BOOKS.

MR. LEAF'S EDITION AND MR. WAY'S TRANSLATION OF THE "ILIAD."*

BY the completion of this valuable and interesting edition, a

blot has been removed from English scholarship. For this work, if supplemented by Mr. Monro's admirable school edition, will make Homer's English admirers cease to feel that they may be admiring him in vain if they are ignorant of German. For a service like this, Mr. Leaf deserves the hearty thanks of all English scholars. We give him our own unstintedly and gratefully, and our admiration for his industry and acuteness is raised, if we may say so, by the fact that we dissent for the

most part from his view of the authorship of the Iliad. He holds the expansion of the Iliad by successive accretions to be a theory that is already dominant in England, and he informs

us that it is steadily winning ground in Germany. We bow, of course, to his decision where German scholarship is in question. But we venture to doubt if this theory is yet dominant in England, and to believe that it never will become so. Repeating, therefore, most emphatically the expression of our thanks to Mr. Leaf for his admirable edition of a poem that needs no epithet, we shall touch mainly on points where the majority of English scholars, if we are not mistaken, will be found to disagree with him. But we cannot, of course, speak for others, and we have no wish

whatever to speak dogmatically for ourselves. Repeated perusals of the Iliad and the Odyssey have left us with the firm belief that all that is best and finest in these unequalled poems came from the heart and brain of one great poet. Mr. Leaf notices traces of Odyssean phraseology in the later books of the Iliad; and we feel very strongly that the doctrine of the separatists, if accepted, would militate greatly against the view that the Iliad, in respect of all those qualities which have made it immortal, is from a single hand. In our notice of Mr. Leaf's first volume, we hinted our distrust of the conclusion which he drew from his statement that "Shakespeare involves Marlowe and Milton, as YEschylas involves Sophocles and Euripides." Shakespearian and Miltonic are far from being synonymous terms. But the author of what Mr. Leaf calls the "first and greatest of epic poems" is not more" Homeric" than are the authors of the accretions which he thinks have been placed upon that "original story." And the author of the Odyssey was quite as "Homeric," i.e., quite as natural, lively, energetic, and harmonious, as were the supposed authors of these "accretions." We may safely leave to the reader's consideration

what these facts "involve," and shall come at once to close quarters with Mr. Leaf. And although we shall prudently avoid all recrimination, it will be seen that this theorist of great faith pointedly challenges unbelievers to tread on the tail of his coat. He is writing about the speech which Achilles makes in Book xvi., "a fine picture of the struggle between his wounded pride and patriotic feeling," and he thus throws down his glove :—

" To those who regard the ninth book as an integral part of the Mad, from the first this speech in its present form offers in- superable difficulties. The words of Achilles in 60-1, 71-3, 84-6, are entirely inconsistent with the ample, and indeed abject, humiliation of Agamemnon in that book. This is not a mere super- ficial inconsistency such as may be due to a temporary forgetfulness, such, for instance, as the accidental resuscitation of the dead Pylcemenes in the thirteenth book ; it is a contradiction at the very root of the story, as flagrant as if Shakespeare had forgotten in the fifth act of Macbeth that Duncan had been murdered in the second. To suppose that the same intellect which prepared the embassy to Achilles in the eighth book, and wrought it out in such magnificence and wealth of detail in the ninth, could afterwards compose a speech so different, and yet so grand, in entire oblivion of what had gone before, is to demand a credulity rendering any rational criticism impossible."

Now, it is strange indeed that lines 60-1, which Mr. Leaf quotes so confidently as telling for his theory, in reality tell so much against it, that he is driven to suggest that the words

• (1.) The Iliad. Edited, with English Notes and Introduction, by Walter Leaf, Litt D. London: Macmfflan and Co. 1888.--(2.) The Iliad of Hennes done into English Verse. By Arthur 8. Way, MA, Mead-Master of Wesley College, Melbourne, Australia. Vol. IL, Books London Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, Limited. 1858.

put into Achilles' mouth in Book ix. may well have been suggested by a phrase which occurs in these lines. What "credulity," we must ask, is he " demanding " here P In 71-3, we cannot guess what Mr. Leaf is driving at. Achilles says no more than that the Trojans would not be winning as they were if Agamemnon were his friend, and there is nothing whatever in that which is inconsistent with the ninth book.. Does Mr. Leaf suppose that the scornful way in which Achilles refused the proffered gifts of Agamemnon left the king of

men full of friendly feeling (i.vta iLs) towards his mightiest chieftain. Lines 85 and 86 do present some difficulty, for

the restoration of Briseis, and "glorious gifts" besides, had been offered and rejected. But here Mr. Leaf will, we trust, allow us to take an arrow from his quiver, and give us permis- sion to obelise these lines, as he himself, for reasons which we

are pleased to read, obelises line 64. It would not be difficult, we think, to show, in a similar way, prima-facie grounds

against more than one or two of Mr. Leafs most cherished points in his theory. But in a notice of this kind there is no room for attempting to do so. We prefer to fall back upon the probability that the poet who wrote Mr. Leaf's original " Achilleid," and the poet (or poets) who wrote, on his own admission, " accretions " quite as fine as that matchless

original, and the poet who wrote the Odyssey, were Homer

himself one and individual. And we cannot on any hypothesis that seems in accordance with sound criticism, believe that any one of such poets would have been content to hide his light beneath so effectual a bushel as the common name of Homer has proved to his fame. Arguments from language are, in this case, untrustworthy ; and we do not say this dogmatically, but state it as an inference which follows irresistibly from the fact that critics of the highest linguistic acquirements are unable to come to anything like a con- sensus of opinion on the questions which Homer's language raises. We think, therefore, that we are not showing undue disrespect to a man of Mr. Leaf's undoubted mastery of his subject, by rejecting his theory as firmly as he rejects the theories of Lachmann and his followers. Our own theory, it. isneedless to say, has the great name of Bentley to recommend it. And if any reader of Mr. Leaf's most valuable, we repeat, and most interesting commentary, should wish to see the other side of the question, he cannot do better than read and inwardly digest Colonel Mare's bright, vigorous, and sensible arguments. An abridgment, by a competent hand, of those arguments would prove a book as acceptable to all lovers of Homer as Mr. Leaf's edition is sure to prove.

The first volume of Mr. Way's fine translation of the llicul led us to place it above Chapman's. The second crowns the

edifice of Mr. Way's Homeric labours so splendidly, that we are able to express our preference again with renewed con- fidence. But Chapman's version, though over-praised by Keats and Lamb, from the explicable but not quite fair dislike which they felt for Pope's, is a work which, in spite of its artificial and uncouth ruggedness, does honour to English literature. The compliment, therefore, which we gladly pay to Mr. Way is a high one, if well deserved ; and that it is so we make no question. Yet we do not anticipate that Mr. Way's version, with all its merits, will escape the fate which has overtaken all English versions but Pope's. Critics and scholars have riddled that version with their shafts, but the vitality which popularity alone is able to give has been given to it, and that vitality has proved fatal to the numerous host of translators who have tried to super-

sede it. It is hard, perhaps, to understand the secret of this popularity, but in arle poetica there is no appeal from the vox populi. It would be easy to place passage after passage from Pope side by side with passage after passage from Mr. Way, and to claim for the latter the crown which he deserves. But it is permissible to believe that Pope's Iliad will still be read when Mr. Way's is forgotten.

We said in a former notice that Mr. Way's style is marked by certain roughnesses which prevent him from representing the sweetness of Homer half so successfully as he does the force of Homer. We might collect a long list of words against which much might be said by non-fastidious critics, but nothing would be gained by doing so. Mr. Way must lay his account with finding that these new forms and compounds will seriously affect the popularity of his work ; and if he has any doubt about the justice of this opinion, he should ponder the causes which made Mr. Browning's translation of the

Agamemnon a failure. Mr. Way's style is admirably fitted for the whole of the twenty-third book, of which Schiller said so warmly that the man who had read it could not be said to have lived in vain. We would instance particularly his version of the famous trick by which Antilochus gains the second prize in the chariot-race. Pope honestly confessed that he could not see what that trick was. Mr. Way— and it is greatly to his credit—makes a rather difficult passage quite plain. The narrow way was near the goal, and Menelaus was leading in it, and under the impression that, if Antilochus tried to pass him, a collision was inevitable. Antilochus saw that there was just room for his chariot to pass in the event of Menelaus being frightened into making room for him. His calculations proved just, and the real difficulty for an Englishman is to gauge the extent of the offence which he committed. So far as we can judge, Antilochus drove to win in the finest way possible. His own conscience evidently acquitted him of having behaved unfairly ; for the address which drew, for the first and only time in the Iliad, a smile from Achilles, is not that of a man who had stolen success unworthily. His subsequent conduct is not at all at variance with this. For although he gracefully and quietly yielded to Menelaus, it is permissible to think that he and Nestor had a hearty laugh over the way in which the Spartan King had been out-driven. And it is noticeable that Homer takes care that the prize, after all, does come to Antilochus, though he had refused, as we should say, to qualify himself for receiving it.

In resuming our impressions of this admirable translation, we must rank in the foremost place the pleasure which all lovers of English literature must feel in welcoming a contri- bution like this from the great colony of which all Englishmen are so justly proud. From the position which he holds, and the abilities which he possesses, Mr. Way's Homer is sure to do as much for Australian as Longfellow's Dante did for American literature. A good translator of good literature deserves well of the republic of letters, and for this reason we are glad to find Mr. Way's Homeric translations so warmly praised by all sorts and conditions of critics.