Page images
PDF
EPUB

Rufh to the vales, and, pour'd along the plain, Roar thro' a thousand chanels to the main; The diftant Shepherd trembling hears the found: So mix both hofts, and fo their cries rebound.

THERE is no antient author more likely to betray an injudicious interpreter into meanneffes, than Homer; as it requires the utmost skill and address to preferve that venerable air of fimplicity, which is one of the characteristical marks of that poet, without finking the expreffion or the sentiment into contempt. Antiquity will furnish a very strong inftance of the truth of this observation, in a single line which is preserved to us from a tranflation of the Iliad by one Labeo, a favorite poet, it seems, of Nero: it is quoted by an old scholiaft upon Perfius, and happens to be a verfion of the following paffage in the fourth book,

Ωμον βιβρωθοις Πριαμον Πριάμοιο τε παίδας. which Nero's admirable poet rendered literally thus:

Crudum manduces Priamum Priamique pifinnos.

I need not indeed have gone fo far back for my inftance; a Labeo of our own nation would

would have fupplied me with one much nearer at hand. Ogilby or Hobbs (I forget which) has tranflated this very verse in the fame ridiculous manner;

And eat up Priam and his children all.

BUT among many other paffages of this fort I obferved one in the fame book, which raised my curiofity to examine in what manner Mr. Pope had conducted it. Juno, in a general council of the gods, thus accosts Jupiter :

Αινοταίε Κρονίδη,

Πως εθελεις αλιον θείναι πονον ηδ' ατέλεστον ίδρωθ', ον ίδρωσα μεγῳ; καμείω δε μοι ιπποι Λαόν αγείριση, Πριαμῷ κακα, τοις τε παισιν. which is as much as if she had faid in plain English, "Why furely, Jupiter, you won't "be fo cruel as to render ineffectual all my

expence of labor and fweat. Have I not "tired both my horfes, in order to raise. "forces to ruin Priam and his family?" It requires the most delicate touches imaginable, to raise such a fentiment as this into any tolerable degree of dignity. But a kilful artift knows how to embellish the

moft

moft ordinary subject; and what would be low and fpiritlefs from a lefs masterly pencil, becomes pleafing and graceful when worked up by Mr. Pope's:

Shall then, O tyrant of th' ethereal plain, My schemes, my labors, and my hopes be vain? Have I for this book Ilion with alarms, Affembled nations, fet two worlds in arms? To fpread the war 1 flew from shore to shore, Th' immortal courfers fcarce the labor bore.

BUT to fhew you that I am not fo enthufiaftic an admirer of this glorious performance, as to be blind to its imperfections; I will venture to point out a paffage or two (amongst others which might be mentioned) wherein Mr. Pope's usual judgment seems to have failed him.

WHEN Iris is fent to inform Helen, that Paris and Menelaus were going to decide the fate of both nations by fingle combat, and were actually upon the point of engaging; Homer describes her as hastily throwing a veil over her face, and fleeing to the Scæan gate, from whence the might have a full view of the field of battle:

Aulina

Αυτίκα δ' αργενησ κάλυψαμίνη οθόνησιν,
Ώρματ' εκ θαλάμοιο, τερεν και δακρυ χέουσα
Οὐκ οιη' αμα τηγε και αμφιπολοι δύ επονο, &c.
Αίψα δ' επειθ' ικανόν, οθι Σκαιαι φυλάι ήσαν.
Il. iii. 142.

NOTHING could poffibly be more interesting to Helen, than the circumstances in which the is here reprefented: it was nèceffary therefore to exhibit her, as Homer we fee has, with much eagerness and impetuofity in her motion. But what can be more calm and repofed than the attitude wherein the Helen of Mr. Pope appears?

O'er her fair face a fnowy veil fhe threw, And foftly fighing from the loom withdrew: Her bandmaids

wait

Her filent footsteps to the Scean gate.

THOSE expreffions of fpeed and impetuolity, which occur fo often in the original lines, viz. αυτικα - ωρμαται - αιψα ικανον. would have been fufficient, one should have imagined, to have guarded a translator from falling into an impropriety of this kind.

THIS brings to my mind another inftance of the fame nature, where our Eng

lifh poet, by not attending to the particular expreffion of his author, has given us a picture of a very different kind than what Homer intended. In the firft Iliad the reader is introduced into a council of the Grecian chiefs, where very warm debates arife between Agamemnon and Achilles. As nothing was likely to prove more fatal to the Grecians than a diffenfion between those two princes, the venerable old Neftor is represented as greatly alarmed at the confequences of this quarrel, and rifing up to moderate between them with a vivacity beyond his years; this circumftance Homer has happily intimated by a fingle word: ταισι δε Νεεωρ

ΑΝΟΡΟΥΣΕ.

Upon which one of the commentators very justly obferves - ut in re magna et periculofa, non placide affurgentem facit, fed prorumpentem fenem quoque. This circumftance Horace feems to have had particularly in his view in the epiftle to Lollius:

Neftor componere lites Inter Peleiden feftinat et inter Atriden.

Ep. 1. 2.

But

« PreviousContinue »