Arising silent, wrapt in holy fear,

Before the Majesty of Heaven appear.

Trembling they stand, while Jove assumes the throne," &c.

COWPER.

"Their conference closed, they went. She, down at once,
With headlong plunge into the briny deep,
And to his own ethereal mansion, Jove.
His dread approach perceived, uprose the Gods,
And all at once, to meet the sire of all.
He reach'd his throne and sat."

SOTHEBY.

"Their conference o'er, the Ocean Nymph again
Down from Olympus plunged beneath the main.
Jove sought his palace: as their sire appear'd,
The Gods his might and majesty revered;
None dared regardless linger on his seat—
But on their king's advance arose to greet.
Jove on his throne reclined," &c.

Dryden may be called-should you happen to be in good humour-spirited; should you happen, "as is your custom of an afternoon," to be in spirits yourself, then you probably will call him splendid. But to us, who are scribbling away

"In the silence of midnight's contemplative hour,"

with no refreshment on the table but our snuff-box (filled, by the by, with Incomparable, a kindly-taken present, at a pinch, from our unforgetful friend in Wigmore street, No. 6), the version is far from first-rate. In Homer, Thetis vanishes in a moment Eis ära äλro Babsiav,-in Dryden, she is nominative to three verbs. She "goes," she "seeks," and she "leaves." She lingers in that long lazy line-when she should have been off like a shot-down to the deep like a sea-eagle.

"The Powers resort,

Each from his house, to fill the sovereign's court,"

is good in itself, but bad, in so far as it is a misreading-for the Powers were already at court, and Homer says they rose up from their seats. But a mere mistake of ignorance is not to us half so offensive, in a translator of Homer, as a wilful

error of arrogance, and therefore we are here gentle upon John.

Pope, here, is much inferior to his Master. In the first line, "flies" is not at all the right word; neither is "starry mansion," in the second; yet the suddenness of the parting is given, and the rapidity of the motion of the sea-diving and of the sky-soaring Immortal. "Rapt in holy fear" are words that, to our ears, seem not rightly applied to a Synod of Heathen Gods and Goddesses. They sound too Scriptural-we hope we are mistaken-but we are not mistaken, we fear, in objecting to "Trembling they stand." What, may we ask, were they so very much afraid of? Still we pass Pope, by no means a pauper, with praise, to the next parish.

Cowper, again, beats both Dryden and Pope hollow. He was full of Homer then-when he saw Thetis

"Down at once

With headlong plunge into the briny deep; "

and how calm the contrast of

"And to his own ethereal mansion, Jove !”

What can be better, too, than

Nothing. Cowper, again, had Milton in his mind. He leans on the right arm of Homer, and on the left of Milton-and so doing, he is not likely to fall to the ground.

Sotheby is rather better, perhaps, than Pope-but very inferior to Cowper. "Ocean nymph" we do not relish— we hardly know why-applied here to Thetis. She was an Ocean nymph, but here we look on her as the mother of Achilles, and wish Sotheby had called her Goddess. Homer here calls her simply, and we prefer that monosyllable with its aspirate. "Again" is scarcely correct. She did not plunge "again." It was her first and only plunge—that day. Linger on his seat" "is not the potato." "Reclined" is surely not "xadser." We believe he sat down on his throne, καθεζετ. as straight as a pole or a pine. Stop-perhaps not. He leant a little back-like a glorious oak-tree-slightly off the perpendicular, yet with its golden crown steadfast in the sunshine.

66

แ

Where is Tickel? Under a heap of slips. Let us see how he and Addison-for Pope shrewdly suspected the Spectator had a finger in the pie-manage the matter.

"Believe my nod, the great, the certain sign,
When Jove propitious hears the powers divine,
The sign that ratifies my high command,

That thus I will; and what I will shall stand.
This said, his kingly brow the Sire inclined,
The large black curls fell awful from behind,
Thick shadowing the stern forehead of the God:
Olympus trembled at the MIGHTY NOD.
The Goddess smiled ; and with a sudden leap,
From the high mountain plunged into the deep.
But Jove repair'd to his celestial towers,
And as he rose, uprose the immortal powers.
In ranks on either side the assembly cast,
Bow'd down, and did obeisance as he past,
To him enthroned," &c.

'Pon our honour, Tickel, or Addison, or both, have acquitted themselves admirably. They have deviated a little too much from the words, but they have preserved the spirit of Homer, and they need not shrink from comparison with the best of their competitors.

But where all this while has been sleeping old Chapman ? Why, we have been sitting on the flat folio. Let us see.

"To thy prayer my eminent head shall move, Which is the great sign of my will with all the immortal states; Irrevocable; never fails; never without the rates

Of all powers else; when my head bows, all heads bow with it still, As their first mover, and gives power to any work I will.

He said; and his black eyebrows bent; above his deathless head Th' ambrosian curls flow'd; great heaven shook; and both were severed,

Their counsels broken. To the depth of Neptune's kingdom dived Thetis from Heaven's height; Jove arose, and all the Gods received (All rising from their thrones) their Sire, attending to his court. None sat, when he rose ; none delay'd the furnishing his port, Till he came near-all met with him, and brought him to his throne," &c.

The old boy had certainly a fiery spirit, and an energetic style. Be satisfied to skip or slur over all his asperities and

VOL. VIII.

roughnesses; as you value your life, to steer clear of his jawbreakers; and shut your eyes, if you can, against the bold blunders that he dashes into your face, and you may often be roused and elevated by his Iliad. He himself thought his translation a great work. He speaks of "the frontless detractions of some stupid ignorants that, no more knowing me than their own beastly ends, and I ever (to my knowledge) blest from their sight, whisper behind me-vilifying of my translation; out of the French affirming them," &c.; and afterwards saith of the judicious reader, "that he will easily see I understand the understandings of all other interpreters, and commenters, in places of his utmost depth, importance, rapture." And again, "For my other fresh fry, let them fry in their foolish galls; nothing so much weighed as the barking of puppies, or foisting-hounds; too vile to think of our sacred Homer, or set their profane feet within their lives' lengths of his threshold."

The old bouncing buck then tells us, that he has "not left behind him any of his (Homer's) sentence, elegance, height, intention, and invention;" and then to show his humility, he saith, "I know I cannot too much diminish and divest myself," which he does by elsewhere informing us that he translated the last twelve books in fifteen weeks! We must have an article on Chapman.

Mercy on us! here is that little thick, black, beast-Old Hobbes-We mean his Homer. Hark!

"But go, lest she observe what you do here.
I'll give a nod to all that you have spoken;
That you may safely trust to, and not fear-
A nod from me is an unfailing token.

This said, with his black brows he to her nodded,
Wherewith displayed were his locks divine;
Olympus shook at stirring of his godhead,
And Thetis from it jump'd into the brine.
And Jupiter unto his house went down!
The gods arose and waited on him thither;
But unto Juno it was not unknown

That he and Thetis had conferr'd together," &c.

This is the unconscious grotesque, and burlesque of the sublime and beautiful, and will never, we venture to prophesy, be carried farther by any mortal Momus aping Apollo.

HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS.

CRITIQUE II.

[MAY 1831.]

READER, beautiful or brave! lend us your ears, while again we seek to hold with you converse high about old Homer and the Heroic Age. These are mechanical times in which we live; those knew no machinery but of the gods. Now, Science, the son of Intellect, is sole sovereign; then, the Muses, daughters of Memory, queenlike reigned on earth. Three thousand years ago, Rhapsodists roamed o'er continent and isle—all last summer we saw not so much as a poetical pedlar. Reason is our idol now-we bow down to it, and worship it; and Imagination, though she still have a dwelling-place in the world of Poetry, has been banished from life.

We, however, the Magicians, hold by another creed. We rejoice in being-we shall not say how far-behind the age in which, nevertheless, we flourish. The president of a mechanics' institution, in the suburbs of a hardware town, does not seem to us the beau-ideal of humanity. The schoolmaster who is now often abroad-when he ought to be at home-is less an object of our admiration than many an unlettered swain who lived before Cadmus. We can see much to rejoice in, throughout the ongoings even of that life,

“When wild in woods the noble savage ran;"

but then it is that our hearts burn within us, when that barbarian,

The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle,"

brings before our eyes a whole host of barbarians, some of them "dark with excessive bright"-Agamemnon and Achilles -for specimen or example-who, glaring on that Devoted