But, by this sceptre, solemnly I swear

(Which never more green leaf or growing branch shall bear ;
Torn from the tree, and given by Jove to those
Who laws dispense, and mighty wrongs oppose),
That when the Grecians want my wouted aid,
No gift shall bribe it, and no prayer persuade.
When Hector comes, the homicide, to wield
His conquering arms, with corpse to strew the field,
Then shalt thou mourn thy pride; and late confess
My wrong repented, when 'tis past redress.
He said and with disdain, in open view,
Against the ground his golden sceptre threw ;
Then sat with boiling rage Atrides burn'd,
And foam betwixt his gnashing grinders churn'd."

POPE.

66 O monster! mix'd of insolence and fear,
Thou dog in forehead, but in heart a deer!
When wert thou known in ambush'd fights to dare,
Or nobly face the horrid front of war.

'Tis ours the chance of fighting fields to try,
Thine to look on, and bid the valiant die.
So much 'tis safer through the camp to go
And rob a subject, than despoil a foe.
Scourge of thy people, violent and base;
Sent in Jove's anger on a slavish race,
Who, lost to sense of generous freedom past,
Are tamed to wrongs, or this had been thy last.
Now by this sacred sceptre hear me swear,
Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear,
Which sever'd from the trunk (as I from thee),
On the bare mountains left its parent tree;
This sceptre, form'd by temper'd steel to prove
An ensign of the delegates of Jove,

From which the power of laws and justice springs,
Tremendous oaths inviolate to kings;

By this I swear, when bleeding Greece again
Shall call Achilles, she shall call in vain.

When, flush'd with slaughter, Hector comes to spread

The purpled shore with mountains of the dead,

Then shalt thou mourn th' affront thy madness gave,
Forced to deplore, when impotent to save;
Then rage in bitterness of soul, to know

This act has made the bravest Greek thy foe."

COWPER.

"O charged with wine, in steadfastness of face,
Dog unabash'd, and yet at heart a deer!
Thou never, when the troops have taken arms,
Hast dared to take thine also; never thou
Associate with Achaia's chiefs, to form
The secret ambush. No: the sound of war
Is as the voice of destiny to thee.

Doubtless the course is safer far to range
Our num'rous host, and, if a man have dared
Dispute thy will, to rob him of his prize.
Tyrant! the Greeks are women, else themselves
Would make this contumelious wrong thy last.
But hearken, I shall swear a solemn oath
By this my sceptre, which shall never bud,
Nor boughs bring forth as once, which, having left
Its parent on the mountain-top, what time
The woodman's axe lopp'd off its foliage green,
And stripp'd its bark, shall never grow again;
Which now the judges of Achaia bear,
Who, under Jove, stand guardians of the laws,—
By this I swear (mark thou the sacred oath),
Time shall be, when Achilles shall be miss'd;
When all shall want him, and thyself the power
To help the Achaians, whatsoe'er thy will;
When Hector at your heels shall mow you down,
The hero-slaught'ring Hector! Then thy soul,
Vexation-stung, shall tear thee with remorse
That thou hast scorn'd, as he were nothing worth,
A chief, the soul and bulwark of your cause.'

SOTHEBY.

"Swoln drunkard! dog in eye, but hind in heart,
Who ne'er in war sustain'st a warrior's part,
Nor join'st our ambush; for alike thy fear
In war and ambush views destruction near.
More safe, 'mid Græcia's ranks th' inglorious toil,
To grasp some murmurer's unprotected spoil.
Plunderer of slaves-slaves void of soul as sense-
Or Greece had witness'd now thy last offence.
Yet-by this sceptre, which, untimely reft
From its bare trunk upon the mountain left,
Bark'd by the steel, and of its foliage shorn,
Nor bark nor foliage shall again adorn,

But borne by powerful chiefs of high command,
Guardians of law, and judges of the land:
Be witness thou, by this tremendous test
I ratify my word, and steel my breast,

The day shall come, when Greece, in dread alarm,
Shall lean for succour on Pelides' arm:

Then, while beneath fierce Hector's murderous blade
Thy warriors bleed, and claim in vain thy aid,

Rage shall consume thy heart, that madd'ning pride,
Dishonouring me, thy bravest chief defied."

Dryden has made some hits-but also many missesAchilles at once gives vent to a matchless burst of the concentrated essence of scorn.

Οινοβαρές, κυνὸς ὄμματ ̓ ἔχων, κραδίην δ' ἐλάφοιο.

Drunkard, Dog-eye, Deer-heart!

We call this multum in parvo. Dryden leaves out both dog and deer! Incredible. And of one line makes three commentary rather than a translation.

"Arms are the trade of each Plebeian soul".

a

is a pure interpolation-and most unlike the direct charge against the king by Achilles. Nothing can be worse.

"To peel the chiefs, the people to devour,"

is in itself good, and we suppose it impossible to translate adequately the words “ Δημοβόρος βασιλεύς.” A fine fow of versification perhaps redeems this version-but at its close we feel how feeble, even in Dryden, is the proud prophecy of Achilles, who in Homer concludes with calling himself what all the world knew he was, agisrov 'Axaiv, an avowal of the consciousness of his own worth most suitable and sublime.

Pope almost entirely succeeds where Dryden utterly fails. In the first burst, he ought not, however, to have let escape him OivoCages, which is ill supplied by the whole line, though it be a strong one,

"O monster! mixed of insolence and fear."

That strong line, indeed, does not contain within it OivoCages —but the dog and deer. The line naming these animals is perfect.

Achilles becomes rather too much of the rhetorician in

Pope's hands; but he declaims with great energy, and we shall not play the captious critic on his oration. We must object, however, to two lines, which, doubtless, Pope thought a mighty improvement on Homer,

"When flush'd with slaughter, Hector comes to spread

The purpled shore with mountains of the dead.”

It is not in such pompous terms that hero speaks of hero— especially when soul-enflamed; nor is it thus that Homer makes Achilles speak of Hector. No purple shores—no mountains of the dead-simply

εὖτ ̓ ἂν πολλοὶ ὑφ ̓ Εκτορος ἀνδροφόνοιο
Θνήσκοντες πίπτωσι

"When many dying fall beneath
The hero-slaughtering Hector."

Better

Cowper, as usual, keeps close to Homer. And, after all, of a Great Poet the most literal version must be the best. to lose something-than to get much that has no business there which may be not only idle, but false to the truthmingling styles and spirits that "own antipathy "-that will with difficulty be brought to coalesce, and that cannot be amalgamated.

"O, charged with wine" is not OivoCagis, for it restricts his accusation to that hour-but Achilles calls Agamemnon a drunkard a wine-swiller or beer-barrel. Had Achilles believed him drunk then, we scarcely think he would have honoured him by such prolonged and repeated Addresses to the Throne. With that exception, his abuse of Agamemnon is well rendered-and it is Homeric.

It is dangerous to Cowper to read his translation immediately after Dryden's and Pope's. There is a richness in their diction, and a profusion of harmonious sounds overflowing the page, which, along with the rhymes, fills the ear with a music that wafts on the mind, and makes reading something like flying-a pleasure accompanied with a sense, as it were, of our own easy-working power. Meanwhile, we too often feel and think vaguely and obscurely-or perhaps not at all; and as for seeing, we can scarcely be said sometimes to see anything; for we either trust to our ears, on which occasions people shut their eyes, or we behold men and things floating away by us, like clouds on the air, or bubbles on a stream.

But Cowper strives to set before us Homer's Iliad in its simplicity-and it is often most simple when it is most sublime,

and under no delusion, or ignorance, regarding the Bard's express and definite meaning, why, to enjoy his poetry, we must see things as well as hear words; the imagination must exert itself, or, let us say the truth at once, the gentle reader will infallibly fall asleep. "How magnificent is Dryden's Homer!" "How splendid is Pope's!" But be ordered to sit down and mould a Hero from some of these magnificent or splendid descriptions, or to stain one on the canvass, and you will find, on comparing your statute or picture with the originals in Homer, that "Greek does not meet Greek," tough as may be the tug of war; and that the wondering world, if not admiring, must be left to conjecture in what forgotten ancient bard or historian you can have found such and such personages; and, above all, what it is that they are about"doing or suffering."

We have neither time nor room-nor indeed inclinationto make many particular remarks on Cowper's translation of this speech, wishing to come to Sotheby.

"When Hector at your heels shall mow you down,

The hero-slaughtering Hector."

Here, though the first line is not Homer, it is surely far better in itself, and infinitely more characteristic of Achilles, than Pope's "purpled shores and mountains of the dead,"—and shows, that if at any time Cowper is forced to depart from the original and the structure of verse must often force every translator so to do-he still writes in a kindred and congenial spirit. In like manner, Cowper changes into a different form of expression the final sentiment of Achilles, which he ought not to have done, for 'twould have been easy to have kept close to the Greek; but he adheres to the meaning of it, nay, rather intensifies it; whereas Dryden "changes the drink upon us," and for purple wine passes off pale negus, as you may assure yourself by looking at the wishy-washy stuff of the last two lines of Achilles' speech, than which nothing can be wersher, except perhaps saltless parritch.

Now, read again Sotheby-after you have read the other three-great names all, Dryden, Pope, Cowper-and read again Achilles' last speech-but not like Sir Charles Wetherell's dying words-in Homer. You have done so. And do