COWPER. "The Trojan host Meantime, impatient to regain the town, SOTHEBY. 66 Meantime the rest, Crowd urging crowd, through Troy's throng'd portals press'd; Rush'd like a flood, once more to breathe in Troy.” Homer means merely to give the liveliest picture of rout, confusion, and fear; and of fear-the blind and utter selfishness. All alike regardless of each other, and, for the time, cowards all, into the town they rush helter-skelter, pell-mell. He had no thought of making the picture a grand one; and though the words are strong as strong can be, and go hurrying and staggering along, there is no magniloquence. Chapman saw and felt this; and in his heart arose such scorn and contempt for the fugitives, that he gave expression to the bitterness, and closes purposely with a line almost ludicrous. We cannot find much fault with him for doing so; though we suspect he supposed-mistakenly-that something of the same sort was intended by Homer in “ ὅν τινα τῶν γε πόδες καὶ youva σáwoai." He seems to have thought these words almost equivalent with “ as fast as their legs could carry them." And if Homer had said so, we really should not have objected to it. "The ports cleft to receive the rout that pour'd itself in," is a picturesque and powerful paraphrase, and it is Homeric. The next two The The first four lines of Pope are admirable. are in themselves good, but they are unnecessary, and had been better away-all but the "sudden joy confused," which is, though free, yet not an untrue version of àcπacío. last two lines are exceedingly sonorous, and mighty magnificent, no doubt, but they are needless supernumeraries, and, especially the concluding one, unlike Homer's usual style, and most alien from the spirit of this particular passage-and that nobody can deny. Neither is Cowper's version-though vigorous-all right. "Impatient" is a poor tame word for domácío; and “ entering closed the gates," poorer and tamer still for #iç ö “μTANTO ÚZÉVTWV — which is indeed "the perfection of ener getic brevity." "With eager haste" has the same faulttameness; but all the rest is good-though the whole description, thus weakened, wants tumult and terror. It is not forceful. Sotheby, perhaps, is the most successful. But what word in his version is equal to polnuέvor? "Pause" is not, to our ears, good for μeñva; and "who swell'd the slain," to our ears-they may be fastidious--is bad for "who had fallen in battle." The last two lines are good; yet “fearful joy" we doubt being Homeric; and ouro, "are pour'd in," is better than "rush'd like a flood," for it implies the flood, and saves a simile, which Homer in the hurry had no leisure for; he writes as if he himself had narrowly escaped being trampled to death, or jammed up flat against post or pillar. But Achilles has one more fight before him, ere he be at "the top of the tree," and wear the baldrick of the Champion : "In somnis ecce ante oculos moestissimus Hector Visus adesse mihi!" But on that combat, and on the character of Achilleswhen he shall stand before us a full-length portrait-as yet he is but kit-cat-we shall ere long enter into colloquy with thee, heroic reader; till then farewell to Homer, and his four illustrious friends-Chapman, Pope, Cowper, and Sotheby. HOMER AND HIS TRANSLATORS. CRITIQUE V. ACHILLES. [FEBRUARY 1832.] ONE man has put to rout a whole army, and filled a city with fugitives-and is not that Bombast? No; it is sublimityfor that one man is Achilles—that city is Troy; and the poet of the Fear and Flight is Homer. Not in all poetry is there such another continuous blaze of inspiration as that which wraps the Iliad from the hour when Achilles is told of the death of Patroclus to that when he falls asleep,-" revenge and all ferocious thoughts," dead within him, in the bosom of Briseïs. We have been in the very heart of that blaze—we are in it still—and we shall abide in it, till, with the ransomed corpse of his beloved son, we behold Priam returning in his car to Troy from the Tent of the Destroyer. The city gates are shut-and within, reclining against the battlements, the Trojans, who had "been driven like hunted. fawns into the town," are slaking their fiery thirst with drink; while you may behold the Grecians, "beneath one roof of well-compacted shields," advancing towards the walls. But you forget all within and all without the walls -your eyes overlook them as things of no worth-for, lo! standing exposed before the Scæan gate-Hector! and in the immediate neighbourhood of-Achilles ! And why tarry the feet of the son of Thetis? Why kills he not, at that moment, the murderer of his Mencetiades ? Because he is parleying with Apollo. "Achilles! mortal thyself, why pursuest thou me immortal?" "Of all the Supernals! to me most adverse, Archer of the skies! Thou hast defrauded me of great renown-and would that on thee -sun-god as thou art-I might have my revenge!" NORTH. "Thus saying (Achilles), with haughty thoughts, went towards the city, Rushing like a prize-winning horse along with the chariot, Rushing over the plain,-all resplendent, like the star Which comes forth between the rising of the day-star and Arcturus, i. e. (at the departure of summer): but most brilliant do its beams Shine amid the multitudinous stars at the milking-time1 of night, And which by name they call the Dog of Orion : Most brilliant it is, but of evil omen, And much fiery-fever brings to miserable mortals.” CHAPMAN. 66 Thus with elated spirits, Steed-like, that at Olympus' games wears garlands for his merits, The great Greek come, sphered round with beams, and showing as if the star, Surnamed Orion's Hound, that springs in autumn, and sends far His radiance through a world of stars, of all whose beams his own Cast greatest splendour, the midnight, that renders them most shown, Then being their foil, and in their points cure-passing fevers then As this were fallen to earth, and shot along the field his rays, POPE. "Then to the city, terrible and strong, 1 Audy, milking-time, morning and evening. Orion's Dog (the year when Autumn weighs), Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death. COWPER. "So saying, incensed he turn'd towards the town SOTHEBY. "Then rush'd to Troy, in fury of his speed: All good. But no time this for criticism. See! hark! loud wailing on the battlements the hoary king. What heart-and-soul-rending beseechings and supplications on his Hector to shun death! Hecuba, too, bares before her son, in sight of all the people, the bosom that gave him nourishment, and implores her hero to cope not with that dreadful adversary! "So they with prayers importuned and with tears |