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, O¿λoμévny. The translators 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.

Ατρείδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος ̓Αχιλλεύς.

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.

“Ως ἔφατ' εὐχόμενος, τοῦ δ ̓ ἔκλυε Φοῖβος Απόλλων,

Βῆ δὲ κατ' Οὐλύμποιο καρήνων χωόμενος κῆς,
Τόξ ̓ ὤμοισιν ἔχων ἀμφηρεφέα τε φαρέτρην
Ἔκλαγξαν δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ὀϊστοὶ ἐπ ̓ ὤμων χωομένοιο,
Αὐτοῦ κινηθέντος· ὁ δ ̓ ἤμε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς.
Εζετ' ἔπειτ' ἀπάνευθε νεῶν, μετὰ δ' ἰὸν ἕηκεν·
Δεινὴ δὲ κλαγγὴ γένετ' ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο.
Οὐρῆας μὲν πρῶτον ἐπώχετο καὶ κύνας ἀργοὺς,
Αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ' αὐτοῖσι βέλος ἐχεπευκὲς ἐφιεὶς
Βάλλ'· αἰεὶ δὲ πυραὶ νεκύων καίοντο θαμειαί.

-I. 43-52.

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 Broo, he is himself poîCos 'Aπóλλwv-Etty might paint him, Macdonald 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 imagination, 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 trueand 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 Broño; and then letting it generalise itself away into the mere presence of the unweariable activity of death.

Competitors! right shoulders forward—wheel!

CHAPMAN.

"Thus he pray'd, and Phoebus heard him prayAnd, 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."

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,

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 translator 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-loosing 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.

Dryden sadly mistakes and mars the majestic meaning of

Εκλαγξαν δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ὀϊστοὶ ἐπ ̓ ὤμων χωομένοιο,

Αὐτοῦ κινηθ ἐντος"

"His bow twang'd, and his 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!"

As much as to say, we presume, that though before his "bow twang'd" it had not been bent with full force. "Glorious 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 "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.

passage.

Tickel's translation is nearly a total failure. Vengeful "warrior," is somewhat impertinent.

"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. "Resound" should have been "resounded," 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