unfit to render Homer thoroughly well, although I still think other metres fit to render him better. So I concede to Mr. Spedding that every form of translation, prose or verse, must more or less break up Homer in order to reproduce him; but then I urge that that form which needs to break him up least is to be preferred. So I concede to him that the test proposed by me for the translator,—a competent scholar’s judgment whether the translation more or less reproduces for him the effect of the original,—is not perfectly satisfactory; but I adopt it as the best we can get, as the only test capable of being really applied; for Mr. Spedding’s proposed substitute,—the translation’s making the same effect, more or less, upon the unlearned which the original makes
even the ten-syllable couplet to employ for rendering Homer. He points out, in answer, that ‘the more complicated the correspondences in a poetical measure, the less obtrusive and absolute are the rhymes.’ This is true, and subtly remarked; but I never denied that the single shocks of rhyme in the couplet were more strongly felt than those in the stanza; I said that the more frequent recurrence of the same rhyme, in the stanza, necessarily made this measure more intricate. The stanza repacks Homer’s matter yet more arbitrarily, and therefore changes his movement yet more radically, than the couplet. Accordingly, I imagine a nearer approach to a perfect translation of Homer is possible in the couplet, well managed, than in the stanza, however well managed. But meanwhile Mr. Worsley,—applying the Spenserian stanza, that beautiful romantic measure, to the most romantic poem of the Ancient world; making this stanza yield him, too (what it never yielded to Byron), its treasures of fluidity and sweet ease; above all, bringing to his task a truly poetical sense and skill,—has produced a version of the Odyssey much the most pleasing of those hitherto produced, and which is delightful to read.
For the public this may well be enough, nay, more than enough; but for the critic even this is not yet quite enough.
