SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK. •
[Under this heading ore notice such Books of the week as hare not been reserved for review in other forms.] The Tale of the Argonauts. By Apollonins of Rhodes. Trans- lated by Arthur S. Way. (S. M. Dent and Co. 2s. net.)—We have no disposition to quarrel with the action of the editor of the "Temple Classics" in-including this volume in his series. ,Apollonbas is a classic, though, perhaps, of the third class, to be :ranked with Baochylides, Tibullus, Statists, and thee like. ssz, Way's translation is new, but his work has met with so general an approval that a new effort is ipso facto qualifrOtprce,simis4on, - He has never, we think, been quite so suceessful as he wasin first translation, the Odyssey. Possibly some of the choral odee in Euripides, presenting, as they do, unusual difficulties, should be excepted. It may be said, however, without hesitation, that this version of the Argcniautiza is a success. The original of Apollonius is not very attractive. The verse seems to mock us, as we are mocked by an echo. And it is overloaded with a peculiar kind of learning, packed close with hard names, most of them unfamiliar. The hard names are here, of course, but one glides over them more easily, and the vexation of the echo is avoided. The result is that the translation is more readable than that which is translated I'Ve mean that many .to whom the Greek presents no particular d- culties will prefer the English. It has a more poetical ring about it. Here is a specimen, the two boxers, Pollux and Amyku& King of the Bebryki, standing ready to engage :— " Then stood they forth, nor in form nor in stature alike to behold: But the one might be seed of Typhoeus the fell, or a monster of old, Ay, even as one of the giant brood of Earth, which she bare To wreak upon Zeus her wrath : but Tyndarens' son showed fair As the star of the heaven, whose loveliest beams through the fading blue Shine in the eventide, when the wings of the night drop dew. Even such was the child of Zeus, and the soft down bloomed on his chin, And bright were his dancing eyes : but waxed his breast within His fury and might like a wild beast's rage ; and he struck out fast With his hands, making trial if swift were their play, as in days overpsst. Uncramped by the stress of toil and the strain of the weary oar. But Amykns proved not his limbs, but he glared on his foe evermore Standing in silence aloof."
The poem itself is strikingly unequal ; it drags particularly during the somewhat purposeless adventures of the Argonauts' return journey. Mi. Way cannot choose but follow it; neverthe- less, he does, as we have before hinted, help his readers to pass lightly over the somewhat tedious archseological and geographical digressions. Here is a passage where the poet rises to his highest, the passion of Medea :—
"And she kissed her bed, and her hands on the walls with loving caress
Lingered she kissed the posts of the doors; and one long tress She severed, and left it her bower within, for her mother to be A memorial of maidenhood's days, and with passionate voice moaned she:
'This tress in mine own stead leave I, or ever I go, unto thee, My mother ; and, far though I wend, yet take farewell from me !
Farewell thou, Chalkiope, and mine home !—Would Clod that the wave Ere thou cam'st to the Kolchian land, 0 stranger, had yawned for t4 grave l' So spake she, and down from her eyelids in floods the teardrops ran.
Then, even as stealeth forth from the house of a wealthy man A bondmaid, whom fate but newly bath torn from her fatherland-soil, Who never till now Lath tasted the lot of bitter toil, But unschooled to misery, shrinking in horror from slavery Under the cruel hands of a mistress, forth cloth she flee ; Even so from her home forth hosted the lovely maid that day. Yea, and the bolts of the doors self 'moving to her gave way Leaping aback at the swift-breathed spell of her magic song. And with feet nnsandalled she ran the narrow lanes along,
While her left hand gathered a fold of her mantle, to screen from sight Her brows and her face and her lovely cheeks, the while with her right The hem of the skirt of her tunic she held upraised from the ground.
And swiftly without the towers that girded the wide burg round By the darkling path in her terror she name; and no man knew
Of the warders thereof, but past them all unseen she flew."
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