Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/112

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I now take two longer passages in order to try my method more fully; but I still keep to passages which have already come under our notice. I quoted Chapman's version of some passages in the speech of Hector at his parting with Andromache. One astounding conceit will probably still be in your remembrance,

When sacred Troy shall shed her tow'rs for tears of overthrow,

as a translation of ὅτ' ἄν ποτ' ὀλώλῃ Ἴλιος ἰρή. I will quote a few lines which will give you, also, the key-note to the Anglo-Augustan manner of rendering this passage and to the Miltonic manner of rendering it. What Mr Newman's manner of rendering it would be, you can by this time sufficiently imagine for yourselves. Mr Wright,—to quote for once from his meritorious version instead of Cowper's, whose strong and weak points are those of Mr Wright also,—Mr Wright begins his version of this passage thus:

All these thy anxious cares are also mine,
Partner beloved; but how could I endure
The scorn of Trojans and their long-robed wives,

  • [Footnote: authority of Liddell and Scott's Lexicon (following

Heyne), is certainly wrong; for then the word cannot be pronounced without throwing an accent on the first syllable as well as the third, and μέγας κοῤῥυθαιόλλος Ἕκτωρ would have been to a Greek as intolerable an ending for a hexameter line as 'accurst orphanhood-destined houses' would be to us. The best authorities, accordingly, accent κορυθαίολος as a proparoxytonon.]