THE ILIAD.—A NEW TRANSLATION AND A NEW EDITION.'

WE welcome with extreme satisfaction these admirable aids to the study of Homer. Mr. Way, it is true, has not completed more than half of his accurate and spirited verse translation, and Mr. Leaf has gone no further with his capital edition of the Bind. But the instalments before us are so consistently good, as to preclude all doubt but that each of these scholars will bring his undertaking to a most successful issue. It is easy to praise and class the Cambridge scholar's work,—easy, and not quite creditable to his predecessors. For Mr. Leaf's edition of the Iliad, so far as it goes, is not merely first in the race ; his competitors (leaving Mr. Munro, for obvious reasons, out of the question) are nowhere. Mr. Paley is the best, perhaps, of an indifferent lot. But no one would think of judging Mr. Paley, whose merits as a Greek scholar need no praise from us, by his perfunctory edition of the Iliad. For a work to compare fitly with Mr. Leaf's, we must take something very different. Professor Conington's well-known edition of Virgil will serve our purpose, and we can offer no better evidence of our admiration for Mr. Leaf than by saying that we prefer him as a commentator to Conington. Any laboured comparison would be out of place here ; we can merely hint that our preference is due to the fact that Mr. Leaf knows his own mind better than Conington often seems to know his. The result, in any case, is one which all students, ripe and unripe alike, will greatly appreciate. Mr. Leaf shuns no difficulty, but when he meets with oue that he cannot overcome, it is impossible to over-praise the lucidity with which he places the reader in a position to judge for him- self about the matter. His view of" The Origin of the Poems" attributed to Homer, is a view which, he frankly admits, is far from popular in England. It is a view, we may add, which we are far enough from sharing ; but we are bound all the more on that account to bear witness to the fairness and moderation displayed by Mr. Leaf in his plea for what we regard as little short of heresy. He is a master of all the resources of German scholarship, yet the discrepancies which exist between the views of German scholars do not appear to strike him so strongly as, in our opinion, they ought. He disregards Colonel Moore's arguments too much; and without insisting, as we should like to do if our limits permitted, on the easy task which a critic would have in proving, a la Lachmanu, that Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained were not from the same hand, and that from two poets of very different calibre came the weak third book and the immortal fourth book of Milton's masterpiece, we shall quote the following specimen of Mr. Leaf's method of taking the bull by the horns :—" It has been repeatedly urged," he says, "that it is in the last degree improbable that there should have been more than one poet in any age who was capable of writing poetry of the high level of the Iliad and Odyssey. But if it be worth while to discuss questions of probability at all" (if it be not worth while, adieu to all Homeric criticism), "it must be pointed out that the presump- tion is entirely in the opposite direction." /Eschylus, he goes on to argue, involves Sophocles and Euripides, while Shake- speare involves Marlowe and Milton. But Mr. Leaf's conten- tion here involves, if we are not mistaken, an ignoratio elenchi. He is dealing with hypothetical accretions upon an original story, and these accretions are admitted by him to be "not unworthy of the greatest of poets, and the style is entirely uni- form." But would Mr. Leaf contend for a moment that the style of Sophocles was "entirely uniform with that of /Eschylus," or that any ear would confound the tones of the "god-gifted organ-voice of England" with the "native wood-notes wild" of Nature's favourite ? He would, of course, do nothing of the kind, and it is with a clear and untroubled conscience that we refuse to listen to him when he says that "we must admit that, ci priori, the Iliad and the Odyssey are likely to be the work not of one poet, but of several." All the same, we must recommend his pithy prefatory remarks on each book very strongly ; and we congratulate the younger students of Homer more especially on the key which Mr. Leaf has forged for Homer's inestimable treasures. We congratulate also those scholars who have been wise enough to keep up their Greek, on what they will gratefully hail with us as a veritable boon. It is almost impertinent, since we can find no room for minuter criticism, to praise Mr. Leaf's

• The Iliad of Homer. Done into English Verse by Arthur S. Way. Vol. I., Books London : Sampson Low and Co. 1836.—The Iliad. Edited, with English Notes and Introduction, by Walter Leaf, ILL. Vol. I., Books London : Macmillan and Co. MM.

notes for their lucidity, terseness, and completeness ; but we have no hesitation in saying that his edition will find most favour with those who are most competent to estimate its value ; and if we were to write columns in its favour, we could hardly, perhaps, say more. In any case, it stands without a rival on English ground, and in this respect presents a contrast very marked to Mr. Way's translation.

Mr. Leaf, metaphorically speaking, has marched into a terri- tory that was practically unoccupied. Mr. Way descends into an arena that is densely thronged with competitors. The Australian Professor—and Englishmen will be as eager to applaud his Homer as they were to applaud Longfellow's Dante —is already known to fame by an excellent verse translation of the Odyssey. His version of the lliad—a harder task unques- tionably—is quite as worthy of all commendation. Literal to a degree which no English verse translation, except Professor Newman's, even remotely approaches, it is not less spirited than it is literal. It challenges no direct comparison with the so- called " classical " versions by Pope, and Cowper, and Sotheby, and the rest ; nor with Mr. Worsley's fine translation in the Spenserian stanza. But it does challenge comparison with Chapman's famous translation ; and if the result of that com- parison should prove to be in its favour, to praise it or recom- mend it would be clearly a work of supererogation. Now, we have no wish to underrate Chapman, over-praised as he has been by some no mean judges of poetry. But the poetry in Chap- man's Iliad, when at its best, is only too frequently Chapman's own, representing nothing that the keenest eye can find in Homer, and with a tendency to run into what are called " conceits." We believe that a full and fair comparison of the two versions would convince even Lamb and Keats, whose names present themselves inevitably here, that in Mr. Way, the delightful old fellow who " spake out loud and bold" has found more than his match. But we are unable, of course, here and now, to attempt any such comparison, and shall quote only a few brief passages from either version, as offering prima facie evidence that the conclusion which we have come to is not unreasonable. We take, quite at random, the following lines from Book xi. :— " ?p 5 (Tea' krIcivy inrcpcf.ec icros &XXI/ fp-c Ka0aXAop.orn loccUa irovrov 4pirm." (297.) These words are rendered by Mr. Way thus :— " And be swooped on the fight like a roaring blast that with hurri- cane-sweep,

Down-leapeth and lasbeth to tempest the face of the dark-blue deep."

And by Chapman thus :— " He brake into the heat of fight, as when a tempest raves,

Stoops from the clouds, and all on heaps doth cuff the purple waves."

" Tuazi8n TI wriOcCyre AEXcicr,ucOa BoiTtaos ?duals ; 6.20c kye irbrov, 7rap' 4tiTacro* 641 'yap gicyxos gcrcrerat cr KEY v7iccs KopoecurfOos'Ercrup." (313.)

"What aileth us Tydeus' son to remember our prowess no more ? Ho, hither to me, friend !—stand by my side: it were bitter shame If the ships should be taken of Hector, the lord of the helmet of

flame." —WAY.

" Tydides, what do we sustain, forgetting what we are ? Stand by me, dearest, in my love. 'T were horrible impair For our two velours to endure a customary flight, To leave our navy still engaged, and but by fits to fight."

—C MAX.

" Tby 'plyncre Poliv ilyccObs Alo,u48ns S"Olivcrcri)a 7rpocrc4c(weev ?wits gov.ra criorv TeSe wino icuArAerar clOpticos 'Del-cop 4,-/E 574COALEV ,cal 14214612E08a I.LEYOYTES."

"Which, perceived by royal Dioined, 'The deep conceit of Jove's high will stiffened his royal hair, Who spake to near-fought Itbacus : 'The fate of this affair Is bat to us. Come, let us stand and bound his violence.'"

—CHAPMAN.

"Then saw Diomedes, the battle-helper, and shuddered to see, And straightway he strode to Odysseus' side, and thus epake he : 'Le, thunder-bolt Hector is on us, a rolling rain-tide, Come, then, let us flinch not before him, his onset let us abide.'

—WAY.

It is quite unnecessary to quote more passages like these ; but as a specimen of Mr. Way's vigorous rendering—we have no room for Chapman's—of Homer's vigorous oratory—for Homer was the prince of orators, as well as the prince of poets—we choose from the first book Agamemnon's answer to Achilles :— "OeUrye Ara' et TO! OtIAT !LTA."

"Ay, turn thou and flee, if thy soul so craveth, it is not I

Will beseech thee to tarry : there yet shall be found &faithful band

Who shall honour the King: yea, Counsellor Zeus, on any side shall stand.

But for thee—of Kings Zeus-fostered, I bate thee most of all, For dear evermore to thy heart are battle and war and brawl. What though thou be never so strong, God-given thy strength is, I brow;

Go with those galleys of thine and thy vassals homewards,—go ! Be a tyrant of Myrmidon slaves ! Tush, naught care I for thee, Neither quail at thy fury ! List to my threat, who threatenest me:—

Since Chryseis is ref from me by Phcebus Apollo's hand, Her will I send away with my ship and my comrade-band; But I will take Briseis the lovely cbeeked : I will go, Even I, to thy tent : I will take thy gnerdon, and thou shalt know How much above thine is my might, and all- other shall dread henceforth To exalt himself against me, and to measure with mine his worth."

This specimen will suffice, we hope, to give the reader a general notion of the swing and energy of Mr. Way's metre. On his literalness we need not insist, nor on the weight which should deservedly be given to such a merit, in comparison with Chap- man's unbridled looseness. Our object, however, is not to depreciate Chapman, but to recommend Mr. Way more especially, literal and helpful as he is (to those who have some inkling of Greek) to those who are unable to read Homer in the original. For it would be idle to deny that those who enjoy that privilege, and who know, therefore, that Homer is as smooth and musical as he is full of fire and simplicity, will find in Mr. Way's translation many roughnesses that will shock them.