priest; and, on the other hand, Homer would never have represented the king so forgetful of his dignity as to use the coarse terms, worthy of Thersites, which Dryden puts into his mouth. Dryden makes no attempt to follow Homer in the simple details of Chryseis' charms; and his carelessness appears alike in the ambiguous grammar of the line: I should not suffer for your sakes alone, and in the introduction of a line of fourteen syllables into Still must that tongue some wounding message bring, There is here nothing of the scolding style which, in Dryden's version, debases the dignity of the speech. The rendering is paraphrastic, like Dryden's, but it is shorter and closer to the original: the rhythm and the rhetoric are both excellent. As against these merits, the diction is far from Homer's simplicity, and is coloured with the gallant phraseology of the Caroline court. Where the Greek says simply: "I prefer her (Chryseis) to Clytemnestra, my lawful wife, for she is not inferior to her, etc.," Pope says, after the exaggerated manner of Statius, parts of whose Thebais he had translated before coming to Homer: Not half so dear were Clytemnestra's charms, And, characteristically, he assigns a more refined reason to Agamemnon's demands for compensation than Homer had thought of :— But since for common good I yield the fair, My private loss let grateful Greece repair. In spite of these faults, which are typical of the work as a whole, the translation of the Iliad by Pope is the greatest performance of the kind in our own or any other language, and the completion of it fully deserved the national triumph, picturesquely commemorated by Gay in his Welcome to Mr. Pope on his Return from Greece. So widely was it read that its diction and versification came to exercise throughout the eighteenth century an unprecedented influence on the course of metrical composition, and had Cowper confined his criticism of Pope's poetical style to his work as a translator, he would have been fully justified in maintaining that "every warbler has the tune by heart." It was indeed impossible that, in rendering many thousands of Greek lines of narrative into English, all evidence of "mechanic art" should be concealed by the poet. The mannerism of the translation is conspicuous. Full as the Iliad is of varied incident, character, and pathos, yet, as narrative poem, it a necessarily contains many level tracts, in which the translator's business is restricted to giving a correct version of this original in his own style. Such passages, of course, are the most easy of imitation: hence what is often erroneously called "the Pope style" "the Pope style" was caught up and constantly repeated by hundreds of versifiers. The first example of this all-pervading metrical influence is furnished by Pope's own translation of the Odyssey. Here the commercial and mechanical element The in the undertaking was unfortunately manifest. Odyssey itself was greatly inferior to the Iliad in heroic dignity and pathos: its interest lay in its adventures; and a translator could gain an adequate amount of credit by telling the story in flowing verse. Naturally, therefore, the manner of narrating adopted by Pope in the Iliad became the most characteristic feature in the work; and this was so successfully imitated by the two assistants whom he had chosen that it is practically impossible to discriminate between the versions of the scholars and that of the master. Elijah Fenton, the elder of the two, was born at Shelton, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, on the 20th of May 1683. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and took his B.A. degree in 1704. As a steady Nonjuror he seems to have earned the esteem of Pope, who used his influence to procure for him the appointment of tutor in the family of Lady Trumbull. In his tragedy of Mariamne (1723), Fenton showed some dramatic ability; and he was a friend and admirer of the playwright Southerne.1 He died in August 1730. 1 He was William Broome, Pope's other assistant, was the son of a farmer in Cheshire, and was born in 1689. educated at Eton, where he was captain of the school, and afterwards (as there was no vacancy at King's College in his year) at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he became a sizar on the 10th of July 1708, taking his B.A. degree from it in January 1711-12, and his M.A. in 1716. He had a great facility of imitating other men's styles, an accomplishment which probably recommended him to Pope as a translator, though the latter afterwards satirised him on this account in the Bathos: he was also scholar enough to furnish the necessary notes. He died in 1745. 2 I have told the curious story of this translating partnership in my Life of Pope: the whole transaction savours disagreeably of the tricks of trade. Pope had the 1 See his verses to him on p. 427. 2 Elwin and Courthope's edition of Pope's Works, vol. v. chapter ix. lion's share of the profits--as was fair enough; nor do I think that there is any ground for the charge brought against him by the Dunces of treating his partners shabbily; his fault rather lies in the deception he practised on the public, by making it appear that he was practically responsible for the entire translation. He had no wish to gain credit for what did not belong to him (for evidently the work could add nothing to his reputation), but he was anxious that the translation should not suffer in the market, by being supposed largely the production of less famous hands than his. Fenton, a lazy and goodnatured man, fell in readily with this view of the matter, as far as he thought he honourably could; but Broome, vain and talkative, and caring more for fame than money, fancied that he was being unjustly deprived of the reputation due to him. Afraid to oppose Pope's manœuvres openly, he talked about them behind his back, and thus furnished materials for the reports that were widely spread by the poet's enemies of his dirty conduct to his partners. 1 Another translator, who carried what has been called the Pope style to excess, was Christopher Pitt. Born in 1699, he was sent in 1714 to Winchester, where he had translated the whole of the Pharsalia before he entered New College, Oxford, in 1719. He took his M.A. degree in 1724, and became Fellow of his College, but resigned the position on being appointed rector of Pimpern, in Dorsetshire. In 1725 he published his translation of Vida's Art of Poetry: his translation of the Eneid appeared in 1729. He died in 1748. Of Pitt's translation of the Eneid, Johnson says with his customary under-note of sarcasm :— Pitt, engaging as a rival with Dryden, naturally observed his failures, and avoided them; and as he wrote after Pope's Iliad, he had an example of an exact, equable, and splendid versification. With these advantages, seconded by great diligence, he might successfully labour particular passages, and escape many 1 He was not aware at the time that it had been translated by Rowe: his own version was never published. errors. If the two versions are compared, perhaps the result would be, that Dryden leads the reader forward by his general vigour and sprightliness, and Pitt often stops him to contemplate the excellence of a single couplet-that Dryden's faults are forgotten in the hurry of delight, and that Pitt's beauties are neglected in the languor of a cold and listless perusal-that Pitt pleases the critics, and Dryden the people-that Pitt is quoted and Dryden read. This is very happy that it is also just may be seen by the following two versions of the death of Priam in the second Eneid, a passage that had already been rendered by Gavin Douglas, the Earl of Surrey, and Phaer, whose translations may also be found in the second volume of this History:1 DRYDEN Perhaps you may of Priam's fate inquire; In arms disused invests his limbs, decayed Uncovered but by heaven, there stood in view Of dames, for shelter sought, but sought in vain. Their images they hug, and to the altar fly. The queen, when she beheld her trembling lord, And hanging by his side a heavy sword, "What rage,” she cried, "has seized my husband's mind? 1 Vol. ii. pp. 134-136. |