The Press. — London, England, 1857-07-11 00:00:00

likely to be distasteful. We have no desire to put a young author on a literary rack, and we allow some latitude to the wild speculations of an immature thinker. Mr. Buckle's mind is a vast catalogue of books ; he is a cycloptedia on two legs ; and it would be an amusing subject for speculation whether a young gentleman of his type could over fall in love. We should like to hear him attempt table-talk with three or four young ladies, and see how far his research would help him against the village curata and the militia lieu tenant. His dedication rune, "To my mother " I dedicate this the first volume of my first " work "—five volumes squeezed into one, and still nothing but a " General Introduction." Mrs. Buckle by this time must knew that her son is "out," in a publisher's sense; and the author's friends may congratulate him on having manufactured the biggest book seen for many a day. What Bentley said of War burton's "Divine Legation" is applicable to Mr. Buckle,—" This man has an enormous " appetite, but very bad digestion." Essays, Critical and Imaginative. By Pro- fessor Wilson. Vol. IV. London : Black- woods. THE latest volume of these essays is devoted entirely to classical subjects—" Homer and his Translators," and the "Agamemnon of .lEschylus." We need scarcely say that on the first-mentioned subject Wilson is thoroughly at home. There is something Homeric in the man himself; and his appreciation of the old heroes, as well as of the spirit of the bard who sung their deeds, is something far trans cending that which men of refined natures and pure taste almost invariably entertain fur them. What Byron is to some men, Words worth to others, and Tennyson to a third class, that Homer seems to have been to Christo pher North. But, notwithstanding his thorough comprehension of, and jealousy for, the beauties of the Greek original, both as a scholar and a poet, he was too catholic minded at man to join in that depreciation of his translators which has so long been the fashion, and he has accordingly devoted a long and very careful essay to a comparison of their merits, which cannot fail in some degree to reinstate them in popular estimation. The most remarkable feature in the essay, taken as a whole, is the superiority assigned to the version of Sotheby ; and although we are pleased to see somewhat tardy justice dis pensed to that elegant waiter, yet we cannot help thinking that Wilson's chivalry has in one or two instances blinded his judgment. We shall give one or two specimens of his mode of criticism, regretting that he is too full and lengthy on every remarkable passage to allow of our doing more. In the celebrated scene between Hector and Andromache, Pope, Cowper, and Sotheby are thus criticised. We select only the translation of a particular couplet : Yet while my Hector still survives, I see My father, mother, brethren, ell in thee. Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all. Once more will perish, if my husband fall. The first two lines are almost, but not quite perfect—for we miss in them the two endearing words that, to Hector's ear, must hive been the most affecting of all—the words that conclude the two most comprehensive lines ever love breathed—SaxicO; Traeccsoi-ruc," and thou art my blooming spouse !" While the last two lines—which contain the word desiderated in its proper place, " husband "—are too ingenious by far, and copied injudiciously from Chapman and Dryden, and, after all, liker Abraham Cowley than Dan Homer. The rest of Andromache's speech is, with the exception of the first two lines of it, well done ; and the two concluding lines, though not in Homer, make an affecting and a natural close, and may be more than for given. But how doth Cowper conquer the two immortal lines, and reduce !them under the English yoke ? How stands he the Test? All these are lost—but In thy wedded love, My faithful Hector—l regain thorn all. Here the meaning, the feeling, the passion is doubtless transfused into a comprehensive power of " English unde filed." The lines are good and great lines—and workby of Cowper. But Homer's, though not greater—not so great —are better, for there is a tenderness in the words he puts into Andromache's lips, which surpasses all other merit. Cowper says 'call these are lost ;" but Homer gives us all these" themselves—over again —and in a heap—at once IRlPPepaive and clustering IftsTin IV 7riTvict (Al, x.crlyvni n , ov 43i th2t 3 . C.X1 . 5 ;; letertXo;rl;. 4: THE PRESS, JULY 11, 1857. No other words under the sun can make amends for the want of these—the eye must see, the ear must hear them, from Andromache's looks and lips—else neither her heart nor ours can be satisfied nor have any rest. " Come, then, let pity plead," is good—but too modern; Homer does not say " let pity plead," but, "come now, take pity upon us," which is infinitely fuller of prayer, and there fore more natural in Andromache. All the rest is what it ought to be—except, perhaps, the last line of all, which appears pedantic. As a nhole, however, the translation is, to our feelings, better than Pope's. • • • • Look at Pope's lines—and you see they are too ambitious —Sotheby's are purely Homeric. Now for the—Test. Yes ! Sotheby has stood it with high aid, and is triumphant. Yet thou! my Hector! thou art all alone, Sire, mother, brethren, husband, all in one ! Let ten thousand translators try it, and not one will sur• pass—not one will equal—Sotheby. True, that he is in debted for these two exquisite lines almost entirely to Dryden. But how could he help that? John was before William. Therefore, all that William could do was to study John ; and, if possible, to polish up John, with the fine feeling fingers of the soul, to uttermost perfection. Pope tried to do so, and failed. Cowper proudly shunned competition, and gave the difficulty the go-by. Sotheby, by simply changing " my parents " into " sire, mother," and " lord " into " husband," and leaving alone and out the two false lines that follow, has given us Homer, and nothing but Homer--the bill, and nothing but the bill— and it is a true bill, unlike some others we oould mention, and may well bid defiance to farther reform. The rest is all good, but not perfect. "fn pity guard this tower " is nearly what it ought to be, but Andromache says, Come now, have pity, and take your station on this tower, which is more tenderly beseeching ; and she does not say, " here shield thy life," though we pardon Sotheby for making her say so, as beyond doubt that thought was in her heart, as indeed it betrays itself in her afflicted words. Yet, terrified as she was, Sotheby knows as well as we do that Andromache would not, could not, have wounded Rector's ears with such syllables as " shield thy life." They would have made his crest shiver, and dimmed the shine of his golden helmet. Leave not an orphan child, a widow'd wife, is faultless, and thus have we a few lines almost sufficient of themselves to redeem all sins either of omission or commission, which in this version, we fear, are neither few nor feeble. We confess, however, we cannot see here the singular superiority of Sotheby's lines. The second couplet of Pope is a pure interpola tion, and so far we think indefensible. But the mere introduction of the word "husband " in Sotheby's and Cowper's version does not, in our opinion, constitute any such pre eminent merit. Both miss the epithet Osx/ F 6 c , and neither catch, as it seems to us, the full force of the four last words alto gether—" You are my father, and my mother, " and my brother, and you too—more than " all—my beautiful husband." This thought, coining at the last, after perhaps a moment's pause, forms as it were the coping-stone to the whole appeal. Hector is not to be enu merated simply as one of her relations. He both supplies their place, and is in himself separately an object of a distinct and deeper love. The extreme tenderness and passion thrown into tbis last clause seems equally to have escaped the translators and their critic. The next passage we shall place before our readers is the famous moonlight scene : 'n, 07 . iv dorm, - Wry Tea 4pcsetv±iy a µ 4 1 aixAvn, tDaive a ' et7rCf7ritS, OTE 17TX/TO 'PAY4I.4Gi" ettetie, ['EX T r4)etvtv natant oxo7:teci xal irew ovi; rix.,)ot Kai vcivrat Gliectvo9iv ki ec riyi (ITICITO C 41:9;1ed Silbs ira T trStvat es CrTeti, 74'41 Si TI POPE. As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ; Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole, O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain's head; Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts frota all the skies ; The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light. COWPER. As when around the clear bright moon, the stars Shine in full splendour, and the winds are hush'd, The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland heights Stand all apparent, not a vapour streaks The boundless blue, and ether open'd wide ; All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd. SOTHEBY. As when the stars, at night's illumined noon, Beam in their brightness round the full-orb'd moon, When sleeps the wind, and every mountain height, Rock, and hokr cliff, shine tow'ring up in light, Then gleam the vales, and ether, widely riven, Expands to other stars another heaven, While the lone shepherd, watchful of his fold, Looks wondering up, and gladdens to behold. With Wilson's own interpretation of' this famous passage we cannot altogether' agree. 681 The basis of it is that a fresh idea is intro duced by eel r eaciyn x.T.x., that Homer intends to express the breaking up of the clouds, and the clear expanse of firmament opening itself to the gazer's view. Now, independently of the fact that no clouds have been mentione4, which renders the interpi station, however dexterous, a very forced one, we cannot think it consonant with the genius of Greek poetry that the two first lines should have been written of a cloudy sky. It appears to us that the fourth line is but an amplification of the two first, and the fifth a description of its effect upon the shepherd. It will be seen that Wilson's comparison of the three trans lators is vitiated throughout by this error, if error it be : Let us say, that such is the double soul—the twofold life of Homer's Nig!it-scene—and see if, hating all othee objections, it has been transfused by Pope into his eels. braced version. No. According to our interpretation, , Around her throne the vivid planets 1011, is so far right. " Vivid " may do for actireusia, but " toll " is very bad for .pesivlT'. Roll perhaps they may—indeed otherwise they would not be planets—but certainly not round the moon. Homer was, perhaps, no great astro• nomer, though he knew well the Planetary Five ; but Homer, who had the use of his eyes, never, drunk or sober, thought when looking at the moon that he saw " around her throne the vivid planets roll." If by " her throne" Pope means the firmament, then he forgets the Greek words ; but it is manifest he means the moon herself, absurdly confusing with her throne the queen who site thereon, whom bf the way he had chosen, injuriously tit Nature and to Homer, to call, a few lines before, " reful• gent lamp of night." However, we have said the line ia so far right ; but that which follows, if our interpretatioa of Homer's heaven be true, is altogether wrung— And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole ; for Homer yet has made no mention of stars unnumbered ; if et'7lVt aii/ref7TICS mean " vivid planets," which it may, Pope had no right to surround them with " unnumbered stars," for it is afterwards, and when a great change has occurred to the immeasurable firmament, that ira.'sYci Si i IlliTes; et ' CITELS. Homer speaks not of clouds, though we have suggested the probability of clouds being there, the dill+ parting of which, and their floating away into nothing, finally revealed this infinite starriness; but be that stir gestion of ours right or wrong, Pope bad no right to assure us of what Homer did not, " that not a cloud o'ereast the solemn scene." Homer says merely that "the eminences and pinnacles of the heights appear, and the groves." Pope makes but sorry work of that, by needless elabora tion of its picturesque simplicity; we do not know that lie makes it unnatural, though he does male it confused; though there is far more light, there is far more darkness, and the landscape is no longer in aught Homeric. That much-admired line, A flood of glory bursts from all the skles, l would almost seem to be intended for a verslot of oz:' , eaci , 69ey S' L, ,„ teC3=l7o; 404, Wars Si T' an - as a'aTece—but then, unfortunately, Popi has given us before, "and stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole ;" and really, after the refulgent lamp of night has been hung on high, and vivid planets roll round the throne of the moon, and stars =- numbered gild the glowing pole, while not a cloud o'ercsatit the solemn scene, how any farther flood of glory can burst from all the skies we are not astronomer enough, either scientific or empirical, to comprehend or conjecture; nor do we believe that Pope himself had any theory on the subject, but wrote away by candlelight, perhaps in his grotto, from memory somewhat dim, while the shining moon, it may have been, was herself in heaven, and the boundless firmament thickstrewn with stars. The scrip tural simplicity of " and the shepherd rejoices in his heart," how far more touching, to every one who has walked over the hills by night, than Pope's philosophical paraphrase As for the application of the sky sight to the ground-soene, we have no room to remark upon it farther than that, while it departs equally from the original, and is laboured overmuch, it possesses a certain shadowy magnificence, for sake of which its faithlessness, or departure from the faith, may in some moods of mind be forgiven. • • Cowper's translation is u usual admirable. Of him, u truly as of any man that ever breathed, may we say, in that fine line of Campbell, lie mused on nature with a poet's eye. He does not fear to say " the clear bright moon," despising th e reading ipalS 1,W," and in lore with " Nor does he fear to say, that around the "clear bright moon," " the stars shine in full splendour." Now, Cole. ridge asserted in one of his lectures in the Royal Institu• tion, that in the immediate neighbourhood of a "refulgent" moon, the stnrs must look wan or dim ; and so, we under. stand, saith Wordsworth. 'Tis but a mere matter of moon shine. it is true ; yet worth settling; and we go along with Homer and Chapman and Cowper. There cannot be two stronger words than .pw.Livin , and eto=rentrin ; moon and stars were alike lustrous. " About the silver moon stars shine clear," are Chapman's words, and they are in the same spirit. Cowper's you have before you, more radiant still. Do not abuse Pope, then, oye hikers, while you let Homer, Chapman, and Cowper go scot•free. Horace, too, speaks of a lady bright as the moon among the lesser fires, meaning that they too were bright. She shone with a larger end serener lustre, as if they from " her silver urn drew light." In one line ('owper transcends all his nom• petitors, and equals his divine original— The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland heights, stand all apparent.