ity. They descended the Mississippi to the mouth of the Illinois, where they arrived on the 31st of the same month. They ascended the Illinois, and reached the "Grand Rapids" on the 10th of August, without finding any indications of the metal. Mr. Kennedy's journal, which is a rare work, contains an interesting account of this voyage. He saw numerous droves of deer and buffalo along the banks of the river, and was charmed with the prairies, groves and islands which diversified the scenery. On his return, he ascended Copperas Creek, a small stream which empties into the Illinois below Peoria, and searched, without success, for the ore along its banks. Mr. Heame found pieces of copper in the Coppermine river in 1771, and mentions in his travels that it was in common use at that time for knives, trinkets, &c., among the Indians of that inclement region. Captain Jonathan Carver, who visited Lake Superior in 1768, then predicted that "in future times an advantageous trade in copper would spring up; that the metal would be conveyed in canoes through the Falls of Ste. Marie, and from thence in larger vessels to the Falls of Niagara; and after being carried by land across the portage, would easily be transported to Quebec." The anticipa tions of that early traveler are about to be realized, though the ore will not seek a market in the precise route and manner indicated by him. American capital and enterprise have been directed to the subject, and making due allowance for much exaggeration, there can be little doubt, that many of the recent investments in mining operations will yield a handsome return of profits, and in a few years add a considerable amount to the commerce and wealth of the country. TRANSLATORS OF HOMER.* BELIER, mon ami, commencez par le commencement." As we are going to write about translations of Homer let us first get a clear idea of what translation, and more particularly poetical translation, is. Some of the popular notions on the subject are indirectly expressed in the following passage, from the writings of an eminent logician : "A good translation of a poem (though perhaps, strictly speaking, what is so called is rather an imitation) [" and accordingly," adds the author, in a note, "it should be observed that, as all admit, none but a poet can be qualified to translate a poem"] is read, by one well acquainted with the original with equal or even superior pleasure to that which it affords one ignorant of that original, whereas the best translation of a prose work (at least of one not principally valued for beauty of style) will seldom be read by one familiar with the original." Whateley's Rhetoric, p. 334. Under the head "Fallacies" in the Archbishop's Logic is mentioned, (p. 207,) that of indirect assumption; of which there are two or three palpable instances in the above extract. First of all we do most positively deny, from our own experience, that "the best translation of a prose work will seldom be read by one familiar with the original." We have known men who read with pleasure Hobbes' Thucydides and the Oxford Tacitus, though fairly acquainted with the originals. To be sure a great deal lies in the parenthesis "at least of one not principally valued for beauty of style." A work is usually read either for its style or its matter; and he who reads it for matter alone will usually prefer consulting the original as the safest course, the best translators blundering occasionally. Some, who are intensely fond of original poetry, cannot abide any poeti cal translations at all; but it would hardly answer to generalize from their case. But this by the way. Our main quarrel is with the assertions that none but a poet can translate poetry, and that good poetical translation is imitation. The first of these many receive as an axiom. Qualify it, and say that a poct's translation must be superior to that of any other man, and a still greater number will acquiesce in it. Yet we are slow to admit it even in this qualified form. There are, it is true, some strong plausibilities against us. We naturally admit, it may be said, that to translate a prose work well one must write good prose; why should not the same rule hold good in the case of poetry? Then the facts of * Homer's Iliad. Translated by William Munford. Boston: Little & Brown. 1846. the case are against us. Great poets are usually great translators. There is Pope, and Byron, and Shelley, and Coleridge, &c. But let us see how these positions will bear examination. In what sense is a good translator of prose a good prose-writer? Must a man be a great historian to translate Thucydides well? Or a great novelist to translate Balzac well? Hardly. When we say that our translator is a good prosewriter we mean that he has a good prose style. Correspondingly then, a good translator of poetry must have a good poetic style, 2. e. poetic manner; between which and poetic matter there is no necessary connection. Poetry consists in two things, the idea and the expression. Now a man may have great facility of poetic expression, and that even in a foreign tongue, without the power of originating a single poetic idea. There are plenty of young men in England who will paraphrase Burns and Shakspeare into Latin and Greek verses scarcely to be surpassed for elegance by anything in Ovid or Euripides. On the other hand poetic ideas may exist conjointly with a very limited power of poetic expression, as in the case of Miss Barrett. To form a great poet both are required; to form a poet at all the latter alone is insufficient. Next let us see how many of the best translators of poetry have been poets. And here be it observed, by way of caveat, that as translation is an inferior department of literature, the translations of one who has already acquired a poetical reputation will derive an adventitious celebrity from his original works. They will be read as part of his poetry, and thus become better known than the pro ductions of one who is no poet. E. g. supposing Chapman's Illiad to be better than Pope's, still Pope's will always be more generally read, because Pope as a poet was infinitely above Chapman. Coleridge's Wallenstein is universally admired in England and generally praised in Germany. Byron translated very well. Shelley with much spirit, though very inaccurately. Leigh Hunt very well. Wilson particularly well. Pope's imitation of Homer we shall waive considering for the present. Among ourselves Halleck and Longfellow are, good translators. So stands the case against us.* Now for the other side. Old Chapman was no poet. Neither is "Young Chapman," the only man who has any idea of putting Eschylus into English verse, and the best English translator of Theocritus (which last commendation, by the way, is no very exalted panegyric). Elton has never been guilty of original poetry, but his Specimens from the Classics are some of the best translations extant.† Equally innocent is Carlyle, whose versions of German ballads, extracts from the Niebelungen Lied, &c., are not to be surpassed. Aytoun (better known under the pseudonym of Bon Gualtier) is a more doubtful case. He is an inexhaustible writer of parodies, and his one serious poem, Hermotimus, is a work of much promise. Yet no one would call him a great poet; and no one who has read Blackwood's Anthological articles can help calling him a great translator. But here our facts may be impugned, and we come to our remaining point of difference with Whateley, the fundamental question, indeed, of all; What is translation? *For obvious reasons we confine ourselves to English translators. In support of this assertion we request particular attention to his translation of that noble passage in the Peleus and Thetis of Catullus, beginning "At parte ex alia florens volitabat Iacchus," &c. "But in another part Iacchus, flush'd With bloom of youth, came flying from above Oh Ariadne with thy love inflamed. They, blithe, from every side came reveling on Snatch'd a torn heifer's limbs: some girt themselves Mysteries to uninitiated ear In silence wrapt. On timbrels others smote With tapering hands, or from smooth orbs of brass 1 Ten years ago we remember, at New Haven, they had a system they called literal translation; which consisted in rendering every separate word by its primitive dictionary meaning, making, in reality, as complete "Dog English" as the oft-quoted verte canem ex is "Dog Latin." There is extant a Boston translation of the Tusculan Questions on this principle which is well worth borrowing, to see what impracticable jargon may be written with English words. There are also some English attempts upon German philosophical works which are prime specimens of this lingo, particularly Dobson's perversion of Schleiermacher. The other extreme is where the translator only takes his author for a guide, and interweaves new ideas or casts out old ones in accordance with his fancy or compliance with his metrical inability. The English scholars already alluded to aim only at producing elegant Latin and Greek verses, bearing some resemblance to the English ones on which they are founded. It would sometimes be rather puzzling to re-translate these elaborate performances, as for instance, when Ben Jonson's "Tempering his greatness with his gravity" is expressed by σέβας τε πάντας ἐμμελῶς ἐπράξατο. A line which it requires a tolerable Greek scholar to comprehend. That a translator has unlimited license in this way will hardly be maintained. Few, for example, would call Marlowe's Sestiad a translation of Museus' Sestiad. When Mitchell expands two lines of Aristophanes into three or four verses and a chorus, the boldest would hesitate to call his paraphrase a translation. But literal word-for-word rendering is absurd in prose and (happily) impossible in Is Chapman's "Well, but not wisely, loved a cruel maid" "Hurre, hurre, hop, hop, hop, In this last instance the imitation is ad mitted by both English and Germans to surpass the original. It is more than an equivalent, but on that very account not a translation. Let us look at the question in another point of view. If imitation is translation then imitators are plagiarists. Take any case of imitation, e. g. Homer's description of Olympus, σε ὅθι φασὶ θεῶν ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ ἔμμεναι· οὔτ ̓ ἀνέμοισι τινάσσεται, οὔτε ποτ' ὄμβρω δεύεται οὔτε χιὼν ἐπιπίλναται· ἀλλὰ μάλ' αίθρη πέπταται ἀννέφελος, λευκὴ δ' ἐπιδέδρο μεν αἴγλη.” Thus imitated by Lucretius, Apparet divûm numen sedesque qui-, Quas neque concutiunt venti, nec nubila etæ nimbis "I am going a long way To the island-valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Or ever wind blows loudly, but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard And bowery hollows crown'd with sum lawns mer sea." Would any one accuse Lucretius and Yet if imitation be translation, they can Tennyson of plagiarizing from Homer? scarcely help being obnoxious to the charge. Let us take an ardent admirer and accurate critic of poetry, who is master of both his languages and has τόσσον τίς τ' ἐπιλεύσσει ὅσον τ' ἐπὶ λᾶαν the facility of versifying and command ἵησιν ? of metre acquired by much poetic read ing and study. It is quite possible for a man to possess all these qualities in a high degree without a single spark of that imagination which is the primary idea implied in (connoted by, as the Logicians would say) the term poet. Such a man, we contend, has all the requisites for a translator of poetry. He understands how to make the dress, and the figure is given him complete. In some respects he is even better qualified than a poet, for there is no fear of his trying to improve on his original as Pope was tempted to deal with Homer. We have been thus particular in explaining ourselves, because it is an indispensable preliminary to the comparison of different translations that we should have a clear idea of what the excellence of a translation consists in. According to the popular notion verse translations are to be estimated by their merits as poems in their own vernacular; and that is the best translation which would be the best original poem if its original did not exist. According to our theory, (which is that of Cowper, Elton, Carlyle, and we may add Wilson, in spite of the praise he has on one occasion bestowed upon Pope's Homer,) every translation must be rigorously compared with its original, and that is the best translation which would give a man ignorant of the original language the best idea of what the original is like. Homer was the bible of his countrymen for several centuries: he has since been the admiration of the civilized world. It was most natural that many attempts should be made to re-produce him in modern languages. In this respect the Germans have been fortunate. If the English have not, it has not been for want of trying. The complete translations of Homer best known are Chapman's, Pope's, Cowper's and Sotheby's. Besides these are Ogilby's and Hobbes', an Ossianic prose translation by Macpherson, and the more recent versions of Morrice (?) and Brandreth in blank verse. Of partial translations from one book to ten, the number is very considerable. A friend recently enumerated to us eleven, to which we were able to add five, and there is little doubt that the list might be still further extended. We have now in Munford's Iliad an American edition to the roll of competitors. Chapman's (1600) was the first com plete translation. (Hale had published, nineteen years previously, the first ten books in Alexandrines, a translation of a translation.) After the appearance of Pope's Homer he lay unjustly in the shade for some time. He was restored to notice partly by the New School who favored irregular versification, partly by a very different style of critic, Wilson. Since then it has been fashionable to exalt him immeasurably above Pope, and extol him as the prince of translators. To do this is to talk very wildly: a cursory examination will show that his translation has serious defects. The most obvious is his breaking up the even flow of Homer's versification by constantly running his lines into one another. Now if there is any distinctive feature of Hexameter verse it is the full, rounded close of each line; to which Chapman pays no more heed than if he were translating the Horatian Alcaic or any other continuous stanza. His interpolations, too, are sometimes very annoying. On no point do Chapman's admirers lay greater stress than his fidelity as a translator; yet he has taken as great liberties with his author in his way, as Pope in his. Most of these additions may be brought under one head-forced conceit. Conceit was the vice of that time. Thus Marlowe's Sestiad, an exceedingly beautiful and luscious poem, is so disfigured by the quaintnesses in its first fifty lines that most readers are killed off there and unable to go further. The blemishes of a similar kind in Shakspeare are familiar to all. On opening Chapman at random (in the 5th book) we find examples of this on either page. Who taking chariot, took his wound," and "bowed his knees to death and sacrificed to earth." All through Cooke Taylor's edition, which carefully discriminates the added matter, we find at the bottom of almost every page notes like these: "Not in the original." 66 This play on words is Chapman's, not Homer's." "No warranty for this expression in the original," &c. Other additions he makes for the sake of explanation, e. g., in describing the sacrifice in the 3d book. "The true vows of the Gods (term'd theirs since made before their eyes.)" "with which away he cut The wool from both fronts of the lambs which (as a rite in use Of execration to their heads that brake the plighted truce) The heralds of both hosts did give the peers of both." Where the words within parentheses are entirely his own. Some of his expansions such as 'Aídng (the Unseeing) into "that invisible cave that no light com forts," are more admissible as they help to bring out fully the author's meaning. Yet even these are too paraphrastic to please us. But Chapman has also some great merits as a translator. In the first place he has hit upon the only English metre which will suit all parts of Homer. For though some passages may be transfused into blank verse as Elton has shown, what blank verse or what Iambic rhyme can adequately express the Descent of Poseidon, or such dancing verses these? as “ ἀλλ ̓ ἄγ ̓ ἐμῶν ὀχέων ἐπιβήσει ὄφρα ἴδηαι οἷοι πρώτοι ἵπποι, ἐπιστάμενοι πεδίοιο κραιπνὰ μάλ' ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα διώκεμεν ἤδε φέβεσθαι.” Well rendered by Chapman, "Come, then, ascend to me, That thou may'st try our Trojan horse, how skill'd in field they be, And in pursuing those that fly, or flying when pursued, How excellent they are of foot." Except that πρώτοι ἵπποι means "the Horses of Tros," not " Trojan Horses." Next he expresses with much accura. cy and felicity the Homeric epithets. Pope seems to have thought that because these epithets were constant, it was allowable, nay, preferable, to omit them, as they had lost their original definiteness. Now in some extreme cases this is true, e. g., piλos comes to be simply equivalent to the possessive pronoun; but in general these adjectives give precision as well as beauty. In the English ballads "England is always Merrie England, Douglas always the Doughty Douglas; all the gold is red and all the ladies are gay." What should we think of a German translator who omitted these picturesque epithets? Again, whatever freedom Chapman may have used in other places, he always in his similes follows Homer as closely as possible, laboring to carry all his points of comparison without adding any others. Ever and anon, too, amid his broken verse we come across a magnificently swelling line equal to Pope in harmony and superior to Cowper in fidelity. Many of Chapman's expressions are now obsolete; on which account, as well as that already mentioned, Cooke Taylor's edition of him is very valuable, as it contains a full explanation of all those words which would be likely to perplex an ordinary reader. much splendor for that day, and adorned Ogilby's work was published with with elaborate engravings of belligerents book, not on account of its merits. curiously out of drawing. It is a rare There are a few copies in this city, but we have not been able to lay hands on one, which is no severe disappointment to ourselves or great loss to our readers. Hobbes was past seventy when he befan to learn Greek. Nevertheless his Thucydides is the best translation extant, not merely for forcible English, but for actual scholarship and comprehension of that very difficult author. But his Iliad reads like a Burlesque. It is as if he had really taken pains to vulgarize it. For instance, Zeus thus addresses the assembled gods; "You Gods all and you Goddesses, ɗye hear?" and the confirmation of his oath to Thetis is thus ludicrously narrated: "This said with his black brows to her he nodded, Wherewith displayéd was his face divine, Olympus shook at stirring of his godhead, And Thetis from him jumped into the brine." His Odyssey is rather better. We Pope's Homer was extravagantly praised in its day, and by a natural re-action extravagantly disparaged since. Pope was a poet, and a great poet: whoever says he was not is simply an ass. saw it coolly stated in print not long ago that "nothing could be worse than his translation of Homer." The individual who could make such an assertion deliberately should be condemned to read Sotheby and Munford straight through. The great merit of Pope's Homer is the perfect structure of his verse: its great defect, his utter misunderstanding or willful perversion of nearly all the similes. |