LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE COLOUR-SENSE IN HOMER.
[TO THE EDITOR. OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
Sin,—Your criticism last week of Mr. Gladstone's article in the Nineteenth Century, on the sense of colour in Homer, suggests to me a remark which bears on the argument there drawn from Homer's epithets of the Dawn. Besides general epithets, such as itnyipEra and itpopog, Homer has three special colour-epithets for morning, viz.,—" golden-throned" (xevea)ewg), " saffron- robed" (xecoamg9r9.0),and " rosy- fingered " (AoStiScivremi;). The first of these obviously refers to the gold-edged clouds, among which the Dawn seems to sit just before the sun appears. The second seems to denote that uniform pale yellow hue with which the easterly sky is suffused about three-quarters of an hour (in Homer's latitudes probably about half an hour) before sun-rise. The third exactly describes not (as seems to have been rather assumed in this discussion) a general pink flush or glow, but the long, thin, tapering fingers (one can call them nothing else) of rosy light, which radiate upwards from the spot where the sun is, some fifteen or twenty minutes before he shows above the horizon. There is, therefore, a careful and delicate discrimination implied in the use of these two latter epithets. It is compariatively hence that a generally diffused blush of pink over the sky s seen, the epithet is "rosy-fingered," not " rosy-robed ;" while never, so far as I know, does one notice streamers or "fingers" of yellow light similar to those rosy ones on which the poet has fixed ; the adjective is therefore "saffron-robed," " Saffron- fingered " would, of course, be unsuitable, but the figure of a robe expresses most happily that pouring-out of a flood of yellow light over a wide expanse of sky which is so beautiful a feature in the progress of the dawn, Without, therefore, disputing the main thesis urged with so much ingenuity in the Nineteenth, Century article, I venture to submit that in this particular in- stance Homer appears not only, as always, a close observer of nature, but a refined observer of the different colour-phenomena. of successive stages of sun-rise.—I am, Sir, &c,,
Previous page
