No, but the will of heaven, and Fate's invincible power.
For by no slow pace or want of swiftness of ours

Did the Trojans obtain to strip the arms from Patroclus;
But that prince among Gods, the son of the lovely-haired Leto,
Slew him fighting in front of the fray, and glorified Hector.
But, for us, we vie in speed with the breath of the West Wind,
Which, men say, is the fleetest of winds; 'tis thou who art fated
To lie low in death, by the hand of a God and a Mortal."

Thus far he; and here his voice was stopped by the Furies. Then, with a troubled heart, the swift Achilles addressed him: "Why dost thou prophesy so my death to me, Xanthus ? It needs not.

I of myself know well, that here I am destined to perish,
Far from my father and mother dear: for all that I will not
Stay this hand from fight, till the Trojans are utterly routed."

So he spake, and drove with a cry his steeds into battle.

There are also one or two particular considerations which confirm me in the opinion that for translating Homer into English verse the hexameter should be used. The most successful attempt hitherto made at rendering Homer into English, the attempt in which Homer's general effect has been best retained, is an attempt made in the hexameter measure. It is a version of the famous lines in the third book of the Iliad, which end with the mention of Castor and Pollux. The author is the accomplished Provost of Eton, Dr. Hawtrey; and this performance of his must be my excuse for having taken the liberty to single him out for mention, as one of the natural judges of a translation of Homer, along with Professor Thompson and Professor Jowett, whose connection with Greek literature is official. The passage is short: and Dr. Hawtrey's version of it is suffused with a pensive grace which is perhaps rather more Virgilian than Homeric; still it is the one ver

1 "Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia;
Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember;
Two, two only remain, whom I see not among the commanders,
Castor fleet in the car, - Polydeuces brave with the cestus, —
Own dear brethren of mine, - one parent loved us as infants.
Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lacedæmon,
Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through the waters,

Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of Heroes,

All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?"

So said she-they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing,

There, in their own dear land, their Fatherland, Lacedæmon.

English Hexameter Translations; London, 1847; p. 242.

sion of any part of the Iliad which in some degree reproduces for me the original effect of Homer, it is the best, and it is in hexameters.

Here I stop. I have said so much, because I think that the task of translating Homer into English verse both will be reattempted, and may be reattempted successfully. There are great works composed of parts so disparate that one translator is not likely to have the requisite gifts for poetically rendering all of them. Such are the works of Shakespeare, and Goethe's "Faust"; and these it is best to attempt to render in prose only. People praise Tieck and Schlegel's version of Shakespeare: I, for my part, would sooner read Shakespeare in the French prose translation, and that is saying a great deal; but in the German poets' hands Shakespeare so often gets, especially where he is humorous, an air of what the French call niaiserie! and can anything be more un-Shakespearean than that? Again: Mr. Hayward's prose translation of the first part of "Faust" so good that it makes one regret Mr. Hayward should have abandoned the line of translation for a kind of literature which is, to say the least, somewhat slight — is not likely to be surpassed by any translation in verse. But poems like the Iliad, which in the main are in one manner, may hope to find a poetical translator so gifted and so trained as to be able to learn that one manner, and to reproduce it. Only, the poet who would reproduce this must cultivate in himself a Greek virtue by no means common among the moderns in general, and the English in particular, moderation. For Homer has not only the English vigor, he has the Greek grace; and when one observes the boistering, rollicking way in which his English admirers - even men of genius, like the late Professor Wilson-love to talk of Homer and his poetry, one cannot help feeling that there is no very deep community of nature between them and the object of their enthusiasm. "It is very well, my good friends," I always imagine Homer saying to them, if he could hear them: "you do me a great deal of honor, but somehow or other you praise me too like barbarians." For Homer's grandeur is not the mixed and turbid grandeur of the great poets of the north, of the authors of "Othello" and "Faust"; it is a perfect, a lovely grandeur. Certainly his poetry has all the energy and power of the poetry of our ruder climates; but it has, besides, the pure lines of an Ionian horizon, the liquid clearness of an Ionian sky.

HECTOR, PARIS, HELEN, ANDROMACHE.

BY GEORGE CHAPMAN.

[GEORGE CHAPMAN, English poet of the age of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., was born in 1559, and graduated at Cambridge. He was very slow in development: his first poem, "The Shadow of Night," was published at thirty-five, and his first play, "The Blind Beggar of Alexandria," at thirty-nine, when also appeared the first part (remodeled later) of his translation of the Iliad, his one living work. He translated also the Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns, Hesiod, Musæus' "Hero and Leander," and Juvenal's Fifth Satire. Among his plays were "Bussy d'Ambois," "Cæsar and Pompey," "All Fools," "Monsieur d'Olive," "The Gentleman Usher," and "The Widow's Tears." He died in 1634.]

The loved of heaven's chief Power,

Hector, here entered. In his hand a goodly lance he bore,
Ten cubits long; the brazen head went shining in before,
Helped with a burnished ring of gold. He found his brother then
Amongst the women, yet prepared to go amongst the men,
For in their chamber he was set, trimming his arms, his shield,
His curets, and was trying how his crooked bow would yield
To his straight arms. Amongst her maids was set the Argive Queen,
Commanding them in choicest works. When Hector's eye had seen
His brother thus accompanied, and that he could not bear
The very touching of his arms but where the women were,
And when the time so needed men, right cunningly he chid.
That he might do it bitterly, his cowardice he hid,
That simply made him so retired, beneath an anger, feigned
In him by Hector, for the hate the citizens sustained
Against him, for the foil he took in their cause; and again,
For all their gen'ral foils in his. So Hector seems to plain
Of his wrath to them, for their hate, and not his cowardice;
As that were it that sheltered him in his effeminacies,
And kept him, in that dang'rous time, from their fit aid in fight;
For which he chid thus: "Wretched man! so timeless is thy spite
That 'tis not honest; and their hate is just, 'gainst which it bends.
War burns about the town for thee; for thee our slaughtered friends
Besiege Troy with their carcasses, on whose heaps our high walls
Are overlooked by enemies; the sad sounds of their falls
Without, are echoed with the cries of wives and babes within;
And all for thee; and yet for them thy honor cannot win
Head of thine anger. Thou shouldst need no spirit to stir up thine,
But thine should set the rest on fire, and with a rage divine
Chastise impartially the best, that impiously forbears.

Come forth, lest thy fair towers and Troy be burned about thine ears."

Paris acknowledged, as before, all just that Hector spake,
Allowing justice, though it were for his injustice' sake;
And where his brother put a wrath upon him by his art,
He takes it, for his honor's sake, as sprung out of his heart,

And rather would have anger seem his fault than cowardice;

[advice,

And thus he answered: "Since, with right, you joined check with
And I hear you, give equal ear: It is not any spleen
Against the town, as you conceive, that makes me so unseen,
But sorrow for it; which to ease, and by discourse digest
Within myself, I live so close; and yet, since men might wrest
My sad retreat, like you, my wife with her advice inclined
This my addression to the field; which was mine own free mind,
As well as th' instance of her words; for though the foil were mine,
Conquest brings forth her wreaths by turns. Stay then this haste of
thine

But till I arm, and I am made a consort for thee straight ;-
Or go, I'll overtake thy haste." Helen stood at receipt,
And took up all great Hector's powers, t' attend her heavy words,
By which had Paris no reply. This vent her grief affords:
"Brother (if I may call you so, that had been better born
A dog, than such a horrid dame, as all men curse and scorn,
A mischief-maker, a man plague) O would to God, the day,
That first gave light to me, had been a whirlwind in my way,
And borne me to some desert hill, or hid me in the rage
Of earth's most far-resounding seas, ere I should thus engage
The dear lives of so many friends! Yet since the Gods have been
Helpless foreseers of my plagues, they might have likewise seen
That he they put in yoke with me, to bear out their award,
Had been a man of much more spirit, and, or had noblier dared
To shield mine honor with this deed, or with his mind had known
Much better the upbraids of men, that so he might have shown
(More like a man) some sense of grief for both my shame and his.
But he is senseless, nor conceives what any manhood is,
Nor now, nor ever after will; and therefore hangs, I fear,

A plague above him. But come near, good brother; rest you here, Who, of the world of men, stands charged with most unrest for me, (Vile wretch) and for my lover's wrong; on whom a destiny

So bitter is imposed by Jove, that all succeeding times

Will put, to our unended shames, in all men's mouths our crimes."
He answered: "Helen, do not seek to make me sit with thee;

I must not stay, though well I know thy honored love of me.
My mind calls forth to aid our friends, in whom my absence breeds
Longings to see me; for whose sakes, importune thou to deeds
This man by all means, that your care may make his own make hast,
And meet me in the open town, that all may see at last

He minds his lover. I myself will now go home, and see
My household, my dear wife, and son, that little hope of me;
For, sister, 'tis without my skill, if I shall evermore

Return, and see them, or to earth, her right in me, restore.

The Gods may stoop me by the Greeks." This said, he went to see
The virtuous princess, his true wife, white-armed Andromache.
She ran to Hector, and with her, tender of heart and hand,
Her son, borne in his nurse's arms; when, like a heavenly sign,
Compact of many golden stars, the princely child did shine,
Whom Hector called Scamandrius, but whom the town did name
Astyanax, because his sire did only prop the same.
Hector, though grief bereft his speech, yet smiled upon his joy.
Andromache cried out, mixed hands, and to the strength of Troy
Thus wept forth her affectión: "O noblest in desire!

Thy mind, inflamed with others' good, will set thyself on fire.
Nor pitiest thou thy son, nor wife, who must thy widow be,
If now thou issue; all the field will only run on thee.
Better my shoulders underwent the earth, than thy decease;
For then would earth bear joys no more; then comes the black increase
Of griefs (like Greeks on Ilion). Alas! What one survives
To be my refuge? One black day bereft seven brothers' lives,
By stern Achilles; by his hand my father breathed his last,

His high-walled rich Cilician Thebes sacked by him, and laid wast;
The royal body yet he left unspoiled; religion charmed

That act of spoil; and all in fire he burned him cómplete armed; Built over him a royal tomb; and to the monument

He left of him, th' Oreades (that are the high descent

Of Ægis-bearing Jupiter) another of their own

Did add to it, and set it round with elms; by which is shown,
In theirs, the barrenness of death; yet might it serve beside
To shelter the sad monument from all the ruffinous pride

Of storms and tempests, used to hurt things of that noble kind.
The short life yet my mother lived he saved, and served his mind
With all the riches of the realm; which not enough esteemed,
He kept her pris'ner; whom small time, but much more wealth, re-
And she, in sylvan Hypoplace, Cilicia ruled again,
[deemed,
But soon was overruled by death; Diana's chaste disdain
Gave her a lance, and took her life. Yet, all these gone from me,
Thou amply render'st all; thy life makes still my father be,
My mother, brothers; and besides thou art my husband too,
Most loved, most worthy. Pity then, dear love, and do not go,
For thou gone, all these go again; pity our common joy,
Lest, of a father's patronage, the bulwark of all Troy,
Thou leav'st him a poor widow's charge. Stay, stay then, in this
And call up to the wild fig tree all thy retirèd power;

[tower,