all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied _eld_, ...
it seems to me that _eld_ comes in excellently there, in a passage of curious meditation; but when Mr Newman renders ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε by ‘from _Eld_ and Death exempted’, it seems to me he infuses a tinge of quaintness into the transparent simplicity of Homer’s expression, and so I call _eld_ a bad word in that place.
Once more. Mr Newman lays it down as a general rule that ‘many of Homer’s energetic descriptions are expressed in coarse physical words’. He goes on: ‘I give one illustration,—Τρῶες προὔτυψαν ἀολλέες. Cowper, misled by the _ignis fatuus_ of “stateliness” renders it absurdly:
The powers of Ilium gave the first assault Embattled close;
but it is, strictly, “The Trojans _knocked forward_ (or, thumped, butted forward) _in close pack_”. The verb is too coarse for later polished prose, and even the adjective is very strong (_packed together_). I believe that “forward in pack the Trojans pitched”, would not be really unfaithful to the Homeric colour; and I maintain that “forward in mass the Trojans pitched”, would be an irreprovable rendering’. He actually gives us all that as if it were a piece of scientific deduction; and as if, at the end, he had arrived at an incontrovertible conclusion. But, in truth, one cannot settle these matters quite in this way. Mr Newman’s general rule may be true or false (I dislike to meddle with general rules), but every part in what follows must stand or fall by itself, and its soundness or unsoundness has nothing at all to do with the truth or falsehood of Mr Newman’s general rule. He first gives, as a strict rendering of the Greek, ‘The Trojans knocked forward (or, thumped, butted forward), in close pack’. I need not say that, as a ‘strict rendering of the Greek’, this is good; all Mr Newman’s ‘strict renderings of the Greek’ are sure to be, as such, good; but ‘in close pack’, for ἀολλέες, seems to me to be what Mr Newman’s renderings are not always,—an excellent _poetical rendering_ of the Greek; a thousand times better, certainly, than Cowper’s ‘embattled close’. Well, but Mr Newman goes on: ‘I believe that, “forward in pack the Trojans pitched”, would not be really unfaithful to the Homeric colour’. Here, I say, the Homeric colour is half washed out of Mr Newman’s happy rendering of ἀολλέες; while in ‘pitched’ for προὔτυψαν, the literal fidelity of the first rendering is gone, while certainly no Homeric colour has come in its place. Finally, Mr Newman concludes: ‘I maintain that “forward in mass the Trojans pitched”, would be an irreprovable rendering’. Here, in what Mr Newman fancies his final moment of triumph, Homeric colour and literal fidelity have alike abandoned him altogether; the last stage of his translation is much worse than the second, and immeasurably worse than the first.