MR. CORDERY'S REVISED TRANSLATION OF THE " ILIAD."*
Ma. COB.DERY has improved, but to no great extent, the blank- verse translation of the Iliad which he published in 1870. His workmanship is still open to many of the objections which were urged against it in the columns of this journal fifteen years ago. Yet he still believes, "after many years' continuous study of the best poets of ancient and modern times," that his original draft is a weak but appreciable approach to that" ideal transla- tion of Homer, wherein it ought to be as impossible to suppose that anything uttered by Odysseus, for instance, proceeded from Achilles' mouth, as it would be for an English- man to imagine that a speech of Hamlet came from Hotspur or Othello." It is right to aim high, no doubt; but such an ideal translation of Homer, unless it were possible to work, as Homer in some measure did, with certain tricks of language, would transcend the translating abilities, transcendent as they were, of Shelley and Coleridge. Mr. Cordery, or we are much mistaken, has gone but a very little way in that direction ; for the sportsman's note that is so perceptible all through the twenty-third book is not echoed even faintly by him, any more than by any of his predecessors. But to his republished work Mr. Cordery has made a most important addi- tion. The unripe scholar, and the grave and reverend senior who is anxious to renew his acquaintance with Homer, will find the Greek text printed on the opposite page to the English version. For although Mr. Cordery has not cared to alter his original version to any great extent, that does not affect the value which this addition gives to that version in its "new form." If he had really wished to improve his original version to the utmost, he ought to have conned night and day the many invaluable aids to the study of Homer which have appeared during the last fifteen years. With Milton, too, and the Authorised Version of the Bible, at his fingers' ends, he would have avoided many of those harsh archaisms which were noticed in these columns in 1871, and a fair assortment also of constructions that are nowa- days ungrammatical. Oar limits prevent us from dwelling on these errors, and we are glad of it, for Mr. Cordery is clearly not one of the common herd of English translators, who will patiently acquire a competent knowledge of any foreign tongue, • The Iliad of Homer. A Translation; with Greek Text. By J. G. Cordery. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. 1896. but who seem to look upon a mastery of the resources of their native tongue as coming, like Dogberry's "reading and writing," by nature. This error is at bottom the cause of so large a proportion of English failures in the matter of translation. But Mr. Cordery's knowledge of English is practically sufficient ; and as he still prides himself—and not unjustly—on the coincidences which are apparent between his version and the prose version of Messrs. Lang, Leaf, and Myers, we marvel all the more at the tenacity with which he clings to his mistransla- tion of Greek words the meanings of which were ascertained long before 1870, and have been duly given, of course, by the above-mentioned prose translators. We shall notice only three of these which ran together, and a fourth which in more respects than one is passing strange. The three are the well- known G`lx-44, xtripsyx in the description of Thersites. Before Mr. Cordery was born, Buttmann had shown that the scholiast was altogether wrong in interpreting rpooac by "squint-eyed." Good comparative philologists say that he was wrong himself in connecting this word with the Latin vo2gus ; but no first-rate scholar doubts that it refers, as he argued, to some defect in the legs. Bat Mr. Cordery perversely translated it by " one-eyed " originally, and only corrects it now by " slant-eyed." (11.44 is the word that puzzles him next ; and this has been, so far as its meaning goes, identified with Trapptpaysic—i.e.," split by fire "— and is applied to pottery spoilt in the baking. A periphrastic equivalent might be Carlyle's "squint-cornered amorphous botch," in Past and Present, applied to pottery made without a wheel.
But Mr. Cordery scat super anti vies, and renders 0413; Env icsOaxim by "his head above ran back wedge-wise." But do wedges run back P `Yeavi iireriiyoef ittiva is his next crux ; and as iiinasO; d pcialupoc means that "the bald man is thinly thatched," we need not hesitate to render .044 by " thin " or " sparse." The legs of Thersites, indeed, were, roughly speaking, like those of Daniel Quilp, Esq., and his hair like the hair of Mr. Sampson Brass ; but Mr. Cordery's "close and furry clung the hair," like a badger's, is quite as original as it is wrong. The fourth word is nvaroxairm ; and as Mr. Cordery translates zusevirts in' " o'er his azure eyebrows," we need not be surprised at his translating zuesyozairs; by " azure- haired." But he translates yhatnarstc by " azure-eyed ;" and if men can be found to believe that 77tavx.4 is identical with xvicsffo;, " colour-blindness " may well be attributed to Homer. It is probable that -/xavzZric meant to Homer "bright-eyed," of some light-grey or bluish tint; but zulzygos means—there can be no doubt about it—the deepest black, "shot " with the deepest shade of blue in certain lights. To translate xvaroxamc by "azure-haired," and yAccuzisrrtc by" azure-eyed," as Mr. Cordery does, brings confusion worse confounded into play, for no one can suppose that yhavisi Aaihaaaa and xuaris thihecaors meant the same thing. The second phrase means something blacker than Byron's "deep and dark-blue ocean ;" and the first, when we remember that it was applied reproachfully to Achilles •when he was inexorable, probably means "the grey and e*llen sea." But Mr. Cordery reeks little of all this. He steadily and stedfastly sticks to "azure-haired" as an epithet. for Poseidon till he reaches Book xx. ; and then, awakening at last to the •fact that he had been dyeing the monarch of the sea's hyacinth locks as an over-earnest stage manager might dye the hair and eyebrows of Bluebeard " azure " in a pantomime, Mr. Cordery, resipiscent but unrepentant, translates zvapoxairn: Maas), rightly, if not idiomatically—for in good English a man's locks answer to a woman's tresses—the "dark-tressed king," and so goes on his way rejoicing, and quite unconcerned about his forsaken " azure- haired." But here our troubles begin. Chapman, who had orthodoxically rendered this compound by " black-haired," "sable-haired," "dark-haired," and so forth, goes off the line precisely where Mr. Cordery returns to it ; and though he fears to azure great Poseidon's hair, he talks of " a horse that shook an azure mane." Mr. J. H. Murray was not at hand when we read this sentence; so we appealed unto Shakespeare, and to Shakespeare we went, by the aid of Mrs. Cowden Clarke's Concordance. He, we found, used the word thrice, and the "azure vault of heaven," in The Tempest, fitting in with the " azured harebell" in Cymbeline, seemed to bring him into line with Pope, who said that Swift's eyes, which were unquestionably light, were of " heaven's own azure." But there was another instance in Cymbeline to look up, and this proved a teaser, for Imogen's eyes are there said to be " white and azure laced with blue of heaven's own tint."
Turning now from Mr. Cordery's Greek to his metre, we hold, as we did fifteen years ago, that Mr. Cordery's blank verse is far better than either Cowper's or Lord Derby's. Blank verse, in- deed, in Mr. Cordery's hands is a fair vehicle for the oratory of Homer, who was not more the prince of poets than he was of orators. But the speeches in Milton had proved that already beyond all cavil, not merely in his longer efforts, but in those " winged " lines which stand out from the context, however fine, like a more than ordinarily fine proverb or maxim from its com- panions in Solomon or Sirachides. We shall quote two of these, out of a probable three hundred in the Iliad :—
" Auras cpaioue alaxour uspehrwr areistmow Ai-peaks?'
(" are the eons of Atreus the only men of all mankind who love their wives?") could easily have been equalled, fine as it is, by the poet who put " Snow ye not me ?" Jac., into Satan's mouth. Mr. Cordery breaks down utterly over the scornful question of' Achilles, and we quote his fiasco, as a warning to future translators of the Iliad—and there is sure to be a host of them, in rhyme, blank verse, and numerous or innumerous prose—that while they cannot study Milton too much, they must avoid
each and all of his numerous and most audacious Latinisms :— " Are the sons of Atreus then,"
sings Mr. Cordery,
"So singular in this particular
0' the love they bear their wives P" A line more singular and particular in its absurdity than the one we have italicised is not often met with, and it occurs in the most brilliant speech to be found in the Iliad.
From the same great speech we quote Mr. Cordery's transla- tion of,-
" JzoeSs •rcie isot ustvhr gams 'Ailkto TuXijolv x' &fps', /AEI" rEiisp ivl q5peoir likAo 81 It is simplex munditiis indeed, being,- " Who says one thing with other in his mind My soul abhors him like the gates of hell."
But it smacks too much of pure prose, and Pope's version owes its superiority to something more than its rhyme :- " Who dares think one thing, and another tell, My soul detests him like the gates of hell."
Mr. Cordery complains of the monotony of all poetical trans- lations, and we believe that Milton's rendering of Homer's battles would have oat-monotonised the theological narratives and sermons with which he has overweighted his glorious poem. But Homer, thanks to his genius and metre, is never monotonous, though his subject very often is. We have never grasped the objections which fastidious critics have brought against the final books of the Iliad, and the twenty-third book has merits of a most " singular " and " particular " kind. It is instinct with the very spirit of sportsmanship, and it was as a sportsman that Achilles smiled, for the first and only time in Homer, at the outburst of Antilochus. We should like to dwell upon this " smile," and what evoked it, but must not. We conclude this notice by repeating that Mr. Cordery has not improved his first draft as he might easily enough have done, and that the Greek text printed face to face with his version has made what is distinctly the beet blank-verse translation of the Iliad, the most useful for students of all sorts and conditions. We need not praise him for speaking with duo appreciation of
Colonel Mare, and for throwing in his lot unreservedly with the vast majority of English scholars, whose solid phalanx stands out in such marked and suggestive contrast to the motley host who represent German opinion.
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