For this very reason he is above needing tender treatment from a translator, but can bear faithful rendering, not only better than Shakspeare but better than Pindar or Sophocles.
When Mr Arnold denies that Homer is ever prosaic or homely, his own specimens of translation put me into despair of convincing him; for they seem to me a very anthology of prosaic flatness. Phrases, which are not in themselves bad, if they were elevated by something in the syntax or rhythm distinguishing them from prose, become in him prose out-and-out. 'To Peleus why did we give you, to a mortal'? 'In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires; by each one there sate fifty men'. [At least he might have left out the expletive.] 'By their chariots stood the steeds, and champed the white barley; while their masters sate by the fire and waited for morning'. 'Us, whose portion for ever Zeus has made it, from youth right up to age, to be winding skeins of grievous wars, till every soul of us perish'. The words which I here italicize, seem to me below noble ballad. What shall I say of 'I bethink me what the Trojan men and Trojan women might murmur'. 'Sacred Troy shall go to destruction'. 'Or bear pails to the well of Messeϊs'. 'See, the wife of Hector, that great pre-eminent captain of the horsemen of Troy, in the day they fought
