ANCIENT CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS.* MR. COLLINS deserves, or probably
shares with his publishers, the highest praise for a discovery which is not the less meritorious because it now seems obvious. Labour without end has been spent with but little success on the attempt to bring the great Greek and Latin classics within the reach of unlearned readers. In truth, the method commonly pursued, the method of translation, is cum- brous and ineffective. Translation exercises an extraordinary fas- cination on those who practise it, and it is not without a literary value, but it is least appreciated by those for whom it is primarily intended. Pope's brilliant paraphrases really please, and Lord Derby is read because lie was a great English noble, but how few readers appreciate the exquisite skill with which Mr. Worsley performed the task of translating the Odyssey ! The advantage of the present series is that the writers are not fettered by the fidelity which often hampers a translator ; that they can omit, or shorten, or give in full as they please ; that they can avail them- selves of the finest work of translation when any scene has to be presented in detail ; that they can introduce appropriate illustra- tions into the body of the work and not relegate them to the obscurity of notes, and that they can do all this within the com- pass of such a volume as can easily be read through at a sitting. As to the two books before us, the Iliad and the Odyssey, they remind us of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. Other matter, indeed, they contain ; but this is the most attractive part of them, and it is no slight praise to say that they need not shrink from the comparison. We may say, indeed, though we have one or two faults to find with details of execution, that they are admirably well done. The main points of incident and character are skil- fully seized, the criticisms, both ethical and artistic, are sound and judicious, the style is simple and spirited. Even readers of but little application will find them easy to get through, and no one can read them without really learning something about Homer.
Our fault-finding will not occupy us long. It strikes us as strange that Mr. Collins, while speaking of the personal history of Homer, does not mention one of the most striking and, we might even say, one of the most trustworthy traditions concerning it. The "Hymns," though not .of the same authorship with the Homeric poems, may probably be assigned to a date not far subse- quent; and if we are to form a conception of the personality and life of the great Unknown, we should be inclined to look to the famous line, the-
" TupXO; clung, olzsi ,:ram-caoicrofi,"
which at least represents the earliest belief on the subject. And Chios, too, as the birthplace, or at all events the residence, of the poet, suits the most prominent characteristics of the poems. The scenery and the language point to the fact that the author was a Greek of Asia Minor; and it is in Asia Minor, according to the best ethnological authorities, that we are to look for the earliest Greek civilization. Yet, as has been well observed, he speaks of morning coming over the sea. The hypothesis of an island home, of which the mainland, as with Chios, was Asia, makes the two facts perfectly consistent. Again, in speaking of Palamedes, it is strange that no notice is taken of the legend of his end which has been adopted both by Virgil and by Ovid. And as to the madness of Ulysses and its detection, is not an essential point omitted when the chief is described merely as " ploughing " ? This a chief might well do ; he was ploughing the sea shore, or, as one legend has it, sowing the land with salt. So, too, Mr. Collins, speculating wherefore the /Ethiopians were called " blameless," will doubtless amuse his readers by quoting George Eliot's notion that it was because they had no neighbours to criticize them, but omits to instruct them on a very remarkable point by quoting the parallel use of the word in reference to 2Egisthus. It may be supposed to have meant " punctual in pay- ment of sacrifices." And it would have given force to the rejec- tion of the post-Homeric legend of the invulnerability of Achilles, if mention had been made of the fact that the hero is actually wounded by Asteropteus in the battle of the river. If we are to criticize Mr. Collins's management of his materials, and we fully appreciate the difficulty in which the limitation of space puts him, and the skill with which he has, for the most part, surmounted it, we should say that the important action which more imme-
• Ancient Classics for English Readers: the Iliad and Odyssey. By the Rev. W. Lucas Collins, M.A. Blackwood, Edinburgh and London. lat.,.
diately precedes the return of Achilles to the war is harried over. Earlier in the story we see no mention of the duel between Sar- pedon and Tlepolemns, one of the most remarkable and graphically described incidents of the poems, in which the poet does what he is manifestly unwilling to do in general, and allows one of the specially described chiefs of the " Catalogue " to fall by the hands of the enemy.
These are but slight drawbacks, however, of which the general reader will not take much account. On the other hand, the merits of the book are great and obvious. The illustrations are a strong point. Readers of medimval romances will be glad in hearing of the hereditary sceptre of Agamemnon to be reminded of "the Sword Durentaille, which belonged to Charlemagne, and was by him given to his nephew, Roland ;" of "Arthur's Ex- calibur ;" and " the marvellous sword Recuite, which passed from the hands of Alexander the Great to Ptolemy, from Ptolemy to Judas Maccabmus, and so, through many intermediate wearers, to the Emperor Vespasian." Thetis rising from the sea like a mist is happily compared to "the White Lady of Avenel." Again, it is a trifle in itself, and yet not unimportant, when we think how far off and unlike our own seems this hero life, when we read how "Hector calls to his horses by name. (He drove a bright bay and a chestnut, and called them Whitefoot and Firefly.)" We can imagine a horse-loving Englishman beginning to realize his Homer after this, or when he reads of the three matchless steeds of Achilles, " Chestnut, Dapple, and Swiftfoot." Of a higher order of merit is such a criticism as this upon Homer's female characters :— " It is remarkable how entirely Homer succeeds in interesting us in his women, without having recourse to what may seem to us the very natural expedient of dwelling on their personal charms ; especially when it is taken into account that in his simple narrative he has not the resources of the modern novelist, who can make even the plainest heroine attractive by painting her mental perfections, or setting before us the charms of her conversation. It has been said that he assumes rather than describes the beauty of Helen ; in the case of Andromache it has been remarked that he never applies to her any epithet implying personal attractions."
And this, too, is well put in speaking of Achilles :- "It is something in favour of a tender side to the hero's character that the fair-cheeked' Briseis, spoil of war though she was, parts from him very reluctantly. Achilles, for hie share, fairly weeps ; but not the most romantic reader of the story dares nurse the idea that it is for his Briseis. They who bring with them, to the pages of classical fiction, a taste which has been built up by modern song and romance, must be warned at once that there is no love story in either Iliad or Odyssey. Love between unmarried persons, in the sense in which we commonly use the word, seems very much the product of modern civilization. There is, indeed, a passion which we name by the same English word,—the mere animal passion, which Homer, to do him justice, deals with but as a matter of fact, and never paints in attractive colours. There is, again, a love of another kind—the love of the husband for his wife and of the wife for her husband—which the old poet also well understood, and which furnishes him with scenes of the highest pathos and beauty. But as to the sentiment which forms the common staple of modern romance and drama, Homer certainly did not know what it meant, nor Achilles or Briseis either."
But the reader will like to see a specimen of Mr. Collins's narrative. It is from " The Third Battle " :-
"Again the Greeks are driven within their entrenchments, and Hector and the Trojan chariot-fighters, pressing on them, attempt in their fierce excitement even to make their horses leap the ditch and palisade. Foiled in this, they dismount, and forming in five detachments under the several commands of Hector, Helenus, Paris, ZEneas, and Asius, son of Hyrtacus, they attack the stockade at five points at once. Asius alone refuses to quit his chariot, and choosing a quarter where a gate is still left open to receive the Greek fugitives, he drives full at the narrow entrance. But in that gateway on either hand stand two stalwart warders, Leontens and Polypostes. The latter is the son of the mighty hero, Pirithons, friend and comrade of Hercules, and both are of the renowned race of the Lapithas. Gallantly the two champions keep the dangerous post against all comers, while their friends from the top of the rampart shower huge stones upon their assailants. Even Hector at his point of attack can make no impression, and as his followers vainly strive to pass the ditch an omen from heaven strikes them with appre- hension as to the final issue. An eagle carrying off a huge serpent through the air is bitten by the reptile, and drops it, writhing and bleeding, in the midst of the combatants. Polydamus points it out to Hector, and reads in it a warning that their victory will be at best a dearly-bought one. Hector rebukes him for his weakness in putting faith in portents. The noble words in which the poet sums up Hector's creed in such matters have passed into a proverb with patriots of everyage and nation,— 'The best of omens is our country's cause.'
Sarpedon the Lycian, who claims none less than Jupiter for his father, has taken chief command of the Trojan auxiliaries, and gallantly seconded by his countryman Glaucus, sweeps ' like a black storm' on the tower where Mnestheus the Athenian commands, and is like to have carried it, when Glancna falls wounded by an arrow from Teucer. The slaughter is terrible on both sides, and the ditch and palisade are red with blood. The balance of the fight hangs even,' until at last the Trojan prince lifts a huge fragment of rock, and heaves it at the wooden gates which bar the entrance at his point of attack."
We have left ourselves small space to speak of the second volume, the Odyssey. It is, we think, equal if not superior in point of execution to the Iliad. The subject, indeed, with all its varied interest, lends itself more readily to the method which Mr. Collins pursues. It is certainly the one of the two which we should recommend to a reader who was seeking to make his first acquaintance with Homer. We quote a passage where some of the familiar illustrations, by which, more, perhaps, than by any- thing else, the unlearned can get to understand Homer, are well put together :— " The fountain in the island of Ithaca, faced with stone, the work of the forefathers of the nation, Ithacus and Neritus, recalls that well of the oath '—Beersheba—which Abraham dug, or that by which the woman of Samaria sat, known as the well of our father Jacob.' The stone which the goddess Minerva upheaves to hurl against Mars, which men of old had set to be a boundary of the land ;' the two white stones of unknown date and history even in the poet's own day, of which. he doubts whether they be sepulchral or boundary, which Achilles made the turning-point for the chariot race ; these cannot fail to remind us of the stones Bohan and Ebenezer, and of the warning in the Proverbs, ' Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set up.' The women grinding at the mill, the oxen treading out the corn, the measure by cubit, the changes of raiment, the reverence due to the stranger and to the poor, the dowry given by the bridegroom, as by way of purchase, not received with the bride,—all these are as familiar to us in the books of Moses as in the poems of Homer. The very figures of speech are the same. The passionate apostrophe of Moses and Isaiah, 'Hear, 0 heaven ! and give ear, 0 earth !' is used by Juno in the Iliad and by Calypso in the Odyssey. Day is commonly employed as an equivalent for fate or judgment ; the half of one's kingdom' is held to be a right royal gift ; the gates of hell' are the culmination of evil. Telemachus swears by the woes of his father,' as Jacob does by the fear of his father Isaac;' and the curse pronounced on Phcenix by his father that never grandchild of his begetting might sit upon his knees,' recalls the sacred text in which we aro told that the children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were brought up on Joseph's knees.' "
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