytemnestra.
Friendship is like love in young hearts—it rises at first
sight and endures for ever. Echephron, Stratius, Perseus,
Thrasymedes, Aretus—Nestor’s sons—are all kind to the
son of Ulysses; but Pisistratus is at once his brother. All
the rest are married men—these two noble youths have room in
their hearts to receive each other, for as yet they have known
not love. Each is chaste as Hippolytus; and their bosoms
glow with less selfish passions. Their life breathes a heroic
innocence. On a carved couch, beneath the resounding porch,
Telemachus lies down to sleep—and near him Pisistratus.
They keep conversing till midnight, and we could—though
Homer has not recorded it—make a poem of their talk about
heroes.
The rosy-fingered morn sees Nestor sitting alone (probably
in Monologue, for his tongue never tired) on the Seat of
Justice before his gates—of white polished, oil-glistening
stone (marble ?), with his sceptre in his hand, and the finest
beard in all Greece. Minerva had revealed herself the even¬
ing before, in the shape of an eagle—and to her he commands
a solemn sacrifice. For hours his sons are busy in prepara¬
tions, nor idle, we may well believe, nor far apart—those
two illustrious boys. In the evening they are to set out in
their chariot for Pherm—Diocleus’ Dome—one-third of the
way perhaps to Lacedemon. But not till
“ Nestor’s youngest daughter deign’d to lave
Ulysses’ offspring in the tepid wave,
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
323
With oil anointed, and the tunic bound,
And the resplendent robe his limbs around—
Fresh from the bath, the prince, a God in grace
Stepped forth, and sat by Nestor’s honour’d place.”
’Tis thus old Homer sings to boys and virgins. The bluest
bend of heaven that ever hung the Ionian Isles, and all their
shadows among the soft confusion of water and of air—one
grovey wilderness of upward-and-downward-growing trees,
and miraculous temples—never was purer,
“ With its white families of happy clouds,”
than was the lofty arch of his spirit letting fall gentle light
on the heads of the brave and beautiful—the mild and the
lovely—and all the bright world—vision-like in its reality—
in which youth breathes empyrean air, and human life is
invested with a grandeur of joy breathed from the heart of
uncorrupted nature.
Behold the Twain in “ Lacedemon’s hollow vale ” before
the gates of Menelaus’ palace. How fortunate their arrival
during the celebratiop of a double marriage ! And such
nuptials ! Why, Hermione, “graced with Aphrodite’s charms, V
leaves Lacedemon for “Phthia’s glorious city,” with chariots
and with horses, to bless the bed of Neoptolemus, a son whose
fame had transcended that of the most glorious sire, had not
that sire been Achilles. And to Megapenthes, his son by a
handmaid—for Helen had but one child, almost as bright as
herself, now the Phthian Queen—Menelaus was now giving for
wife Alector’s beauteous child, the flower of Sparta. The
Twain draw up their smoking steeds in the palace porch; but
read the scene in Sotheby, almost as alive as in Homer :—
“ While in his palace porch, great Nestor’s son,
And the Prince staid the steeds, their journey done,
Them, Eteoneus, issuing forth, survey’d,
And backward speeding, to Atrides said :
‘ Lo ! Jove-born Menelaus, at thy gate
Two strangers, likest gods, thy word await:
Shall we here loose their steeds, and claim their stay,
Or to some roof more willing send away ? ’
‘ Thou wert not once,’ the indignant king replied,
‘ Devoid of sense, untaught thy words to guide.
Thou babblest like a child—from dome to dome
We, hospitably feasted, reach’d our home :
324
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
So Jove may henceforth guard us : loose the steed,
And to our banquet, haste, the strangers lead.’
He spake : nor Eteoneus disobey’d,
But, summoning the menials, urged their aid,
Loosed the hot yoke, and where the steeds reposed,
Within the monarch’s spacious stalls enclosed,
Oats and fine barley in their manger threw,
And to the radiant wall the chariot drew :
Then usher’d in the guests, who, wondering, gazed,
As the proud palace of Atrides blazed,
Which like the lunar orb, or solar light
With strange magnificence amazed their sight.
But, when their wonder paused, they went to lave
Their bodies in the bath’s refreshing wave ;
Then, when the females with anointing oil
And the warm flood had freed their limbs from toil,
And the bright vest and mantle round them cast,
They, nigh the king, partook the rich repast.
In a bright vase of burnish’d silver wrought
On a gold stand, a maid pure water brought.
Spread for the feast, with dainties largely stored,
A matron placed the tables’ polish’d board :
The sewer with varied flesh their food supplied,
And served with golden cups of royal pride.
Then, with kind warmth their hands Atrides press’d,
And welcoming the strangers, thus address’d:
‘ Feast, and rejoice—when satiate keen desire,
I, who my guests, and whence you came, inquire.
Hot yet, I deem, has pass’d away from earth
The memory of the men who boast your birth.
In yours, the form of Jove-born kings I trace,
For ne’er vile fathers bred such godlike race.’
Then deign’d himself their portion’d feast assign,
The monarch’s share, the bullock’s roasted chine.
They richly feasted, and, the banquet o’er,
When thirst and satiate hunger sought no more,
Then, bow’d o’er Nestor’s son, that none might hear,
The Prince thus whisper’d in his listening ear :
‘ Round this refulgent dome, my friend ! behold
What blaze of amber, ivory, silver, gold :
Such Jove’s Olympian hall ’mid realms of light,
The infinity of splendour awes my sight.’
His whisper’d wonder Menelaus heard,
And to the admiring guests thus spake the word:
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
325
‘ No—let not mortal man contend with Jove,
’Tis immortality stamps all above. ,
Man may with me hold contest, or decline,
Whate’er my wealth, toil, suffering made it mine,
Brought from far wandering, by my restless sail,
Ere the eighth year, I bade my country hail.
To Cyprus, AEgypt, to Phoenicia’s shore,
To ^Ethiopia me, my vessel bore,
The Erembi, Sidon, Libya, where the horn
Crowns the fair forehead of the lamb new-born,
Where sheep thrice yearly breed, nor lord nor swain
For dearth of cheese, or flesh, or milk complain,
Nor ere throughout the year the udder fails
To tempt the hand that fills the milking-pails.
While thus I stray’d, and with incessant toil
Vast wealth amass’d from many a distant soil,
By a vile wife’s dark guile, the sudden blow
Smote unawares, and laid a brother low.
Thus rich, I joyless reign—yet, ye have heard
Whate’er your race, your sires have spread the word,
How sore I suffer’d, and to ruin brought
A hospitable home with luxury fraught;
With half its wealth, I would contented dwell,
Were they but living who at Ilion fell.
How oft beneath my roof I lone deplore
The loss of those who here return no more :
Now feed my soul with grief, and now at peace
Best, when, worn out with plaint, afflictions cease ;
Yet less I weep them all, though sore I weep,
Than one whose loss embitters food and sleep,
Mindful of him whose ardour unrepress’d
Sustain’d the weight of woe that bow’d the rest,
Thee, loved Ulysses, bound by fate to grief,
And to my soul by woe without relief—
Where the long-absent hero ? whither sped ?
Strays he alive, or slumbers with the dead ?
His loss bows down to earth his aged sire,
Penelope consumes with vain desire,
And whom he left, the babe just sprung to day,
Telemachus, deplores his long delay.’ ”
We always liked, but now we love Menelaus. That Helen
should have left such a man for Paris! Brave as his own
sword—bright in honour as his own shield—hospitable as his
326
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
own board—strong as the tree at his own palace-gate—tender
withal, as well as true—with a heart in his manly bosom
overflowing with all kind affections—love, friendship, grief,
pity—and yearning not towards kith and kin alone, but, as
now, towards the sons of his old companions in arms, Nestor
and Ulysses. For Nestor wore arms—but Menelaus knows
not who the youths may be—he loves them for their own
noble sakes—and well one of them will ever after love the
Great Spartan King, for having mourned so for Ulysses, and
Laertes, and Penelope—and for him who now with both hands
upholds before his face his purple robe, that it may hide his
gushing tears. But where is Helen ?
CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
(Literally, and line for line with the Original.)
“ Whilst he was revolving these things in his mind and heart,
Helen from her odoriferous, lofty-roof’d chamber out-
Came, like to Diana with-the-golden-arrows :
For her then did Adrasta place a beautifully-fabricated couch,
And Alcippe bore a carpet of soft wool :
Phylo carried a silver basket, which to her {Helen) gave
Alcandra, the wife of Polybus, who dwelt in Thebes
Of AEgypt, where most-numerous possessions lie in-the-houses.
Who to Menelaus gave two silver baths,
And two tripods, and ten talents of gold.
Apart {from these) did his wife besides bestow on Helen beautiful
gifts,—.
A golden spindle, and added a basket rimmed-beneath
Of silver, but its lips were perfected of-gold.
This then did the attendant Phylo bear and place before her,
Completely-filled with elaborately-wrought thread ; and over it
Was extended the spindle having wool of-a-deep-violet-hue.
{Helen) on her reclining-couch sat down, and under her feet was a
•footstool,
And forthwith she questioned her husband on all.”
SOTHEBY.
“ While thus the Monarch paused with doubt o’ercast,
Forth from her fragant chamber Helen past,
Like gold-bow’d Dian ; and Adraste came,
flhe bearer of her throne’s majestic frame ;
Her carpet’s fine-wrought fleece Alcippe bore,
Phylo her basket bright with silver ore,
HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.
327
Gift of the wife of Polybus, who sway’d
Where Thebes, the -^Egyptian Thebes, vast wealth display’d ;
There too the monarch’s hospitable hand
To Atreus’ son, departing from his land,
Gave ten weigh’d talents, all of purest gold,
Two tripods and two baths of silver mould.
His wife, Alcandra, from her treasured store
A golden spindle to fair Helen bore,
And a bright silver basket, on whose round
A rim of burnish’d gold was closely bound ;
Before her sovereign placed, this Phylo brought
And charged with wool elaborately wrought;
There the bright spindle lay, whence Helen drew
The fleece that richly flow’d with purple hue—
Thus on her footstool’d throne the Queen reclined,
And to her lord unbosom’d all her mind.”
M. J. CHAPMAN. (TRIN. COL. CAM.)
“ From her high-roof’d and fragrant chamber came,
Like to Diana of the golden shaft,
Helen : her following, Adraste placed
A well-made couch for her ; Alcippe brought
A carpet of soft wool : Phylo, the gift
(A silver basket) which Alcandra made
To the bright Queen,—the wife of Polybus,
Who in ^Egyptian Thebes his dwelling had,
Where in his palace lie treasures immense ;
He gave to Menelaus tripods twain,
Two silver baths, and talents ten of gold;
His wife, besides, made Helen gifts of price
And beautiful,—a distaff all of gold,
And silver basket, silvery circling round,
But tipp’d with gold ; which stuff’d with threads made fit
To spin withal, Phylo her handmaid brought ;
The distaff was upon it, wrapt with wool
Of violet colour. On her couch she sat,
And on a cushion placed her dainty feet.”
GEORGE DRAKE. (K1RKTH0RPE.)
“ While thus his thoughts in doubtful current flow,
Like the bright Goddess of the golden bow,
Forth from her lofty chamber the fair dame—
Her chamber rich in perfumes—Helen came.
For her a well-wrought couch Adraste bare :
A carpet of soft wool Alcippe’s care:
328
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Phylo a silver basket broughther load
Alcandra, wife of Polybus, bestow’d,
With divers treasures on their Spartan guest,
When they in Thebes of Egypt wealth possess’d ;
Two golden lavers, two of tripod mould,
And ten pure talents were annex’d of gold :
Besides his spouse rich works of rare device
To Helen gave, and gems of costly price ;
A golden distaff, and a sculptured vase,
She gave, of silver on a rounded base,
Whose upper rims with burnish’d gold were wrought:
The same now Phylo for her mistress brought,
Fill’d with spun thread : and on the pile she threw
A distaff charged with wool of purple hue.
A footstool underneath, a couch above
Received the queenly form of beauteous love.”
’Tis impossible to hate the traitress. Homer himself loved
her—and so did Hector. In Troy we could not forgive her
—for the tears of the Fair Penitent were shed on the bosom
of Paris. Alas ! and alack-a-day ! what could she do ? For
wicked Venus would show her gratitude for the golden apple
after her own wicked way; but Helen is again an honest wo¬
man—nay, start not at the homely words—for we have seen
honest women beautiful as angels. Menelaus suspected from
his weeping, at mention of Ulysses, that it was Telemachus;
but Helen—whose beautiful eyes were always wide-awake—
knew that it must be the son of the great-hearted Ulysses—
from his wondrous likeness to the hero. Then the King—but
not before—sees the likeness too, in feet, hands, head, hair,
and eyes ! Helen can still make him see—or not see—any¬
thing ; but for our parts, we now see nothing but her own
radiant self, and since she is yet alive, what matters it that
Troy has ceased to be even a heap of ashes ?
Pisistratus declares it is no other than Telemachus.
CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
{Literally, and line for line with the Original.)
il Him the auburn-(7mire , uxro; Ss (ppuxrov Sst^’ ooor a.yyu.Qov oru^os
’’Ewi/XrfiV. ’'lS>? filv 0S 'Eq[J 0 UA 0 V Xivrxs
A riftvov’ fiyav Ss S vroQiurou Xx/xvrciSos rtgos
n luxri ro %(ivcro(piyyls co; n$ %Xios
liXx; ‘Ta.^ce.yyuXoc.o'a. Metxiirrou trxoorcu;'
O S’ cun [xtXXouv ov S’ xtygctcr/xovas uWu
N :ku(mvo; vroopfxiv ooyyiXov [tiros'
'Exit; S£ uxrou av%qov riXfaz tzvago’io;'
Nt/y y cturz trurn^ XKTce.yuvioz,
Avk% AtoXXov. rovz r ccyudiovz 9-zobz
Uavraz Tootrccvcco, rov r z/aov rt/Accogov
'E ^/Ayjv, diXov xripvxcc, kyiquauv o'zSocz,
"H Qias fha.o’iXzK toXXm Xgovy.
H kzi yozp v [a. v Qctiz zv zutygovyi ip 'z^uv
I\a< ro7trV utczo-i xoivov ’AyozfAifAvuv ctvor.X.
AXX zv viv u.a’Tu.o’ot.crSz , xki ybcg ovv t^ztzi,
GREEK DRAMA.
425
Tgo/xv xxTxtrxx^xvrx rou 'bix,Yi$)'o()ov
A to; (Axx'zXXri t . xQ-zxyriS tz xx) xXottvs 'bixnv
T oZ puxlov J’ wpoxgTZ xx) txvuXz@qov
Avtonomov vrxT/oMov zdgitrzv 'bopoov.
AitfAx S’ zrurxv npix/xibxi S-xuapTia*
—V. 503-537.
NORTH.
“ Oil paternal soil of the Grecian land!
In this tenth light of the year 1 2 have I reach’d thee,
Of many broken hopes having realised but one.
For never could I have confidently hoped that in this land of
Argos
I should, when dead, be a sharer in a much-wish’d-for tomb :
Hail now, O Earth, and hail, thou light of the sun,
And Jupiter supreme over the country, and the Pythian king,
From thy bow no longer discharging weapons against us :
Implacable enough at Scamander wert thou to us ;
But now on the other hand be thou a > saviour, and a deliverer of
us from our struggles,
O King Apollo. The gods-that-preside-over-games also
All I invoke, and my protector
Mercury, the herald beloved, of heralds the divinity,
And the heroes (demigods) sending us forth (and) gracious again
To receive the army spared by the spear.
Hail, ye palaces of kings, abodes beloved,
Venerable seats, and sun-exposed deities,
If erst you ever (did),—do you now with these eyes serene
Receive becomingly the king, after a long time.
For he hath come—a light in the night—bringing to you,
And to all these in common King Agamemnon.
Propitiously then salute him —for this is becoming—
Who dug up Troy with the spade of justice-bearing
Jupiter, whereby the foundation hath been upturn’d.
And the altars are nameless 2 (things whereof nothing can be
known) and the gods’ seats,
1 For—this light of the tenth year.
2 ”Ai o-roi, from oo jpriv. and ‘itr-nxi, to know ; that whereof nothing can be
known.
426
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
A nd the seed of all the land is utterly destroy’d.
Having imposed on Troy such a yoke,
The king, the son of Atreus the Elder, a prosperous man,
Has come, of being honour’d the most worthy of mortals
That now are : for neither Paris nor his associate city
Boasts that the deed done was greater than the suffering ;
For having incurr’d the penalty of rapine and of theft
He had forfeited his pledge of security ; and his utterly-ruin’d,
Aboriginal, paternal house hath he mow’d down.
Doubly then have the children of Priam render’d back the price
of their offences.”
POTTER.
“ Hail, thou paternal soil of Argive earth !
In the fair light of the tenth year to thee
Return’d, from the sad wreck of many hopes
This one I save ; saved from despair e’en this ;
For never thought I in this honour’d earth
To share in death the portion of a tomb.
Hail then, loved earth ; hail, thou bright sun ; and thou,
Great guardian of my country, Jove supreme ;
Thou, Pythian king, thy shafts no longer wing’d
For our destruction ; on Scamander’s banks
Enough we mourn’d thy wrath ; propitious now
Come, King Apollo, our defence. And all
Ye gods, that o’er the works of war preside,
I now invoke ; thee, Mercury, my avenger,
Revered by heralds, that from thee derive
Their high employ ; you heroes, to the war
That sent us, friendly now receive our troops,
The relics of the spear. Imperial walls,
Mansion of kings, ye seats revered ; ye gods,
That to the golden sun before these gates
Present your honour’d forms ; if e’er of old
Those eyes with favour have beheld the king,
Receive him now, after this length of time,
With glory ; for he comes, and with him brings
To you, and all, a light that cheers this gloom :
Then greet him well; such honour is his meed,
The mighty king, that with the mace of Jove
Th’ avenger, wherewith he subdues the earth,
Hath levell’d with the dust the towers of Troy ;
Their altars are o’erturn’d, their sacred shrines,
And all the race destroy’d. This iron yoke
Fix’d on the neck of Troy, victorious comes
GREEK DRAMA.
427
The great Atrides, of all mortal men
Worthy of highest honours. Paris now,
And the perfidious state, shall boast no more
His proud deeds unrevenged : stript of his spoils,
The debt of justice for his thefts, his rapines,
Paid amply, o’er his father’s house he spreads
With twofold loss the wide-involving ruin.”
SYMMONS.
“ Ho ho ! my native and paternal soil!
Ho ho ! my country, and the sweet approach
Of A.rgive land ! in ten long years return’d,
I stand upon thee gladly, 0 my country !
And save this one of many a shipwreck’d hope.
O much I fear’d I ne’er should see thy shores,
Nor when I died, be gather’d to thy lap.
Now Earth, all hail! all hail, thou sun of light!
And Jove, this realm’s great paramount! and thou,
O King of Pytho, hurling from thy bow
Thy shafts no more against us ; full enough
We felt thy ire by sad Scamander’s banks :
Now be our saviour, and our lord of games,
O King Apollo ! and I call ye all,
Ye Gods of Festivals, and thee, my patron,
Sweet Herald God ! whom heralds most adore ;
And ye, the worshipp’d Heroes of old times,
Who sent your armed sons to battle forth ;
Peceive what now remains of us, the gleanings
Of hostile spears. O palace of our kings!
Dear roofs, and venerated judgment-seats !
And ye, sun-facing images of gods !
Now, now, if ever, beam with joyful eyes
Upon your king returning ;—lo ! he comes,
King Agamemnon, bringing now at last
A light in darkness, and a general shine
On you, on all the people, on all those
Who throng around. But greet him, greet him well
(Such honour is the mighty conqueror’s meed),
Who, arm’d with vengeance and the mace of Jove,
Unloosed the stony, massy girths of Troy.
Ay, now Jove’s spade has finish’d its dread work,
And made a mound of all that mighty field ;
Altars and fanes in unknown ruins lie,
And without seed lies all the blasted land.
428
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Thus comes Atrides from the siege of Troy,
Which ’neath his yoke has bent her turrets high.
O happy, glorious, honourable man,
Deserving praise of men, far, far beyond
What any worthy of this age can claim.
The vaunts of Troy and Paris are no more,
Boasting the arm of Justice could not reach them;
But it has spann’d them with a hand as large
As their offendings : the convicted thief
Has lost his main prize, and the ravisher
Has with his beauteous fair one lost himself.
And bared his father’s house to the dire edge
Of naked ruin ; and old Priam’s sons t
Have with their blood his double forfeits paid.”
Potter excellent—Symmons admirable.—The Chorus thus
accosts the eloquent Herald,—
“ Herald of the Argives from the host, all health,
And joy be with thee ! ”
Herald,—
“ Take me to ye, gods,
I ne’er can live to greater j oy than this !
Meanwhile, where is Clytemnestra ? ”
Symmons has rightly put into the mouth of the Chorus the
above words, which Potter, merely to oppose Heath, whom
he hated almost as bitterly as Gifford did Monk Mason and
Coxeter, assigns to Clytemnestra. “ Potter,” quoth Symmons,
“ was to that critic what the elephant is said to be to the
rhinoceros.” Symmons tells us—and we tell you—to observe,
that Clytemnestra, during this whole scene, being now fully
apprised of the taking of Troy, and of the approaching return
of her husband, and finding herself brought by events to the
eve of what she had long meditated, is apart, wrapt in
gloomy meditations, and gaining time to collect herself. In
the mean time, the dialogue goes on between the Herald and
the Chorus, which is very artfully conducted by the Poet,
and rendered intentionally obscure; the Chorus appearing
fearful of being overheard or understood by Clytemnestra, in
their covert complaints of her and iEgisthus during their
regency, under which it is insinuated, that it would have
been a crime to have expressed great regret at the absence
GREEK DRAMA.
429
of Agamemnon. The Herald's part is also very characteris¬
tic ; his curiosity is momentarily raised by the insinuations
of the Chorus; but on their declining to be immediately
explicit, buoyant with the joy of the moment, he forgets them
and their complaints, and returns to the narrative of his adven¬
tures. For that narrative we have no room—but it is the best
in poetry of the sufferings of campaigning—and contains a
glorious description of a bivouac.
The Unity of Action—and no action can be simpler—is
preserved in this play ; but there seems to be a violation of
the Unity of Time. For what but a miracle could have
brought the Herald home so soon, supposing the exhibition
of the beacons to have taken place immediately on the taking
of Troy ? But the truth is, as Mr Symmons says and shows,
that the Greek poets did not observe the minor Unities of
Time and Place so scrupulously as the French. Sophocles
presents in his Trachinice a more glaring example, in the
mission of Hyllus and his return (a distance of a hundred and
twenty Italian miles), which took place during the acting of
a hundred lines. In the Eumenides , iEschylus opens the
play at Delphi, and ends it at Athens. Aristotle, as Twining
properly remarks, does not lay down the Unity of Time as a
rule; but says that Tragedy endeavours to circumscribe the
period of its action to one revolution of the sun.
But Mr Symmons observes that, strictly speaking, the
Unity of Time is not violated in this play. How so ? Why,
iEschylus the Bold has hazarded a miracle off the stage , artifi¬
cially or clandestinely concealed from the attention of the
spectators; but everything on the stage proceeds rapidly and
consecutively in the space of a day, and nothing there occurs
to mark any greater lapse of time. The passions, the feelings
of the audience, under the influence of so great a Poet, could
admit of no marked delay, no interval; all their faculties
being wound up, and hurrying on to the horrid catastrophe.
Potter, too, writes with the same fine feeling of the truth.
“ iEschylus,” he says, “ was as sensible as any of his critics
could be of the impropriety of making Agamemnon appear at
Argos the day after Troy was taken ; but his plan required it—
and it is so finely executed, that he must be a critic minorum
gentium who objects to it. The whole narrative of the
Herald is calculated to soften this impropriety; a tempest
430
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
separates tlie royal ship from the Fleet; some god preserves
it, and Fortune, the deliverer, guides it into the harbour;
everything is as rapid and impetuous as the genius of
iEschylus, and the expression is so carefully guarded, that
no hint is given of the vessel’s being at sea more than
one night.” Muller, we are happy to see, though a Ger¬
man, also applauds all this daring, and says vigorously,
that iEschylus “ fieri jussit.” He ordered it so, and it was
right.
Clytemnestra, who had been apart during the previous
conversation between the Herald and the Chorus, now ap¬
proaches, and addresses the Herald in a long hypocritical
speech—of which the hypocrisy, “ the only evil thing that
walks unseen,” is perfect. She sends a message to her
Lord.
“ Go bear this message to my noble lord :
‘ Come quickly to thy city, much-loved Prince,
Come to thy consort true, whom thou wilt find
Such as thou left’st, a watch-dog on thy hearth,
Good, gentle, kind to thee, but to thy foes
A bitter enemy ; alike in all things ;
One who has kept the print upon thy seals
For years unbroken and inviolate;
From all but thee a stranger still to pleasure ,
And by the breath of evil fame unsullied
As the pure metal from the dyer's art.' ”
Lichas, in the Trachinice , bears the same message from
Deianira to Hercules. But Mr Symmons finely points out
the difference between the simplicity of her innocence, and
the artfulness of the other’s guilt. Deianira, innocent and
attached, says nothing of her innocence or her attachment;
but Clytemnestra, guilty, loudly professes both one and the
other.
The Herald then gives that most eloquent description of
storm and shipwreck alluded to by Potter, and the Chorus—
Clytemnestra having entered the palace — again takes up
the strain, almost as doleful as before, but containing one
passage of consummate beauty, of which we give Mr Sym-
mons’s translation. It is a description of Helen, the De¬
stroyer of Ships—or of Helandros, the Destroyer of Men—
or of Heleptolis, the Destroyer of Cities.
GREEK DRAMA.
431
SYMMONS.
“ When first she came to Ilion’s towers,
O what a glorious sight, I ween, was there !
The tranquil beauty of the gorgeous queen
Hung soft as breathless summer on her cheeks,
Where on the damask sweet the glowing Zephyr slept;
And like an idol beaming from its shrine,
So, o’er the floating gold around her thrown
Her peerless face did shine ;
And though sweet softness hung upon their lids,
Yet her young eyes still wounded where they look’d.
She breathed an incense like Love’s perfumed flower,
Blushing in sweetness ; so she seem’d in hue,
And pained mortal eyes with her transcendent view:
E’en so to Paris’ bed the lovely Helen came.
But dark Erinnys, in the nuptial hour,
Bose in the midst of all that bridal pomp,
Seated midst the feasting throng,
Amidst the revelry and song ;
Erinnys, led by Xenius Jove,
Into the halls of Priam’s sons,
Erinnys of the mournful bower,
Where youthful brides weep sad in midnight hour.”
But why tarries Agamemnon ? Where linger the wheels
of his chariot? He comes—he comes—and with him the
captive Cassandra. The Chorus thus hails the king,—
u O king ! O sacker of Troy, town divine !
Spring from Atreus’ godlike line,
How shall I speak thee ? How admire ? ” &c.
Agamemnon, before making any reply to their greeting, says
he must first salute Argos, and the indigenous G-ods of the
Land. Having done so, how like a Warrior-King he speaks
of war!
“ Ye may now see the captive city far
In smoke discernible : its embers burn.
The hurricane of Ate scarce is spent:
The ashes pale laid on their fever’d bed,
Together with the dying city die,
And gather up their latest breath to blow
Clouds of rich freightage to the vasty skies !
For this we are your debtors, mighty gods,
432
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
And we must pay you with a mindful heart,
And celebration of recording rites,
For our great hunters’ toils with cunning hand
Laid to our hearts’ content, and haughty Troy
(All for a woman lost) razed to the ground ;
Bearing the Argive dragon when the Horse
Yean’d in the city its terrific birth,
Who bounding burst, with helm and high-toss’d shield
Brandish’d in air, horrific on the night,
The Pleiads setting in their paly spheres ;
And the fierce lion made a bound in air,
And high o’er tower and temple rampant came,
And with red jaws lick’d up the blood of kings.”
The King of Men then moralises and philosophises to the
Chorus in a style worthy of him, and then looking at his
palace, says,—
“ But now straight entrance to the house I’ll make,
There to pour out the gladness of my soul
Before the hearths unto my household gods,
Who gave me conduct to far distant climes,
And now return me to their sacred domes ;
And may firm victory abide for aye,
Since hitherto my steps she has attended.”
And now Clytemnestra comes forth from the palace—and
how doth she meet her lord ?
“ She-wolf of Greece, with unrelentless fangs,
That tearest the bowels of thy mangled mate ! ”
How dost thou hide thy murderous intents in that deep and
high-swelling bosom, on which lay last night the head of
iEgisthus ? That learned wiseacre, Is. Casaub., dares to say—
“ Congressus primus Clytemnestrse et Agamemnonis. Hsec
tota pars friget. iEschylus inscite; Seneca evitavit haec.”
And afterwards he saith — u Hie proimum Clytemnestra
Agamemnonem, quam frigide, quam prolixe! ” Poor gen¬
tleman ! he prefers Seneca to iEschylus! iEschylus, in the
opinion of Is. Casaub. wrote here ignorantly—with no know¬
ledge of human nature! The address of Clytemnestra is
cold and frigid. So it is—and why ? Because her heart was
hot with its own hell—and therefore, to prevent the very
flames from bursting out of her mouth, she first compressed
GREEK DRAMA.
433
her lips into frigidity—and then, when she felt that she had
the flames safely smothered for a while, she became prolix—
and then she ventured stealthily npon affectionateness of
manner—and then at last she hailed the doomed Hero with
the honeyed words of connubial love and delight, adoration
and reverence. And Is. Casaub. said, “ iEschylus inscite! ”
But Potter, who was a fine fellow, knew better, and his words
are worthy of being recorded in Maga. u According to the
simplicity of ancient manners/’ quoth this excellent and
eloquent clergyman, u Clytemnestra should have waited to
receive her husband in the house ; but her affected fondness
led her to disregard decorum. Nothing can be conceived
more artful than her speech; but that shows that her heart
had little (no) share in it; her pretended sufferings [she asserts
she had thrice tried to hang herself, but always unfortunately
got cut down.—C. N.] during his absence, are touched with
great delicacy and tenderness; but had they been real, she
would not have stopped him with the querulous recital; the
joy for his return, had she felt that joy, would have broke
out first; this is deferred to the latter part of her address;
then, indeed, she has amassed every image expressive of
emotion; but her solicitude to assemble these, leads her
beyond nature, which expresses her strong passions in broken
sentences, and with a nervous brevity, not with the cold
formality of a set harangue. Her last words are another
instance of the double sense which expresses reverence to
her husband, but intends the bloody design with which her
soul was •agitated.”
Thus far Potter, who had a soul to understand iEschylus,
though hardly a pen equal to translate him; but Mr Sym-
mons has,—and what can be nobler, in his version, than the
concluding part of Clytemnestra’s address?
-“ Meantime
The gushing fountains, whence so many tears
Chasing each other trickled on my cheeks,
Are quite run out, and left without a drop ;
And these sad eyes, which so late took their rest,
Are stain’d with blemish by late watching hours,
Weeping for thee by the pale midnight lamp,
That burnt unheeded by me. In my dreams
I lay, my couch beset with visions sad,
2 E
VOL. VIII.
434
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
And saw thee oft in melancholy woe !
More than the waking Time could show, I saw
A thousand dreary congregated shapes,
And started oft, the short-lived slumber fled,
Scared by the night-fly’s solitary buzz :
But now my soul, so late o’ercharged with woe,
Which had all this to bear, is now the soul
Of one who has not known what mourning is,
And now would fain address him thus, e’en thus :
This is the dog who guards the wattled fold ;
This is the mainsheet which the sails and yards
Of some tall ship bears bravely to the winds ;
This is the pillar whose long shaft from earth
Touches the architrave of some high house ;
A child who is the apple of the eye
To the fond father who has none but him ;
Ken of the speck of some fair-lying land,
Seen by pale seamen well-nigh lost to hope :
A fair day, sweetest after tempest showers ;
A fountain fresh, with crystal running clear,
To the parch’d traveller who thirsts for drink :
So in each shift of sad necessity
’Tis sweet to be deliver’d hard beset.
Thus my fond heart, with speeches such as these,
Pays to his worthiness what she thinks due :
Let no one grudge me the sweet pleasure now,
But think upon the sorrows I have borne.
But now, O thou most precious to my eyes !
Light from thy car : but soft; step not on earth,
Lay not thy foot, O king ! Troy’s overturner,
On the bare ground. Why dally ye, my women,
Who have’t in charge, by my command, to lay
The field with tapestry whereon he walks ?
Quick strew it, cover it; let all the road
Be like a purple pavement to the house.
That Dike to his house may lead him on
As the unhoped-for comer should be led :
My care, that sleeps not, shall do all the rest ;
Do all that duty at my hand requires,
If Gods will hear me, and the Pates allow.”
The king replies with much tenderness, calling Clytemnestra
“ Daughter of Leda! guardian of my house !
Well hast thou spoken, as a true wife should; ”—
GREEK DRAMA.
435
but he tries to dissuade her from her fond intention of strew¬
ing his path with purple garments—pageantries these fit only
for the gods. Well saith Potter, that Agamemnon appears
here in the most amiable light—he knows his dignity, and is
not insensible to the fame which attends him as the conqueror
of Asia ; but he shows that manly firmness of mind, and that
becoming moderation which distinguishes the sober state of
the King of Argos from the barbaric pride of an Asiatic
monarch. The part which he has to act is indeed short; but
it gives us a picture of the highest military glory and of true
regal virtue, and shows us that, as a man, he was modest,
gentle, and humane.
“ A being, as I am, but of to-day,
To walk in such high state bedizen’d out
With flaunting purples, studiously devised
With quaint embroidery, beneath my feet,—
Not without fears and terrors could I do it.
According to a man’s height, not a god’s.
Take measure of the duty thou wouldst pay me.
Though not on purple rests she her bare feet,
Nor yet with cloth-of-gold is cover’d o’er,
Fame is heard far and wide —so loud she cries.
To be possess’d of that clear soul within
That thinks no folly, but is wise and meek,
Is the most precious jewel God can give :
And blazon not the happiness of man
Till he has ended life, still ever blest
In that sweet state which, fixkd to the end,
Stands like a constant summer all his days.
Let me speed thus hereafter in all things
As well as up to now, my soul will be
Full of a happy confidence serene.”
But Clytemnestra will not be dissuaded from her fond purpose
of strewing the ground with purple garments for his feet,
walking, after that ten years’ absence, into his palace—and
the King, relenting, at last gives his consent. He calls on
“ some one ” to u take off the pride of sandals from his feet ”
—“ the thralls of the haughty treading,” lest the “ grudge of
some god’s eye throw its long cast upon him,”—and then,
showing Cassandra, requests the Queen to be kind to her ; for
that u God beholds the gentle ruler governing with mildness
436
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
his subject slaves.” He then declares that he is ready so to
walk into the Palace as she wishes :—
“ I will unto the mansions of the house
Move, footing it on purples as I go.”
Then exclaims Clytemnestra,—
“ Who’ll quench that sea, which gives us plenteous store
Of beaming purples from her azure caves,
Eternal dyer of the blood-red robes,
That sparkle o’er the silver’s paly shine ?
Thy house, O King, has plenteous store of these ;
’Tis no poor house, blest be the gracious gods !
These gorgeous robes were dust beneath my feet,
When deep in domes oracular I pray’d,
Kiss’d the pale shrines, and pour’d forth many a vow
To give the gods all I could give, in barter
Of their kind grace to save a life so dear !
The root is living, and the laurel thrives,
And makes a sweet walk for us under shade,
When the hot dog-star rages in the skies.
The lord is come ! the household hearth burns bright,
And merrily the winter days we pass.
And now the pale grapes turn to luscious wine,
The vintage comes, Jove treads the purple vat;
We joy beneath the noontide air imbrown’d,
Stretch’d in cool zephyrs under bower and hall,
And sweetly live ! Our lord he is at home !
A man in prime, frequenting his glad halls.
Jove ! Jove ! thou perfect and perfecting one,
Perfect my prayers, and whatsoe’er to do
Thou hast in hand, to do it be thy care.”
All this is very dreadful—nor do we hesitate to say, equal to
anything in Shakespeare. In translating iEschylus, Symmons
has here u quitted himself like Samson.”
How characteristic and sublime this last speech of Clytem¬
nestra ! With all the pomp, profusion, and prodigality of a
Queen, has she lavished cost upon cost unappreciable, on the
pageant that leads her victim into the house of murder; and
with what a frenzied eloquence of exulting joy does she pour
over it intenser splendour! She bathes and steeps it all in
the poetry of blood. When she calls the sea
“ Eterual dyer of the blood-red robes,”
GREEK DRAMA.
437
yon feel on what her imagination is running,—the tunic in
which her husband is about to be helplessly involved in the
bath, empurpled then as the garments on which, to gratify
her, he now sets unwillingly his princely feet. She pours a
brighter light, because never before was her heart so elate,
upon the household hearth, than ever she saw it shining with
ere she meditated murder.
“ The lord is come ! the household hearth burns bright! ”
And then how she revels, seemingly in a holy joy, over the
holiest images of domestic bliss ! She would have said to her
husband, “ there’s blood upon thy face ! ” She would have
touched it with her lips, licked it with her tongue, an antepast
of her revenge. Believe all that welcoming sincere, and she
seems an angel. Know that ’tis all deceitful, and she is worse
than the wickedest of the Demons. How religious ! How
impious ! How blasphemous !
“Jove ! Jove! thou perfect and perfecting one,
Perfect my prayers, and whatsoe’er to do
Thou hast in hand, to do it be thy care.”
Turn from iEschylus to Shakespeare, from Agamemnon to
Macbeth. When King Duncan is about to enter the Castle in
which he is murdered, what says he ?
“ This Castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
Banquo. This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here ; no jutty, frieze, buttress,
Nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made
His pendent bed and procreant cradle : where they
Most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air
Is delicate.”
And how does Lady Macbeth receive her king?—she who
some short hour before had said,
“ Come ! thick night,
A nd pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell !
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes ! ”
Why, she receives her king as a lady should, with bland aspect
438
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
and a gentle voice, but over-courteously, mark ye tbat, for the
wife of a Highland Thane.
“ All our service
In every point twice done, and then done double,
Were poor and single business, to contend
Against those honours deep and broad wherewith
Your majesty loads our house : for those of old,
And the late dignities heap’d up to them,
We rest your hermits.”
•
’Tis not so bad, perhaps, to murder one’s king as one’s hus¬
band. But both are bad, very bad ; and then such hypocrisy
is unpardonable !
People will write about what they do not understand—
perhaps they are doing so now ; but we hope the best. The
ingenious reviewer of Sclilegel on the Drama, in the Edin¬
burgh Review (the number is an old one, and the reviewer,
we believe, was Mr Hazlitt), endeavours, after Sclilegel, to
state the essential distinction between the peculiar spirit of
the modern or romantic style of art, and the antique or classi¬
cal. All he can make out is this—that the moderns employ
a power of illustration which the ancients did not, in compar¬
ing the object to other things, and suggesting other ideas of
beauty or love than those which seem to be naturally inherent
in it. And he explains his meaning by reference to Shake¬
speare’s description of soldiers going to battle,—“ All plumed
like estriches, like eagles new-bathed, wanton as goats, wild
as young bulls.” “ That,” he says, “is too bold, figurative,
and profuse of dazzling images, for the mild equable tone of
classical poetry, which never loses sight of the object in the
illustration. The ideas of the ancients were too exact and
definite, too much attached to the material form or vehicle in
which they were conveyed, to admit of those rapid combina¬
tions, those unrestrained flights of fancy, which, glancing from
earth to heaven, unite the most opposite extremes, and draw
the happiest illustrations from things the most remote.”
Alas! for the futility of philosophical criticism, when the
philosopher and critic happens to be utterly ignorant of the
life and soul of the subject-matter on which he philosophises !
There is no glancing from earth to heaven in that passage of
Shakespeare. The images are closely connected with each
other, and with the earth—estriches and eagles—goats and
GREEK DRAMA.
439
bulls. But let the reader look back on Clytemnestra’s first
speech of welcome to Agamemnon, and to her speech on his
agreeing to walk over the purple path to the palace—and
then consider with himself on the knowledge or ignorance,
the wisdom or folly, of saying that the ancients u never lost
sight of the object in the illustration; ” and that to do so
would not be consistent with the u mild equable tone of classi¬
cal poetry ” ! ! !
Agamemnon is now within the palace which he will never
again leave alive, and the Chorus renews his wailings—more
woeful, the nearer they come to the catastrophe. Portents
keep flitting before his eyes, and then again he recovers
courage, and chants a less lugubrious strain. He labours,
says Mr Symmons, under a forced and involuntary inspiration.
In' his character of man, and with reference merely to his
human faculties, he is described as totally unconscious and
unsuspicious of a plot, not only then, but even subsequently,
when the catastrophe is presented more to his eyes; but in
his character of prophet, and actuated by a sudden inspiration,
he, throughout one passage in this Ode, darkly adumbrates
the death of Agamemnon. He sings,—
“ Many a time the gallant Argosie,
That bears man’s destiny with outspread sails,
In full career before the prosperous gales,
Strikes on a hidden rock,
And founders with a hideous shock ! ”
That image is perhaps but the suggestion of a melancholy
fancy, brooding over the instability of human affairs. But
having been led to this point by an involuntary train of reflec¬
tions, here, says Mr Symmons, very finely, u here, as it were,
he scents the blood; he catches, as it were, a glimpse behind
the curtain, when all of a sudden it drops, and leaves him in
darkness, amidst the embers of his expiring inspiration.”
Thus,—
“ But O ! upon the earth when once is shed
Black deadly blood of man,
Who will call up the black blood from the ground—
With moving incantation’s charm ?
Check’d not Jove himself the man,
The mighty leech, who knew so well the art
To raise the silent dead '?
440
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
I pause ! some fate from Heaven forbids
The fate within me utter more,
Else had my heart outran my tongue,
And pour’d the torrent o’er.
Silence and darkness close upon my soul,
She roars within, immured,
And in the melancholy gloom
Of dying embers fades away ! ”
But where, all this time, has been Cassandra ? Sitting
mute and motionless in her chariot, before the palace. Aga¬
memnon and his train have all entered within the gates, all
but the Trojan Princess and Prophetess. But Clytemnestra
having got her prime victim into her clutches, now seizes
upon the captive. She comes out to order in Cassandra,
with words of unkindness and insult, that harrow up one’s
soul. “ Come forth out of that wain, nor be too overweening
—too high-stomached for thy lot. What I she hears me not
—the language she is mistress of is strange—and like the
swallow’s, a barbarian talk. Nay, I have no time to dally
with her. Cannot she at least speak with inarticulate barba¬
rian hand?” Still Cassandra utters not a word. The Chorus,
always kind, tries to soothe her into speech ; but she remains
stone-still and stone-mute. Her looks are waxing wild. For
the Chorus says, “ That stranger maid, the manner of her
bearing is, as it were, of a wild beast’s newly caught! ”—
“Why, yes,” cries Clytemnestra, savagely; “why, sure she
looks as if she would rave — she who comes among us
from a new-sacked city with all its horrors fresh upon her
soul! She champs, and knows not yet how to bear the bridle;
but soon shall her bloody mettle be foamed away. But no
longer will I submit to such dishonouring; thus casting away
words upon Her! ” and Clytemnestra re-enters the palace.
Then comes the Scene of Scenes—the Inspiration of Inspir¬
ations—the Immortal Prophetic Ravings of Cassandra. We
remember dear old Henry Mackenzie once descanting to us
with his mild volubility on the prodigious power the Poets
of our modern ages possessed in describing the workings of
disordered intellect—a power which, he said, was unknown to
the ancients. He had forgotten all the Three Greek Trage¬
dians ; but we ventured to read off-hand—translating as we
went—the madness of Cassandra. The old man was aston-
GREEK DRAMA.
441
islied, and confessed that it was equal to anything in Shake¬
speare—to Lear!
“ 0 woe, woe, woe ! O Earth ! 0 Gods ! Apollo ! Apollo ! ”
So raves she for a while, the Chorus catching the contagion,
and wailing in dismal harmony with the Prophetess. Sym-
mons has here all the spirit of iEschylus.
CASSANDRA.
“ Ha ! ha ! that dismal and abhorred house !
The good gods hate its dark and conscious walls !
It knows of kinsmen by their kinsmen slain,
And many a horrid death-rope swung!
A house, where men like beasts are slain !
The floor is all in blood !
CHORUS.
The stranger seems sharp-scented like a hound,
And searches as for bodies she would find !
CASSANDRA.
These are my witnesses ! I follow them !
Phantoms of children ! terribly they weep !
Their, throats cut! and the supper that I see
Of roast flesh smoking, that their father eats !
CHORUS.
We heard, O prophetess, of thy great name ;
Ay—but we want no prophets in this house.
CASSANDRA.
Alas ! ye gods, what is she thinking on ?
And what is this that looks so young and fresh ?
Mighty, mighty is the load
She is unravelling in these dark halls !
A foul deed for her dear friends plotteth she,
Too sore to bear, and waxing past all cure !
Where’s succour? fled far off! Where’s help ? it stands at bay !
CHORUS.
What means she now ? ’twas lately Atreus’ feast ;
’Tis an old story, and the city’s talk.
CASSANDRA.
Alas ! ah wretch, ah ! what art thou about ?
A man’s in the bath—beside him there stands
One wrapping him round—the bathing-clothes drop,
Like shrouds they appear to me, dabbled in blood !
442
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
O for to see what stands there at the end !
Yet ’twill be quick—’tis now upon the stroke !
A hand is stretch’d out, and another, too !
As though it were a-grasping—look, look, look !
CHORUS.
’Tis yet all dark to me : by riddles posed,
I find no way in these blind oracles.
CASSANDRA.
Ha, ha ! Alas, alas ! What’s that ?
Is that hell’s dragnet that I see 1
Dragnet! or woman ! she, the very she
Who slept beside thee in the midnight bower,
Wife and murd’ress ! Howl, dark quires !
Howl in timbrel’d anthems dark
For Atreus’ deadly line,
And the stony shower of blood.
CHORUS.
Ye gods ! what vengeance of a Fury’s this
Thou bidd’st take up her clarion in these halls ?
As I heard thy doleful word,
Chased is my merry sprite,
And trickling up my heart has run
The blood-drop changed to saffron hue ;
Which from the spear-fallen man
Drops apace upon the ground,
Flitting together with the rays
Of the setting sun of life.
CASSANDRA.
Ha, ha ! see there ! see there !
Keep the bull from the heifer, drive, drive her away !
The bull is enchafed and hoodwink’d, and roars •
His black branching horns have received the death-stab!
He sprawls, and falls headlong ! he lies in the bath,
Beside the great smouldering cauldron that burns :
The cauldron burns,—it has a deadly blue ! ”
In many a lovely lay Cassandra then laments her lost
delights—when like a nightingale she used to sing in her
native groves—and interweaves magnificent pictures of the
destruction of Troy. All holy feasts, sacrifice, and blood of
kine, when her father kept festival in his old bowers, all un¬
availing ! Nought availed the sacrifice gorged with the blood
GREEK DRAMA.
443
of the rich meadow-feeders, to save the sacred city ! “ She
passed through the storm of passion and suffering, even as I
now shall pour out soon my warm blood upon the earth! ”
“Hush! hush!” sings the Chorus—“’Tis some God who
hath put that bad sprite into thy mind—with the power of a
demon, and with strong heavy spells, making death-bearing
outcries and horrible moans ! I am confounded—and know not
what mav be the end.” Cassandra cries, “But tliou’lt know
it soon! No longer like a bride veils the God his visage !
The oracle peeps, through the mistiness, driving the clouds
eastwards. Blow! blow! ye winds ! for soon he will come ! he
will come ! rolling his woes upon the beach of storms! soon
out of the troubled deep will he stir up huger far, and
dashing in daylight a wave against the eastern cliff! ”
“ I shall have no more
To teach you in enigmas ; I’ll speak plain.
And be ye witness whilst I, snuffing blood,
Bun on the footsteps of things done of old.
Pale phantoms brood within yon guarded towers,
And ne’er do vanish from the spectred halls ;
Screams are heard nightly, and a dismal din
Of strange, terrific, and unearthly quires,
Singing in horrid, full harmonic chord !
Like what they sing of! nothing good I ween !
And there are those, who bide within the house,
Bight hard to drive such inmates out of doors,
For, blood of mortal man since they have drank,
Their riot more unquenchable does grow ;
The Masque of Sisters ! the Erinnyes drear !
They are all seated in the rooms above,
Chanting how Ate came into the house
In the beginning : gloomily they look !
Each sings the lay in catches round, each has
Foam on her lips, and gnashes grim her teeth,
Where heavily the incestuous brother sleeps,
Stretch’d in pale slumber on the haunted bed.
Ha ! do the shafts fly upright at the mark ?
Fly the shafts right, or has the yew-bow miss’d ?
Methinks the wild beast in the covert’s hit;
Or rave I, dreaming of prophetic lies,
Like some poor minstrel knocking at the doors ?
Come, bear thou witness, out with it on oath,
That I know well the old sins of this house !”
444
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
u Who gave thee,” asks the Chorus, “ the prophetic power ? ”
“ Apollo ! Apollo ! he was the champion who vehemently
breathed upon me the breath of love and pleasing fire : I said
it should be, but I spoke him false—and for my transgression
none believed my words.”
“ O ! O ! hu ! hu ! alas !
The pains again have seized me ! my brain turns !
Hark to the alarum and prophetic cries !
The dizziness of horror swims my head !
D’ye see those yonder, sitting on the towers ?
Like dreams their figures ! Blood-red is their hair!
Like young ones murder'd by some kinsman false ;
Horrible shadows ! with hands full of flesh !
Their bowels and their entrails they hold up,
Their own flesh, O most execrable dish !
They hold it; out of it their father ate !
But in revenge of them there’s one who plots,
A certain homebred, crouching, coward lion ;
Upon his lair the rolling lion turns,
And keeps house close, until the coming of
My master !—said I master ? Out! alas !
I am a slave, and I must bear the yoke.
King of the ships, and sacker of great Troy,
Thou know’st not what a hateful bitch’s tongue,
Glozing and fawning, sleek-faced all the while,
Will do! like Atk stealing in the dark !
Out on such daring ! female will turn slayer
And kill the male ! What name to call her ? Snake,
Horrible monster, crested amphisbsena,
Or some dire Scylla dwelling amid rocks,
Engulfing seamen in her howling caves !
The raving of Hell’s mother fires her cheeks,
And, like a pitiless Mars, her nostrils breathe
To all around her war and trumpet’s rage.
O what a shout was there ! it tore the skies
A s in the battle when the tide rolls back!
’Twas the great championess—how fierce, how fell!
No, ’tis all joy, and welcome home, sweet lord,
The war is o’er, the merry feast’s begun.
Well, well, ye don’t believe me—’tis all one.
For why ! what will be, will be ; time will come ;
Ye -will be there, and pity me, and say,
‘ She was indeed too true a prophetess.’
GREEK DRAMA.
445
CHORUS.
The Thyestean feast of children’s flesh!
I know it, and I shudder! Fear is on me,
Hearing it nothing liken’d at or sketch’d,
The very truth ; but for those other things,
I heard ! and fall’n out from the course I run.
CASSANDRA.
I say thou shalt see Agamemnon’s death !
CHORUS.
Hush, hush, unhappy one, lie still thy tongue ! ”
11 What man? ” asks the Chorus, u What man such execrable
deed designs? ” u Of murder are their thoughts ? ” “I
heard strange things, strange rumours !—yet the name of a
murderer I heard not! ” “ And yet I know the Greek tongue
—ay, I could speak ! ”
“ 0 what a mighty fire comes rolling on me !
Help! help ! Lycean Apollo ! Ah me ! ah me!
She there, that two-legg’d lioness ! lying with
A wolf, the highbred lion being away,
Will kill me ! woeful creature that I am !
And like one busy mixing poison up,
She’ll fill me such a cup too in her ire !
She cries out, whetting all the while a sword
’Gainst him, ’tis me, and for my bringing here
That such a forfeit must be paid with death !
0 why then keep this mockery on my head ?
Off with ye, laurels, necklaces, and wands !
The crown of the prophetic maiden’s gone!
[Tearing her roles.
Away, away ! die ye ere yet I die !
I will requite your blessings, thus, thus, thus !
Find out some other maiden, diglit her rich,
Ay, dight her rich in miseries like me !
And lo ! Apollo ! himself! tearing off
My vest oracular ! Oh ! cruel god !
Thou hast beheld me, e’en in these thy robes,
Scoff’d at when I was with my kinsmen dear,
And made my enemies’ most piteous despite,
And many a bad name had I for thy sake ;
A Cybele’s madwoman, beggar priestess,
Despised, unheeded, beggar'd and in hunger ;
And yet I bore it all for thy sweet sake.
44G
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
And now to fill thy cup of vengeance up,
Prophet, thou hast undone thy prophetess !
And led me to these passages of death !
A block stands for the altar of my sire ;
It waits for me, upon its edge to die,
Stagger’d with blows—in hot red spouting blood !
Oh ! oh ! but the great gods will hear my cries
Shrilling for vengeance through the vaulted roofs !
The gods will venge us when we’re dead and cold.
Another gallant at death-deeds will come !
Who’s at the gates ?—a young man, fair and tall, 1
A stranger, by his garb, from foreign parts ;
Or one who long since has been exiled here :
A stripling, murderer of his mother’s breast !
Brave youth, avenger of his father’s death !
He’ll come to build the high-wrought architrave,
Surmounting all the horrors of the dome.
I say, the Gods have sworn that he shall come.
His father’s corse (his crest lies on the ground)
Pises, and towers before him on the road !
What ! mourning still ? what! still my eyes in tears ?
And here, too, weeping on a foreign land 1
I, who have seen liigh-tower’d Ilion’s town
Fall, as it fell; whilst they who dwelt therein
Are, as they are ! before high-judging Heaven !
I’ll go and do it! I’ll be bold to die !—
I have a word with ye, ye gates of Hell!
[To the gates of the palace as she is about to enter.
I pray ye, let me have a mortal stroke,
That without struggling, all this body’s blood
Pouring out plenteously, in gentle stream
Of easy dying, I may close my eyes ! ”
u 0 woeful creature,” sings the Chorus — u woeful, too, and
wise ! 0 maid ! thou hast been wandering far and wide ! But
if in earnest thou dost know thy fate, why like a heifer, goaded
by a god, why fearless dost thou walk to the altar ? ”•— u Foh !
foh ! foh! ” 11 What means foh! foh! Some loathing at thy
heart? ”— u The house breathes scents of murderous dropping
blood ! ” “ How so ? ’tis smell of burning sacrifice ! ”—“ Like
is the vapour as from out a tomb ! ” 11 A dismal character thou
givest this house ! ”—“Well! well! I’ll enter, carrying with
me all my shrieks ! I’ll enter ! E’en in these horrid domes I’ll
wail aloud myself and Agamemnon. Life, farewell! I’ve had
1 Orestes.
GREEK DRAMA.
447
enough of thee ! But remember me ! A dying woman speaks !
For maid one day shall die wife ! man for man! for that ill-
starred husband ! ”
“ Once more ! once more ! oh let my voice be heard !
I love to sing the dirges of the dead,
My own death-knell, myself my death-knell ring !
The sun rides high, but soon will set for me ;
O sun ! I pray to thee by thy last light,
And unto those who will me honour do,
Upon my hateful murderers wreak the blood
Of the poor slave they murder in her chains,
A helpless, easy, unresisting victim !
O mortal, mortal state ! and what art thou 1
E’en in thy glory comes the changing shade,
And makes thee like a vision glide away !
And then misfortune takes the moisten’d sponge,
And clean effaces all the picture out! ”
Cassandra enters the palace, and the Chorus, confounded and
lost in awe, moralises over the dangerous glories of high estate.
“ The gods,” they say, “have blessed the arms of our king!
The gods have given him the city of Priam. Home has he
returned with celestial honours. But what if now he is to
rue the blood of olden times, and dying to pay forfeit to the
dead ! Oh ! who of mortals, as he hears this story told, would
wish not that his own horoscope might be beneath a low
and harmless star ! ”
“ Agamemnon {within).
O ! 0 ! WITHIN THERE ! O ! StABB’d TO DEATH !
First Chorus.
Hist ! some one cries ! I heard a voice cry Stabb’d !
Agamemnon.
O ! O ! again ! another blow ! O ! O !
Second Chorus.
’Tis the King’s voice ! Ye Gods ! the deed is doing !
Third Chorus.
Hark ! let us quickly council what to do !
Fourth Chorus.
Let’s raise the town, and cry through all the streets,
Help ! help ! and succour to the palace-gates ! ”
Who had murdered the King of Men?—who? Why—who
could it with any propriety have been but the Queen of
448
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Women? ’Twas fitting that none but Clytemnestra should
murder Agamemnon. He was her own husband—she alone
had a right to show him into the bath, with her own hands to
put the tunic tenderly over his shoulders, and to enclose his
heroic arms within its inextricable folds, and then to smite
him on the forehead with her two-edged axe — once and
again—till down he fell, as Homer says, somewhere in the
Odyssey, like an ox at the stall. There was no one who dared,
at the instigation of Cassandra, to keep the heifer from the
bull. She gored him to death, and then filled all the byre with
her lowings and her bellowings, till echoes shook all the stalls,
and the floor ran with blood. You would not surely have had
the cowardly iEgisthus to slay his sovereign? He was a dolt
—she was a demon. u Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell.”
she strode out of the bath, forth from the palace—and, lo ! she
comes with the bloody axe over her shoulders, and proclaims
the deed to the Chorus, that they, like ballad-singers, may
chant it over Argos. Lo ! she comes ! she is here—and hush!
for she is about to speak.
-“ These hands have struck the blow !
’Tis like the deeds that have been done of yore !
Past ! and my feet are now upon the spot!
And so I did it, and I’ll not deny it,
That fly he could not, nor himself defend !
A net without au outlet, as it were
A drag for fishes, round about I staked,
An evil garment! yet all richly wrought!
I smote him twice : after two groans his limbs
Sunk under him, and then upon the ground
I clove at him again with a third blow,
To quit my vow to Hades under ground,
Warden of dead men in the pale blue lake !
Thus falling, his own life he renders up,
Sighing and sobbing such a mighty gush,
Which spouted from his streaming wounds amain,
That he cast on me the black bloody drops,
In that black dew rejoicing, as the seeds
Joy at the coming of the heaven-sent shower
Raining upon them, in the blowing hour,
When the sweet blossoms glow with purple birth.
This being e’en so, ye prime of Argive men,
Rejoice ye, if rejoicing be your mood.
I am so full of joy, that if ’twere seemly
GREEK DRAMA.
449
To pour libations on a corpse, I would do it ;
And just it were—ay, most exceeding just.
With such accursed potions he who here
Has fill’d a chalice, drinks it off hir^self !
CHORUS.
Amazement! that a woman should thus speak !
What horrid boldness ! o’er her husband’s corse !
CLYTEMNESTRA.
Ye try me like a woman weak in mind.
My heart shakes not, my tongue proclaims the deed.
And thou, or praise, or blame me, as thou wilt,
’Tis one to me. He there is Agamemnon,
My spouse—a corpse ! this right hand did the work,
A righteous handicraftsman ! Even so !
CHORUS.
What evil thing, O woman! hast thou ate,
Eatable, nursed upon earth’s venom’d lap,
Or potable, from out the hoary sea,
That thou hast put this sacrifice to burn
A midst the curses of the tongues of men '(
Thou hast cast him from thee, thou hast cut him off,
Thou’lt be cast off thyself!
A mighty hate unto thy country’s men !
CLYTEMNESTRA.
Now ye do doom me from this city flight
And hatred, and to have the tongues of men
In curses on me ; but to this man then,
No, not one word in pity didst thou speak,
Who thought no more his tender child to spare
Than a young lamb from fleecy pastures torn
From out the midst of his unnumber’d sheep,
His child, and mine ! the dearest of my womb !
When he her blood a drear enchantment pour’d
To lull the howlings of the Thracian blast!
Wasn’t that a man to drive out from the gates
To expiate pollutions ? But to me,
Sitting in audience of my deeds, thou art
A harsh judge ! But I say this unto thee !
Threaten away, for I too am prepared
In the like manner—rule me, if thou canst
Get by thy hand the mastery—rule me then—
But if the contrary be the doom of God,
I’ll teach ye lessons for greybeards to learn. - ’
VOL. VIII. 2 F
450
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Then follows a dreadful colloquy between Clytemnestra and
the Chorus. Her soul is up in the clouds—his soul is down in the
dust. She yells like an eagle, he sobs like a pigeon—she growls
like a lion, he groans like a stricken deer—what careth the Fury
for the idle imprecations of a silly old man ? He tells her,
“ Thy soul is maddening yet
As on the gore-drops fresh and wet!
A drop upon thy eyes does show
Of unavenged blood !
The time will come, when, left alone,
Thou’lt wring thy hands, and vainly moan
Thy friends away ! Thy murderers by,
Thou wilt pay blow for blow ! ”
What hath she to say in answer to that ? Quails she, in her
pride of place, already with remorse ? Sees she already the
snaky sister ? Shudders she at the avenging phantom of her
own son—Orestes doomed to shed in expiation his own
mother's blood ? You shall hear. She calls on the Chorus to
listen to her defence.
CLYTEMNESTRA.
“ And thou shalt hear my just and solemn oath !
By the full vengeance taken for my child,
By Ate and Erinnys, at whose shrines
I’ve slain this man, a bloody sacrifice,
I think not in the House of Fear to walk,
Whilst on my hearth AEgisthus burneth fire,
As he is wont, his heart still true to mine :
For he’s my boldness, and no little shield.
Low lies the man who did me deadly wrong ;
Low lies the minion of Troy’s fair Chryse'is :
And she his captive, and his soothsayer,
His paramour, his lovely prophetess,
She whom he trusted, true to him in bed,
And, on the naval galleys as she rode,
Not unrequited, what these two have done !
For he e’en so ; and she most like a swan
Kept singing still her last song in the world,
A deadly, wailing, melancholy strain :
Now on the earth she lies, stretch’d out in blood,
And her dishevell’d tresses sweep the ground :
Cold sweats of death sit on her marble face ;
His love ! his beauty ! ’Twas to me he brought
This piece of daintiness.”
GREEK DRAMA.
451
The drama is done—well done, we think; but there re¬
mains a dreadful dialogue yet between the Queen and the
Chorus. Mr Symmons has made poetry of it—but we venture
to hope that the spirit that breathes through it (the want of
the divine music of the Greek versification is a sad one), may
be given better in very literal prose. Let us try—sometimes
at a loss.
CHORUS.
Alas ! alas ! 0 that some fate, not agonising nor couch-confining,
with speed might come,—bringing upon us the endless sleep ! Since
now the most benignant Guardian of the State has been overpowered,
and endured the last extremity from the hands of his own wife !
For by his own wife hath he been murdered ! Oh law-violating
Helen ! Who singly having destroyed many heroes innumerable
lives at Troy, hast now cropped as a flower the life of the noblest of
them all—the high-honoured Agamemnon, by an inexpiable, an un¬
washed murder!
CLYTEMNESTRA.
Do not thou, we beseech thee, overwhelmed by these things, pray
for the lot of death ! Neither turn tliou thy wrath, we beseech thee,
against Helen—because she was, as thou sayest, a man-exterminator
—because singly she slew, forsooth, the lives of the Grecian heroes—
because she, so sayest thou, hath caused an incomprehensible dis¬
tress ! Why blame, why be thus wrathful with Helen ?
*
CHORUS.
Oh Deity ! who pressest heavily upon this house, and the two
descendants of Tantalus, and who con firmest in women a heart¬
gnawing strength, equal to that of men! But see—see like a hateful
raven, lawlessly placing herself on the body, and hear how she glories
hymning a strain.
CLYTEMNESTRA.
Why—now thou hast rectified the judgment of thy mouth, by.
naming the Family Demon ! the Demon of the House ! For from
this source the blood-licking lust is nourished in its bowels, and be¬
fore that the former affliction had ceased, lo ! a new blood-shedding !
CHORUS.
Assuredly thou referrest to a Demon in this house mighty and
heavy in his wrath ! Alas, alas, a grievous evil of destructive and
insatiable fortune !—Alas, alas, by means of Jupiter, the Cause of all,
the Worker of all! For what is brought about for mortals without
Jupiter ? Which of these things is not God-ordained ] Alas, alas, 0
452
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
King ! O King ! How shall I weep for thee ! What can I say out
of a woeful heart! Thou liest in the meshes of this spider, breathing
out thy life by an unholy death ! Alas, me—me ! subdued by a
treacherous destiny, there thou liest on this servile couch, by means
of a two-edged weapon brandished in the hand.
CLYTEMNESTRA.
Thou assertest that this deed is mine. But do not affirm.
that I am the wife of Agamemnon ! The ancient grim Fury of Atreus,
that stern banqueter, impersonating the wife of him that lies dead,
she hath punished him—sacrificing over the young a full-grown victim!
CHORUS.
But that you are sackless of this murder who shall testify % How ?
How 1 The Fury, indeed, sprung from his father may have been a
fellow-helper ! Black Discord constrains them by the kindred afflux
of blood ; whither also advancing, Black Discord shall give them over
to an offspring-devouring horror. Alas, alas, O King, O King !
CLYTEMNESTRA.
Methinks that he met with a death not unbecoming a freeman.
He did not, indeed, inflict mischief on this house in a guileful man¬
ner—no, not he ; but then my fair Branch sprung from him—my
much-wept Iphigenia—having used her unworthily—why, let him
not, now that he has received a worthy recompense, vaunt exultingly !
Let him not exult, having expiated, by a sword-inflicted death, the
deed which he was the first to do—the sacrifice of my Iphigenia !
CHORUS.
I am at a loss—being deprived of judgment—how I shall turn my
kindly cares—for this house is falling around me into ruin. But I
dread—I dread—the house-shaking, blood-covered rattling of the
tempest ! For the sprinkling drop by drop ceases ; and Fate, for
some other matter of vengeance, is sharpening retribution on other
whetstones !
SEMICHORUS.
Alas ! Earth! Earth ! Oh that thou hadst received me, before I
had looked upon this Man, now occupying the earth-lying couch of
the silver-sided bath! Who shall bury him 1 Who lament him ?
Wilt thou dare to do this, having slain thy own husband ?
Wilt thou dare to bewail his spirit, and for a dreadful deed unjustly
to perform an ungrateful service ? Ungrateful to the murdered !
Alas! alas! Who, pouring out with tears a funeral eulogium on
the godlike man, shall mourn in truthfulness of soul ?
GREEK DRAMA.
453
CLYTEMNESTRA.
It suits you not to speak of this concern ! By our hand he fell—
he died. And we will bury him—not with family-lamentations—
but Iphigenia, his daughter, shall cordially, as she ought, meet her
father at the swift-flowing Ferry of Sorrows, and folding him in her
arms, shall kiss her father ! Ha! ha !
CHORUS.
This reproach springs from a former reproach ; but all is mystery.
She—Iphigenia—cuts him off who cut her off—the Slayer drees his
weird. But it remains that she, the other Perpetrator, should suffer
in Jove’s destined time. For who could expel from the house this
devoted family ? Are they not all glued and fastened to one another,
and to calamity ?
CLYTEMNESTRA.
The Divine Decree hath justly fallen on this Man. Look at him !
My wish, then, is to frame a Covenant with the Demon of the Plis-
thenidse ; and though difficult to be borne, yet to bear all these
things! As to what remains, let the Demon depart and afflict
another family with self-inflicted death. Provided I have but a
small portion of the possessions, it is quite enough for me—having
driven from the house mutual-murdering madnesses!
iEgisthus now appears for the first time, and it seems to
have been the aim of iEschylus to make him as contemptible
as was consistent with the laws of the drama. He vindicates
the murder, on the score of the horrid conduct of Agamem¬
non’s father Atreus to his (iEgisthus’) father Thyestes—the
old story of the stewed children. He therefore calls himself
u righteous executioner.”
“ I have my wrongs too, like my wretched sire,
For I was with him when he took to flight,
And all his children follow’d at his back,
Thirteen in number. I, the youngest, was
Then in my swaddling-clothes, a child in arms,
Not conscious of the horrors of that day;
But I grew up, and Dike rear’d my head,
And brought me home : though exiled, I was near,
Revolving curiously each means of death,
And all the phantoms of the assassin’s soul;
And I have gall’d him : now, if it is my fate,
Why, let me die : I cannot fall disgraced,
Now I have seen him wrapt in Dike’s toils.’’
454
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
The Chorus, however, cannot stomach this argument—which
might perhaps have availed a nobler man—and they threaten
him with an evil end.
“ Sure as thou livest, I say, thou shalt not ’scape
The volleys of the people, stony showers,
And their just curses, hurled at thy head ! ”
The Chorus then upbraids him with having had the villany
to plot, without the courage with his own hand to perpetrate,
the murder. But there iEgisthus has him on the hip—for he
cries vauntingly,—
“ Why, you dull fool! ’twas stratagem and guile !
And who so fit as Woman for the plot ?
’Twould have marr’d all had I but shown my face ;
1 must have been suspected as his foe,
His ancient, old, hereditary foe.
But now ’tis done, and I am at my ease !
I’ll take his treasures, and I’ll mount his throne.”
He then, after the fashion of usurpers, threatens to scourge,
imprison, and kill all who are disobedient, and especially the
Chorus. But the Chorus is not to be intimidated in the dis¬
charge of his duty, and keeps satirising the coward to such a
pitch of virulence, threatening to call in armed people to kill
the cowardly murderer of the king, that but for the inter¬
position of Clytemnestra, we suspect the old gentleman would
have bit the dust. Clytemnestra is now the most merciful of
murderesses, and glides purring round about her prey like a
satiated tigress. How sweet!
“ Stay, stay, dearest JEgist]ms ! stay thy hands !
Let’s not do further harm. Behold, here lies
A wretched harvest which we have to reap!
We have had enough of woe ! Let's not be bloody !
But go, old men ! repair unto your homes
Before aught happens ! ’Twas the Time and Fate
That made us act e’en so as we have acted:
But with the deed sufficient has been done !
And we are plunged, alas ! full deep in woe,
Struck by the demon in his horrid rage.”
The Chorus takes the hint, and departs—muttering something
about—Orestes.
GREEK DRAMA.
455
CLYTEMNESTRA (to JEgistJlUS.)
“ Think nought of these vain barkings : Sin and I
Will take the rule, the sceptre, and the might,
And order all things in this house aright.”
[Exeunt Omnes.
The drama, then, ends well— happily —and some persons
may object to it on that score, who wish always u to assert
eternal Providence, and justify the ways of God to man.”
But in the first place, remember that it is a Greek tragedy,
and what Milton says of Fate. iEschylus lived before the
Christian era some hundred years, and the wisest men held
then strange doctrines about Jove.
But, secondly, though the last words that fall from the lips
of Clymnestra are,
“ And order all things in this house aright,”
we have our own doubts about her being able to accomplish
her household plans. We question if she were perfectly
happy that night in the arms of her paramour. Who knows
but that she walked about the palace in her sleep, wringing,
as if washing her hands, like another great sinner, and mutter¬
ing, “ Out, damned spot! ” Sleep has a very sensitive con¬
science. Somnus is as good as a Chorus, and the moment an
atrocious criminal shuts his or her eyes, the inner kingdom
undergoes a reform, which certainly is revolution. You are
wrong, then, in saying, that the tragedy ended happily—for
Clytemnestra—hanged herself!
Hanged herself! Shocking ! But Tis not mentioned in
my Lempriere. Well, then, she did not hang herself; but a
beautiful young man, almost a boy, a mere lad, cut her throat,
and haggled her body into pieces. Her own Son ! and that
was retribution. An eye for an eye—a tooth for a tooth—
blood for blood. ’Tis a law as old as the hills—and often has
the fulfilment of the law made the hills blush red, without
the aid of the setting sun. Bivers of gore have run down
their sides, and all the trees round about been like purple
beeches, from the spray of such ghastly waterfalls. Yes ! as
one of our own dramatists says,
“ The element of water moistens the earth,
But blood flies upwards, and bedews the heavens ! ”
What think ye was really the character of Clytemnestra ?
456
ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
Did her hatred of her husband originate in the sacrifice of Iphi-
genia? Perhaps. No mother can endure to see her daughter
killed “like a kid,” by her own father, even on the altar. But
we fear that her hatred of her husband grew out of her love for
her paramour—not the reverse process. The adulteress longed
to be a murderess. The two characters are kindred and conge¬
nial—and walk hand in hand. Besides, ten years is a long
absence—and many are the trials and temptations of a lone
“ widow-woman.” iEgisthus was probably the finest man-
animal in Argos—nay, in all Greece. And know you the
full force of-infatuation ? Then—are you a miserable
man or woman—and beware !
But all this throws but faint light on the darkness of the
mystery of that guilt. The secret to be told is the constitu¬
tion of Clytemnestra’s own soul. Thoughts that entered there
changed their colour. Some waxed wondrous pale, and others
grew fiery red—some were mute and sullen, others hissed like
serpents—and some roared like very thunder, rolling all round
the horizon with multiplying echoes, and then dying on the
far distance like an earthquake.
But whatever was the constitution of her soul, her conduct
was magnanimous. It showed her soul was—large. It could
hold a prodigious sum of wickedness. It was like one of the
Cauldrons of the Bullers of Buchan. They, you know, are
not only always black, but always boiling ; and the reason is,
that day and night the abysses are disturbed by the sea. The
sea will not let them rest in peace—but fills them, whether
they will or no, with perpetual foam—everlasting breakers—
an eternal surf. In the calmest day, the lull itself is dread¬
ful ; yet is the place not without its beauty, and all the world
confesses that it is sublime.
This is impressive, you say, but vague. Ay—vague enough
—dim and dismal—and so is Sin. But we beg leave to say
something more definite. Issuing from her Palace, to give
orders that the whole city should be set ablaze with sacrificial
fires, Clytemnestra looked every inch a Queen. Her figure
dilated almost to gigantic height—yet still “ grace was in
all her steps.” Her face was fierce but fair—bold but bright
—for was she not the sister of Helen ? Stately stood she, as
Juno’s self, and glorious exceedingly were the white wavings
of her arms, as she described the “ Fires that drew their line-
GREEK DRAMA.
457
age from Mount Ida; ” the Poetess of the Burning Beacons.
Never was sovereign so bid hail as Agamemnon, on his
return to Argos, by her whose words flowed richer than the
purple robes she bade be strewed beneath the victorious feet
of her lord the king. As she followed him into the palace,
she was—was she not, a magnificent Erinnys ? See her with
haughty head encircled with scorn and fire, frowning fear and
fright upon the soul of Cassandra, then awakened to the
doom of death! Imagine the Fury with uplifted axe—and
then, with brain-beaten forehead, her victim falling, a Groan,
at her feet beside the Bloody Bath. Won’t you believe her
own word ? See her then sprinkling herself with her hus¬
band’s blood, as with the dewdrops of the sunny morning.
Then down on your knees before her, as red from the sacrifice
she issues forth exultingly into the light of day, before her
own palace—for now it is her own, in the heart of her own
Argos—for now she is indeed a Queen, in presence of the
Chorus, who, you know, are the representatives of Humanity
—with the dim axe cresting her crown, and justifying the
deed, with her u I did it! ”—and then say if she be not a
more glorious being far than mortal eyes have beheld before
or since—and that but one being ever lived on earth who
might have personated the fateful Phantom,—who else but—
nay, do not start at “ the change that comes o’er the spirit of
my dream ”—who else but Sarah Siddons ?
And have we not a single word to say for Cassandra ? Not
one. Yet methinks there is one yet alive who might once
have well personated the raving Prophetess. Beautiful must
have looked the captive Princess, in her car, mute and motion¬
less as a statue, during all that kind but cruel colloquy
between Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, and the Chorus, that
determined the fate of the King, and of her his bosom-slave,
by the fate of war. Yet, though Agamemnon enjoyed what
was refused to Apollo, in soul Cassandra was still a virgin.
But when Apollo overshadowed her, and her soul awoke to all
those sights of blood, then fell down from its holy fillet all
that bright length of sun-loved hair, and shrouded her fragile
form in the mystery of madness, dishevelled in harmony with
the music that wailed from her inspired lips! Never was
madness so disastrous and so divine as hers—Poetess, Priest¬
ess, and Prophetess—raging and raving with the God. And
vol. nn. 2 G
458
ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
when in the act of flinging away all her secret adornments,
that they might not be profaned by the gushing of her own
blood, how piteously must she have implored the Chorus only
for their compassion! And when turning to take one last
look of the Day, of the Sun-God, who had turned towards her
with passion, and was shining now on her dying day, who
would have resembled the delirious victim on the threshold of
the Palace of Blood—who but she who was so beauteous as
Juliet, on the Balcony and in the Tomb—who but the
O’Neill ?
Agamemnon we saw but for a shortest hour—a glorious
tree doomed to fall in a moment axe-stricken by the woods-
woman, with all its shade and sunshine, leaving a gap in the
sky. Never saw we but one man who looked on the stage
like the “ King of Men.” Well would the Grecian regal
robes have become his majestic form,—well would that noble
face—though haply ’twas more of the u Antique Boman’s ”
than the Greek’s—have shed its mild and monarchical light
over Queen, Cassandra, Chorus—all Argos ! Who might have
adumbrated Agamemnon the Sovereign Shadow—who but—
Kemble ?
Who, the Chorus ? There have been persons who thought
the Chorus a blot on the Greek Drama!! They would have
washed it out—or cut out the piece—and left a hole in the
veil. Others have called it an encumbrance—a drag. It is
precisely such an encumbrance as a man’s soul is to his body.
But let us not allude to fools. The Chorus in the Agamemnon
is a noble character. He keeps to the affair in hand, as if he
were himself the chief actor; yet he is never too forward—
and on the wished-for opening of his lips you hear u the still
sad music of humanity! ” Who shall be the Chorus? We
must have fifteen elderly gentlemen. Let Oxford, Cambridge,
The Silent Sister, Edinburgh, Aberdeen—each send Three
Professors—and then let Christopher North be appointed The
Choragus of the Choragi. But alas! Kemble sleeps—The
Siddons “lias stooped her anointed head as low as death;”
The O’Neill “ in the blaze of her fame,” fell down into private
life, and in among all its obscure virtues ; so, how now, alas !
shall we ever be able to get up the Agamemnon ?
Let it remain, then, for ever, an unacted Drama. But what
forbids that it be acted—on that private stage which every
GREEK DRAMA.
459
man may behold nightly, free of all expense—in the Theatre
of his own Imagination ? There is the glorious Greek—there
is the no less glorious English. Look at the words—and his
as into a magic mirror. The curtain is drawn up—and lo!
Siddons as Clytemnestra! O’Neill as Cassandra! Kemble as
Agamemnon !—and Christopher North as Choragus of Chor-
agi! Hear him !
CHRISTOPHER NORTH AS CHORAGUS OF CHORAGI.
But Justice sheds her peerless ray
In low-roof’d sheds of humble swain,
And gilds the smoky cots where low-bred virtue dwells :
But with averted eyes
The Maiden Goddess flies,
The gorgeous Halls of State, sprinkled with gold,
Where filthy-handed Mammon dwells;
She will not praise what men adore,
Wealth sicklied with false pallid ore,
Though drest in pomp of haughty power,
But still leads all things on, and looks to the last hour.
END OF VOL. VIII.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
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