NOTICES AND CRITICISMS. BELLES-LETTRES. The Niad of Homer, Translated into English blank verse by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. Vol. 1. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1870. pp. 398. It would seem as though the world had just waked up to a sense of the wonderful beauties of the grand old heroic poem, and would not be satisfied without having it presented to view in every variety of costume. Mr. Bryant's version has followed close upon the Earl of Derby's, and before the former has been completed another (Mr. Caldcleugh's) has appeared. We hope they will continue to come until some version which shall really present to the reader the force and beauty of the original shall be produced. Hitherto not one of the translations, which have appeared in English, has done this ; and we consider the principal reason of it to be the unfortunate choice of metre for the foreign dress. The Homeric metre is the hexameter, and the peculiarity of it consists in the pause in the middle of the third syllable of the line, and in the “swing” (if we may use the expression) with which each line ends. For example: Τίσει αν Δανα | ου Η έρμα | δάκρυα | σοισι βε | λεσσιν, 1 2 2 3 4 5 6 *Os õpa burn loas 1 åné 1 Bn kopu 1 Baíodos l'Extwp | Now, no rendering of this into any other metre than the hexameter will produce the peculiar melody of it. And of all the unfortunate metres that could be chosen to try the experiment with the pentameter is the worst. There is a stiffness about it that precludes anything approaching to freedom, and, therefore, we regret that Mr. Bryant should have followed the examples of Pope, Cowper, and Lord Derby, and added one more to the list of imperfect renderings of the Greek. Pope's cannot properly be called a translation; it is a paraphrase, which, as a rule, distorts the original, and destroys more than half its beauty, of which the translator seems to have possessed no adequate idea. As for Cowper's version it may be characterized as generally ineffective and frequently feeble. Lord Derby's is better, and Mr. Bryant's, we are glad to say, is better still. It is, in general, faithful to the meaning of the poet, and, therefore, he may well be congratulated. Still, we repeat our regret that so much labor should have been employed on the pentameter metre, and we confess our surprise at the following passage in his preface : ** I did not adopt the hexameter, principally for the reason that in our language it is confessedly an imperfect form of versification, the true rhythm of which is very difficult for those whose ear is accustomed only to our ordinary metres to perceive. I found that I could not possibly render the Greek hexameters line for line, like Voss in his marvellous German version, in which he has not only done this, but generally preserved the pauses in the very part of the line in which Homer placed them. We have so many short words in English, and so few of the connective particles which are lavishly used by Homer, that often when I reached the end of the Greek line I found myself only in the middle of my line in English. This difficulty of subduing the thought-by compression or expansion of phrase-to the limits it must fill would alone have been sufficient to deter one from attempting a translation in hexameters." This confession of inability is at least honest; but that the thing canpot be done we deny in toto. The English language has produced some very sweet poetry in hexameters, of which it is sufficient to cite Professor Longfellow's “Evangeline” as a proof. That metre is capable of great variety of expression, but hitherto it has not been applied to any lofty subject, except by Southey, in his “ Vision of Judgment,” which, it must be confessed, was a lamentable failure, and drew down an amount of ridicúle upon the hexameter verse from which it has scarcely recovered even now. By resorting to the pentameter verse Mr. Bryant has lengthened the number of lines fully one fourth, and in some instances more than that. He speaks of its flexibility, but that is an open question. It was much in vogue during the last century, and the great masters of it were Dryden and Pope, who followed in the wake of Milton, the greatest of all. But their productions are too often stiff and inflated in their style, though filled with noble thoughts and happy imagery. The most melodious specimens of the pentameter with which we are acquainted are Byron's “Corsair” and “Lara," and Moore's “ Veiled Prophet of Kbarassan," But conceive the “Iliad" done in that style! It would be but a repetition of Pope's monstrosity. We have said that it is possible to render the “Iliad” into English in hexameter, line for line and pause for pause; and as it would be but fair if Mr. Bryant were to challenge us to the proof we offer the following as a specimen. The lines we have selected, almost at random, are from the celebrated meeting and parting of Hector and Andromache in the Sixth Book: We are far from pretending that either accentuation or rendering are faultless; we simply assert that the foregoing shows that a very close approximation to the original can thus be made, line for line and pause for pause. The only words here introduced, to fill up the metre, occur in the fifth and sixth lines, and are enclosed within brackets; all the others are rendered literally. This extract consists of twelve lines in the original; in Mr. Bryant's version it occupies fifteen, and runs thus : "So epake the plum'd Hector, and withdrew And reached his pleasant palace, but found not We may, perhaps, be allowed a few verbal criticisms on this rendering. The word evnenos cannot be properly translated "stately"; the adjective “bright-haired " is applied by the poet to Minerva, and not to the Trojan wonen; and it is a license to translate domovs evvalt Tarvtas (which is in the plural) by “his pleasant palace” (which is in the singular). The expression “sorrowed, shedding tears" is infelicitous, and has not the force of the original "weeping and wailing." Equally infelicitous renderings may be found elsewhere, whereby the sense of the passage is enfeebled. A notable instance of this occurs in the beautiful which is rendered by Mr. Bryant : "till the dark-eyed maid Freely and without ransom be restored To her beloved father," which, we are sorry to say, is little better than prose. Fault-finding is very easy and very ungracious when not resorted to with a good object. Therefore, when there is so much to commend as there is in Mr. Bryant's translation, we will abstain from what might perhaps be called hyper-criticism. Yet we would point out the fact that the attempt to compress Homer into pentameter has led Mr. Bryant, as it has other translators, to leave out a portion-and a not unimportant portion of the text occasionally. Here is an illustration of our meaning. Mr. Bryant has it : " And now the Achaian judges bear it,-they Fully translated, this passage should read thus : “But now the justicedispensing sons of the Achaians bear it in their hands, they who also watch over the statutes from Zeus. And, indeed, great [i. e. of great consequence to thee shall be the oath when the desire for Achilles shall seize the collected sons of the Achaians. Then thou shalt in no wise be able, though deeply troubled, to ward off [the calamity] when many shall fall dying under the man-slaughtering Hector. Then thou, raging, shall tear the soul within thee, because thou didst insult the bravest of the Achaians." It will be seen from this contrast how much more forcible the original is as regards the portions in italics. “Such is my oath,” in no way conveys the meaning of the text; it is, in fact, not a translation of the passage, ο δε του μέγας εσσεται όρκος. If it be contended that the rythm and poetry of the passage did not admit of its being rendered in any other way, we offer the following contradiction in hexameter : But now the Achaian dispensers of justice There is great force in Mr. Bryant's remarks respecting the anomaly which we find in the poem respecting the cause of the war, and the fact that it should have been carried on so long when it might have been terminated at any moment by the surrender of Helen, and, in fact, a treaty was actually entered into between Menelaus and Paris to terminate the war by a duel, but the duel came to nothing. Antenor, in a council of the Trojans, proposed that Helen should be given up, and Priam and all the Trojan chiefs agreed to it, but Paris objected, and therefore she was retained. It is inexplicable, and that is all that can be said about it, unless we adopt the theory of Herodotus* that "it was the divine will that the Trojans should be destroyed, root and branch, in order to make it plain to mankind that the gods inflict great punishments upon great crimes." He assertst that he was told by the Egyptian priests that Helen never was carried to Troy, for that Paris, after leaving Sparta, was driven by storms to Egypt, and the Egyptian king, Proteus, detained her until her husband should come for her, at the same time sending Paris out of the country. When the Greeks reached Troy and demanded her, the Trojans solemnly assured them that she was not in their power, but the latter were unable to convince their foes of the truth of this statement, and so the war was prosecuted to the last. The poet, however, ignores all this, and besides he lived before Herodotus. The short time occupied by the transactions of the heroes before Troy proves that Homer intended only to celebrate an episode of the war, and not to write a history of it. The Niad of Homer. Translated into English verse. By W. G. CALD CLEUGH, author of " Eastern Tales,” and “The Branch and other poems.” Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co. pp. 444. On perusing this volume, the question occurred to us “why was it published ?” A translation of the Iliad in the old-fashioned pentameter metre can no longer add anything worth reading to our literature. Pope, Cowper, Derby, and Byrant having each given us his version of the poem in that metre, there was but little likelihood that Mr. Caldcleugh could do more than they had done, and he has done no more; indeed, he has not done so much ; for they, at least, adhered to correctness in their metre, and in general to the classic and proper mode of pronouncing proper names, but he has shown a wonderful spirit of independence in these respects. There is scarcely a page in which we do not meet with false quantities, defective metre, and mispronounciation. To such an extent have these defects been carried that we have been led to doubt whether |