busy on behalf of my father's great glory, and my own[1]'. In Chapman's hands this becomes:
The spirit I first did breathe
Did never teach me that; much less, since the contempt of death
Was settled in me, and my mind knew what a worthy was,
Whose office is to lead in fight, and give no danger pass
Without improvement. In this fire must Hector's trial shine:
Here must his country, father, friends, be in him made divine.
You see how ingeniously Homer's plain thought is tormented, as the French would say, here. Homer goes on: 'For well I know this in my mind and in my heart, the day will be, when sacred Troy shall perish'—
ἔσσεται ἦμαρ, ὅτ' ἄν ποτ' ὀλώλῃ Ἴλιος ἱρή.
Chapman makes this:
And such a stormy day shall come, in mind and soul I know,
When sacred Troy shall shed her towers, for tears of overthrow.
I might go on for ever, but I could not give you a better illustration than this last, of what I mean by saying that the Elizabethan poet fails to render Homer because he cannot forbear to interpose a play of thought between his object and its expression. Chapman translates his object into Eliza-*
- ↑ Iliad, vi. 444.
