Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/218

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natural word. I do not know that I have used it three times, but I claim a right of using it, and protest against allowing the heroes of slang to deprive us of excellent words by their perverse misuse. If the imaginations of some men are always in satire and in low slang, so much the worse for them: but the more we yield to such demands, the more will be exacted. I expect, before long, to be told that brick is an ignoble word, meaning a jolly fellow, and that sell, cut are out of place in Homer. My metre, it seems, is inadmissible with some, because it is the metre of Yankee Doodle! as if Homer's metre were not that of the Margites. Every noble poem is liable to be travestied, as the Iliad and Æschylus and Shakspeare have been. Every burlesque writer uses the noble metre, and caricatures the noble style. Mr Arnold says, I must not render τανύπεπλος 'trailing-*rob'd', because it reminds him of 'long petticoats sweeping a dirty pavement'. What a confession as to the state of his imagination! Why not, of 'a queen's robe trailing on a marble pavement'? Did he never read

πέπλον μὲν κατέχευεν ἑανὸν πατρὸς ἐτ' οὔδει?

I have digressed: I return to words which have been misunderstood. A second word is of more importance, Imp; which properly means a Graft. The best trans-