The other condition which we have mentioned, the avoidance of mere poetical diction, is a special requirement of an hexameter translation. This poetical diction is so closely entwined in our minds with our more familiar forms of verse-blank verse and heroic couplet-that it is difficult in writing them to avoid it altogether; and hence the simplicity and reality of Homer's descriptions is apt to evaporate in such translations. The hexameter is free from such habitual associations, and its language may be made as simple and real as Homer himself. It is worth our while to see, in a few passages, how the more homely parts of Homer have been refined, and, therefore, misrepresented, by this tendency of our translators. Let us take the celebrated passage of the exchange of arms between Glaucus and Diomed in the Sixth Book, which Schiller has used to show how the naïf poetry of the ancients differed from the sentimental poetry of the moderns. Mr. Dart thus translates (VI. 231): "Thus did the warriors speak; and descended at once from the war-cars, Mr. Wright, the most recent of our English blank verse translators, has it thus :— "This converse o'er, The chiefs, dismounting from their chariots, clasp'd But surely Jove robbed Glaucus of his wits When golden arms for brazen he exchanged— Arms worth a hundred beeves for arms worth nine." Homer simply says what Jove did, without presuming to judge of it. The blank verse Homer judges the proceeding to be strange; but surely, he says, in his astonishment, Jove did it. The Popian Homer does not believe that Jove did any such thing; it would have been too absurd. He did something of a more dignified and rational kind : "Thus having said the gallant chiefs alight, Their hands they join, their mutual faith they plight; Brave Glaucus then each narrow thought resign'd, (Jove warm'd his bosom and enlarg'd his mind); For Diomed's brass arms of mean device, For which nine oxen paid (a vulgar price), He gave his own of gold divinely wrought, A hundred beeves the shining purchase bought." We may take another example of the homely parts of Homer, the merriment of the gods at the end of the first book. Pope makes it depend on the spectacle of the limping Vulcan performing the office of the graceful Hebe : "Vulcan with awkward grace his office plies, And Mr. Wright takes much the same view :— "While unextinguishable laughter rose To see halt Vulcan puffing round the court." · But it was Vulcan's piteous story and his shrewd warning which made the gods "Comfort thyself, mother mine'; be not wroth, though thy heart swell within thee, Lest, all dear as thou art, with these very eyes I behold thee Come to the worse, and, though grieved to the soul, be unable to help thee. No slight task is it, mother, to strive with the King of Olympus. Thus did he speak, and a smile lit the face of the white armèd Herè. Bare he the sparkling bowl, and pour'd the sweet juice from the wine-cup. E'en at the sight of Hephaestus thus serving the wine at the banquet." It may strike the reader that this mirth of the gods is not of a very refined kind; and this is precisely what we mean by calling such passages homely: and such passages it is which necessarily undergo some change of tone when transferred into our longer-established kinds of verse, and which can be faithfully rendered into hexameters. Another case of Homeric laughter, very unrefined, but to unrefined men very natural, is that at the punishment of Thersites (II. 255). Odysseus says to him : "But let me tell thee this-and my threat shall be surely accomplish'd— If I refrain to lay hold of thee, strip off the rags from thy carcase Cloak, mantle, all the rest-and leave thee as bare as thy face is : Thus spake the chief, and brought down the sceptre right well on his shoulders; We have taken this passage at length, because it is a good example both of the peculiar advantages of an hexameter translation, and of Mr. Dart's mode of using then. The expressions here, though familiar and idiomatic, are not too colloquial; except possibly one-"looking the fool that he was "--which, moreover, is an interpolation, not being in Homer; a licence which the hexametrist should especially shun. The passages which we have quoted will give our readers a sufficient sample of the character of Mr. Dart's translation in the more homely parts of the Iliad, in which parts, as we have said, the hexameter can attain to a truth and a fidelity which no iambic measure can rival. In the more pathetic and sublime parts he is still faithful, and generally simple and lucid; but we have not observed in such passages any striking felicities of expression, any sparks of poetic fire, such as might, and Mr. Lockhart's translations of the Hector and Andromache scene. Still, Mr. Dart's is, on the whole, a good translation, and might have had a considerable currency among English readers, to the great improvement of their knowledge of Homer, if it had not been for his unfortunate crotchet about the mode of versifying proper names. And this is a mistake so widely pervading his translation, and so deeply seated, that it does not seem capable of being eradicated by any operation of poetic surgery. A QUIET NOOK; OR, VAGARIES OF AN OLD BACHELOR. IN FOUR CHAPTERS. BY JOHN RUFFINI, AUTHOR OF "LORENZO BENONI," CHAPTER IV. MY LAST FLIRTATION. In spite of these and other occasional disagreeable impressions, Schranksteinbad altogether left in me a longing to revisit it which I did the following summer; and, the more I saw of it, the more I grew in love with it; so that I ended by being a constant visitor at the establishment, and there I had, as I was telling you, my last flirtation. But what was it that so endeared this Schranksteinbad to you? I hear some one ask. I have told you already. It was its plenty of air and verdure, its fresh waters, its grand prospect of the Alps, its walks, its fir-tree forests, its birds, its squirrels, and vergissmeinnichts-it was that, which might make it a Temple of Ennui to you, its comparative seclusion, its homely feeling, its early hours, quiet old-fashioned habits, and perfect emancipation from the tethers of conventional life. Let me also mention, en passant, its very moderate charges. We live in an age, thank God, when everybody is rich, or wishes to appear so, and I disclaim beforehand all invidious inferences, which may be drawn from my having touched upon this ignoble item; still, I beg to submit that cheap terms are a consideration. Well, is this all? was there no other inducement to your patronage of this DOCTOR ANTONIO," ETC. will candidly admit that there was. Schranksteinbad had a peculiar feature of its own, which gave it an additional charm in my eyes. It was never entered by men under forty years of age. Open your eyes as wide as you will, I don't bate a jot of what I have put down. I don't mean, of course, that there was any written statuce forbidding the entrance of this quiet haven to gentlemen under forty years of age. I simply mention a fact, and that fact is, that not within the memory of the oldest annual visitor had there ever been (with one solitary exception) any gentleman under forty staying as a boarder at Schranksteinbad. I say staying as a boarder, for naturally there were plenty of youngsters among the occasional visitors of the Sunday. In the year 1858 it was-the year of the comet-that this deplorable exception took place, an exception, after all, which only served to confirm the rule. The interloper was a young man— —I was going to say a lad-between twenty-six and twenty-seven years of age. Thus far I must say for him, that he came with, and as companion to, a gentleman. of the legal age, very infirm and nearly blind. Had the youngster been at least indifferent-looking or vulgar-mannered! But no-he was very prepossessing and gentlemanly, and danced to perfection. I leave you to imagine the run he had with the young ladies; they were quite unmanageable. The past-fortians had C but it is a thing of the past now, and not likely to occur again. For this young man was reported to have died shortly after leaving-a warning to those who might be tempted to imitate himand the report found credence at Schranksteinbad, and forms part of the traditions of the place to this day. As I did nothing towards accrediting this belief, so I did nothing to discredit it, though I happened to know that my young man was in excellent health and spirits, having met him not long ago. It was his invalid friend who had died; but I held One is not obliged to be a my peace. hero of abnegation. To return. The stern sex being to the soft in about the proportion of one to five, Schranksteinbad had generally a floating account of from seven to eight gentlemen past the two scores, to an average number, let us say, of forty ladies, twelve or fifteen of them grownup young ladies. Now, high-spirited, or, may be, soft-hearted young ladies do not spend a month or so at a spa without sporting and coquetting a wee bit, or perhaps indulging in a little sentimentality; in other words, without establishing a little current of often unconscious, always innocent flirtation, be it even with bachelors past forty. Bachelors on their part, for being past forty, are not the less men possessed of eyes and a heart too... You perceive at a glance the charges, the benefits, and the dangers of the situation for this sprinkle of past-fortians, amid a bevy of young beauties. Thrice happy the mammas and the little sisters and brothers! they had an easy life of it with us. How we spoiled the little ones, drove their hoops for them, and crammed them with bonbons! With what an assiduous care we watched for the comfort of the matrons; warned them of sun and draught, wrapped shawls round their shoulders, nay, petted their polysarcic poodles-nasty creatures!-when they had any. At what a double gallop we set off to fetch the gloves, the bonnet, the parasol, at the bidding of the young ones! How many pick sweetbriar for them, or compromised the polish of my varnished pumps in some marshy ditch, to get at a withered vergissmeinnicht! Sweet toils, after all; and more than requited by the gift of a small twig of the blue blossom, instantly treasured in a pocketbook, or by the pressure of a lily hand holding prisoner the pricked finger, while the other, armed with a needle, extracted the thorn from it. Nor were these small ways of ingratiating ourselves with mammas and daughters the only string to our bow. The preoccupation of the agreeable did not make us forget the claims of the useful. One knows one's Horace by heart at our time of life, and how to mingle utile dulci. No little ailment or discomfort for which we had not our little remedy-sticking-plaster, eau des carmes, eau of orange-blossoms, sal volatile, balsamic vinegar, creosotis Billiard, ammonia, benzine, etc. These two last articles, the two most in requisition, were an exclusive monopoly of mine-it was only justice, because I had introduced them at Schranksteinbad-and urgent must be the case, indeed, for recourse to be had to other methods of healing a wasp-bite, or a spot on a silk gown, than my ammonia or benzine. The respect for my privilege was pushed so far on these two points, that a lady, convicted of having taken a stain out of her gown with her own benzine, was sentenced by her peers to have the obnoxious phial sequestered during all her stay at the Baths. The dangers of this kind of intercourse, on our side, are too obvious to need being pointed at; they are all comprised in this one-the risk of sliding from the slippery ground of flirtation into the slough of earnest lovemaking. Only fancy a grave past-fortian, with perhaps a bald pate, or a wig, playing the impassioned for good and all with a luxuriantly-haired blondine or brunette of seventeen or so! What could come of it but heartache and ridicule? I must say that, for my part, I never courted danger, I may say-yes, I played with fire. I remember a season in which I carried on three consecutive flirtations, one per month, and I came off at last heartwhole. Impunity had made me reckless. I felt so sure, so fire-proof poor goose that I was! But another word before I tell you of my narrow escape; it is meant in exoneration of the fair young ones. On my second visit to Schranksteinbad, I found it to have somehow transpired that I was an author; and, on my third season, I had the mixed satisfaction of seeing two books of mine handed from bench to bench, and from summerhouse to summerhouse, and now and then forgotten there. My being an author, combined with the ammonia and benzine I had just brought with me, made me in some request. A man who can manufacture lovely heiresses, and jet-haired lovers for them, and marry them at will, is not like another man in young ladies' eyes. They will lend him some of the perfections and of the locks of his heroes. This prestige-I beg pardon for the ambitious expression, but I find no better-lasted generally from a week to a fortnight. In cases of aggravated sentimentalism, twenty days had been reached. I may just as well remark, that this last limit of time was not overstepped in the pass of arms to which I am going to advert. Including both those of her arrival and departure, Mdlle. Emma's stay at the Baths amounted in all to nineteen days. Yes, her name was Emma; I had heard her sister call her so. Mdlle. Emma was a lovely, kind-hearted, playful big child. That she was lovely, I had the irrefragable evidence of my own eyes; that she was kind-hearted, I knew from the fact of her having offered to go, and going every day, to dress an old lady, her next neighbour, and a perfect stranger to her, whose right hand was disabled by rheumatism. A little scene in which she had played the first part, and which I had witnessed at table, had given me the measure of her graceful playfulness. We had a lady her daily tricks at the dessert consisted in this that she drew a dish of cakes near her, and cautiously slipped the contents, one by one, into her pocket. It was to defeat the end of this manœuvre, that Mdlle. Emma applied herself on one of the first days of her arrival, and so quietly managed, and with the utmost politeness, as never to let the dish of cakes stop within reach of the rapacious hands. I don't know how it came to pass, but, for the three or four first days of their stay, there was no communication whatever, save polite bows, between Mdlle. Emma and her company and me. The slow or quick growth of acquaintance between strangers at a spa depends pretty much on their respective situations at table, or on accident. Now, Mdlle. Emma's company and I sat at the two poles of the dinner-table, and accident, as it seems, had done nothing to draw us together. But, whatever its cause, the longer this sort of distance lasts, the more difficult it becomes to break through it. I felt the truth of this one morning, when, on going as usual to my observatory to read the newspaper, I descried in one of the summer-houses Mdlle. Emma reading a book, and I could take upon myself to do no more than bow to her most respectfully-a politeness which she returned at compound interest, I suspect with a little caricature. If I am to speak candidly, both Mdlle. Emma and her sister-a married lady, and her senior by six or seven years-belonged to that set of queenly women I most admire at a distance. Tall commanding figures intimidate me. However, it was written somewhere that we should become friends, and here is how it happened. I must premise that there ran against the wall of the house, on both sides of the flight of steps, a trellised verandah covered with Virginia creepers, which hung down in beautiful garlands, reaching to the ground. One day, towards dusk, I entered this cool recess to smoke a cigar. I was momentarily blinded by |