The Ion of Euripides. Translated by "H. B. L." (Williams.
and Norgate.)—The translator endeavours to realise for his readers the play as it was acted. He describes the theatre, the stage and its machinery, the scenery, and renders the Greek into English metres corresponding to the original. The iambic is represented by the alexandrine, and the trochaic by a similar movement. The lyric metres are imitated as nearly as the language permits. Somehow the alexandrine sounds much longer than the senarius. English words are so often monosyllabic that they crowd a line, so to speak. But our chief objection to "H. B. L.'s" work is that it is not really English "as she is spoke." We take a specimen from the speech of Hermes (when he quotes the injunctions of Phcebus)
"To bright Athenai fly, my cognate (well thou mind'st
The Goddess burgh), where Gaia hnmanhood prodned, There, 'mongst the hollow'd crags, a new-born baby find In 'to swadole gear, in Is bassinet, with all therein To Delphis waft it, reach my seat oracular, And safely set it down before the tomple.doors I For what remains (assur'd be thou that mine it is) my care shall be."
It is not too much to say that this is intolerable.
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