Thus Lord Derby. Chapman renders:—

There is no question which version is the more energetic. Is Lord Derby’s nearer the original in being tamer? He has taken the “instinct with fiery life” from Chapman’s hint. The original has simply “restless,” or more familiarly “in a fidget.” There is nothing about “grappling to the death,” and “nor should I fear” is feeble where Chapman with his “long insatiately” is literal. We will give an example where Chapman has amplified his original (Book XVI. v. 426; Derby, 494; Chapman, 405):—

Lord Derby’s version is nearer:—

Chapman has made his first line out of two in Homer, but, granting the license, how rapid and springy is the verse! Lord Derby’s “withs” are not agreeable, his “shouts” is an ill-chosen word for a comparison with vultures, “talons curved” is feeble, and his verse is, as usual, mainly built up of little blocks of four syllables each. “To battle” also is vague. With whom? Homer says that they rushed each at other. We shall not discuss how much license is loyal in a translator, but, as we think his chief aim should be to give a feeling of that life and spirit which makes the immortality of his original, and is the very breath in the nostrils of all poetry, he has a right to adapt himself to the genius of his own language. If he would do justice to his author, he must make up in one passage for his unavoidable shortcomings in another. He may here and there take for granted certain exigencies of verse in his original which he feels in his own case. Even Dante, who boasted that no word had ever made him say what he did not wish, should have made an exception of rhyming ones, for these sometimes, even in so abundant a language as the Italian, have driven the most straightforward of poets into an awkward détour.

We give one more passage from Chapman:—

Here the first half is sluggish and inadequate, but what surging vigor, what tumult of the sea, what swiftness, in the last! Here is Lord Derby’s attempt:—

Chapman here is truer to his master, and the motion is in the verse itself. Lord Derby’s is description, and not picture. “Monsters of the deep” is an example of the hackneyed periphrases in which he abounds, like all men to whom language is a literary tradition, and not a living gift of the Muses. “Lash” is precisely the wrong word. Chapman is always great at sea. Here is another example from the Fourteenth Book:—

Observe how the somewhat ponderous movement of the first verse assists the meaning of the words.

He is great, too, in single phrases and lines:—

The lion “lets his rough brows down so low they hide his eyes”; the flames “wrastle” in the woods; “rude feet dim the day with a fog of dust;” and so in a hundred other instances.

For an example of his more restrained vigor, take the speech of Sarpedon in the Twelfth Book of the Iliad, and for poetic beauty, the whole story of Ulysses and Nausikaa in the Odyssey. It was here that Keats made himself Grecian and learned to versify.

Mr. Hooper has done his work of editing well. But he has sometimes misapprehended his author, and distorted his meaning by faulty punctuation. In one of the passages already cited, Mr. Hooper’s text stands thus: “Lest I be prejudiced with opinion, to dissent of ignorance, or singularity.” All the commas which darken the sense should be removed. Chapman meant to say, “Lest I be condemned beforehand by people thinking I dissent out of ignorance or singularity.” (Iliad Vol. I. p. 23.) So on the next page the want of a hyphen makes nonsense: “And saw the round coming [round-coming] of this silver bow of our Phoebus,” that is, the crescent coming to the full circle. In the translations, too, the pointing needs reformation now and then, but shows, on the whole, a praiseworthy fidelity. We will give a few examples of what we believe to be errors on the part of Mr. Hooper, who, by the way, is weakest on points which concern the language of Chapman’s day. We follow the order of the text as most convenient.

“Bid” (Il. i.) is explained to mean “threaten, challenge,” where “offer” would be the right word.

Surely a slip of Chapman’s pen. He must have intended to write “Of all the offal,” a transversion common with him and needed here to avoid a punning jingle.

Mr. Hooper’s note is “inhabiters, viz. of Troy.” “Inhabitant” is an adjective agreeing with “power.” Our power without exceeds that within.

A note on this passage tells us that “out of judgments” means “against our inclinations.” It means simply “in accordance with our good judgment,” just as we still say “out of his wisdom.” Compare Il. iii. 63,

Mr. Hooper’s note is “‘Which men a comet call’—so both the folios. Dr. Taylor has printed ‘which man a comet calls.’ This certainly suits the rhyme, but I adhere to Chapman’s text.” Both editors have misunderstood the passage. The fault is not in “call” but in “exhals,” a clear misprint for “exhall,” the spelling, as was common, being conformed to the visible rhyme. “That” means “so that” (a frequent Elizabethan construction) and “exhall” is governed by “sparks.” The meaning is, “As when Jove, brandishing a comet, hurls out its curled hair so that a thousand sparks exhale from its burning.”

Mr. Hooper tells us, “It is doubtful what this word really is. Dr. Taylor suggests that it may probably mean the evict, or doomed one—but? It is possible Chapman meant to Anglicize the Greek αἴξ; or should we read Ibex, as the αἴξ ἴξαλος was such?” The word means the chamois, and is merely the English form of the French ibiche. Dr. Taylor’s reading would amaze us were we not familiar with the commentators on Shakespeare.

“Out-ray—spread out in array; abbreviated from array. Dr. Taylor says ‘rush out,’ from the Anglo-Saxon ‘rean,’ to flow; but there seems no necessity for such an etymology.” We should think not! Chapman, like Pope, made his first sketch from the French, and corrected it by the Greek. Those who would understand Chapman’s English must allow for traces of his French guide here and there. This is one of them, perhaps. The word is etymologically unrelated to array. It is merely the old French oultréer, a derivative of ultra. It means “they pass beyond their gates even to your fleet.” He had said just before that formerly “your foes durst not a foot address without their ports.” The word occurs again Il. xxiii. 413.

“Tydides.—He led Tydides, i. e. Tydides he led. An unusual construction.” Not in the least. The old printers or authors sometimes put a comma where some connecting particle was left out. We had just now an instance where one took the place of so. Here it supplies that. “None could make his vaunt that he led (that is, was before) Tydides.” We still use the word in the same sense, as the “leading” horse in a race.

“Wilfully—willingly, anxiously.” Wishfully, as elsewhere in Chapman.

“Opposed—standing opposite to one another for expedition’s sake.” We hope Mr. Hooper understood his own note, for it baffles us utterly. The meaning is simply “pitted against each other to see which will reap most swiftly.” In a note (Il. xi. 417.) we are told that “the etymology [of lucern] seems uncertain.” It is nothing more than a corruption of the old French leucerve (loup-cervier).

“Income—communication, or infusion, of courage from the Gods. The word in this sense Todd says was a favorite in Cromwell’s time.” A surprising note! Income here means nothing more than “onfall,” as the context shows.

“Ure—use. Skinner thinks it a contraction of usura. It is frequent in Chaucer. Todd gives examples from Hooker and L’Estrange.” The word is common enough, but how Mr. Hooper could seriously quote good old Skinner for such an etymology we cannot conceive. It does not mean “in use,” but “to work,” being merely the English form of en œuvre, as “manure” is of manœuvrer.

“Troop-meal—in troops, troop by troop. So piecemeal. To meal was to mingle, mix together; from the French mêler.... The reader would do well to consult Dr. Jamieson’s excellent ‘Dictionary of the Scottish Language’ in voce ‘mell.’” No doubt the reader might profit by consulting it under any other word beginning with M, and any of them would be as much to the purpose as mell. Troop-meal, like inch-meal, piece-meal, implies separation, not mingling, and is from a Teutonic root. Mr. Hooper is always weak in his linguistic. In a note on Il. xviii. 144, he informs us that “To sterve is to die; and the sense of starve, with cold or hunger originated in the 17th century.” We would it had! But we suspect that men had died of both these diseases earlier. What he should have said was that the restriction of meaning to dying with hunger was modern.

Il. xx. 239 we have “the God’s” for “the Gods’” and a few lines below “Anchisiades’” for “Anchisiades’s”; Il. xxi. 407, “press’d” for “prest.”

We had noted a considerable number of other slips, but we will mention only two more. “Treen broches” is explained to mean “branches of trees.” (Hymn to Hermes, 227.) It means “wooden spits.” In the Bacchus (28, 29) Mr. Hooper restores a corrupt reading which Mr. Singer (for a wonder) had set right. He prints,—

Of course it should be powerfully-divined, for otherwise we must read “Pow’rs.” The five volumes need a very careful revision in their punctuation, and in another edition we should advise Mr. Hooper to strike out every note in which he has been tempted into etymology.

We come next to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Lovelace. Three short pieces of Lovelace’s have lived, and deserved to live: “To Lucasta from Prison,” “To Lucasta on going to the Wars,” and “The Grasshopper.” They are graceful, airy, and nicely finished. The last especially is a charming poem, delicate in expression, and full of quaint fancy, which only in the latter half is strained to conceit. As the verses of a gentleman they are among the best, though not of a very high order as poetry. He is to be classed with the lucky authors who, without great powers, have written one or two pieces so facile in thought and fortunate in phrase as to be carried lightly in the memory, poems in which analysis finds little, but which are charming in their frail completeness. This faculty of hitting on the precise lilt of thought and measure that shall catch the universal ear and sing themselves in everybody’s memory, is a rare gift. We have heard many ingenious persons try to explain the cling of such a poem as “The Burial of Sir John Moore,” and the result of all seemed to be, that there were certain verses that were good, not because of their goodness, but because one could not forget them. They have the great merit of being portable, and we have to carry so much luggage through life, that we should be thankful for what will pack easily and take up no room.

All that Lovelace wrote beside these three poems is utterly worthless, mere chaff from the threshing of his wits. Take out the four pages on which they are printed, and we have two hundred and eighty-nine left of the sorriest stuff that ever spoiled paper. The poems are obscure, without anything in them to reward perseverance, dull without being moral, and full of conceits so far-fetched that we could wish the author no worse fate than to carry them back to where they came from. We are no enemies to what are commonly called conceits, but authors bear them, as heralds say, with a difference. And a terrible difference it is! With men like Earle, Donne, Fuller, Butler, Marvell, and even Quarles, conceit means wit; they would carve the merest cherry-stone of thought in the quaintest and delicatest fashion. But with duller and more painful writers, such as Gascoyne, Marston, Fe11tham, and a score of others, even with cleverer ones like Waller, Crashawe, and Suckling, where they insisted on being fine, their wit is conceit. Difficulty without success is perhaps the least tolerable kind of writing. Mere stupidity is a natural failing; we skip and pardon. But the other is Dulness in a domino, that travesties its familiar figure, and lures us only to disappoint. These unhappy verses of Lovelace’s had been dead and lapt in congenial lead these two hundred years;—what harm had they done Mr. Hazlitt that he should disinter them? There is no such disenchanter of peaceable reputations as one of these resurrectionmen of literature, who will not let mediocrities rest in the grave, where the kind sexton, Oblivion, had buried them, but dig them up to make a profit on their lead.

Of all Mr. Smith’s editors, Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt is the worst. He is at times positively incredible, worse even than Mr. Halliwell, and that is saying a good deal. Worthless as Lovelace’s poems were, they should have been edited correctly, if edited at all. Even dulness and dirtiness have a right to fair play, and to be dull and dirty in their own way. Mr. Hazlitt has allowed all the misprints of the original (or by far the greater part of them) to stand, but he has ventured on many emendations of the text, and in every important instance has blundered, and that, too, even where the habitual practice of his author in the use of words might have led him right. The misapprehension shown in some of his notes is beyond the belief of any not familiar with the way in which old books are edited in England by the job. We have brought a heavy indictment, and we proceed to our proof, choosing only cases where there can be no dispute. We should premise that Mr. Hazlitt professes to have corrected the punctuation.

Here the original reads, “Cruel still on,” and the only correction needed was a comma after “cruel.”

The original has “of which,” and rightly, for “their spheres bereft” is parenthetic, and the sense is “of which only the jelly’s left.” Lovelace is speaking of the eyes of a mistress who has grown old, and his image, confused as it is, is based on the belief that stars shooting from their spheres fell to the earth as jellies,—a belief, by the way, still to be met with in New England.

Lovelace, describing a cow (and it is one of the few pretty passages in the volume), says,—

Mr. Hazlitt changes to “Round was her udder,” thus making that white instead of the cow, as Lovelace intended. On the next page we read,—

Compare Chapman (Iliads, xviii. 480):—

The original was “prize their life,” and the use of “neat” as a singular in this way is so uncommon, if not unprecedented, and the verse as corrected so halting, that we have no doubt Lovelace so wrote it. Of course “hollowed” should be “hallowed,” though the broader pronunciation still lingers in our country pulpits.

So the original, which Mr. Hazlitt, missing the sense, has changed to “what hook or angle.”

The original has “there.” Read,—

“Where as,” as then used, would make it the “plays” that were to die.

Mr. Hazlitt’s note on “posses” could hardly be matched by any member of the posse comitatus taken at random:—

The “ibid., &c.” is delightful; in other words, “find out the meaning of posse for yourself.” Though dark to Mr. Hazlitt, the word has not the least obscurity in it. It is only another form of push, nearer the French pousser, from Latin pulsare, and “the context here requires” nothing more than that an editor should read a poem if he wish to understand it. The plain meaning is,—

That is, when she heard the name Lucasta,—for thus far in the poem she has passed under the pseudonyme of Amarantha. “Possess her round” is awkward, but mildly so for Lovelace, who also spells “commandress” in the same way with a single s. Process is spelt prosses in the report of those who absented themselves from Church in Stratford.

Mr. Hazlitt, for some inscrutable reason, has changed “haire” to “eare” in the first line, preferring the ear of a beard to its hair!

Mr. Hazlitt prints,—

Surely we should read:—

i. e. “Poor fool now frozen, the shortness of thy joys, who mad’st no provision against winter, warns us to do otherwise.”

The original reads rightly “for which,” &c., and, the passage being rightly pointed, we have,—

Of course “complexion” had not its present limited meaning.

“We should read themselves,” says Mr. Hazlitt’s note authoritatively. Of course a noun ending in s is plural! Not so fast. In spite of the dictionaries, bays was often used in the singular.

says Robert Randolph in verses prefixed to his brother’s poems; and Fe11tham in “Jonsonus Virbius,”

But we will cite Mr. Bayes himself:—

Here Mr. Hazlitt has ruined both sense and metre by his unhappy “not.” We should read “Female, but madam-born,” meaning clearly enough “we are women, it is true, but of another race.”

Wrong again, and the inserted “let” ruinous to the measure. Is it possible that Mr. Hazlitt does not understand so common an English construction as this?

Mr. Hazlitt inserts the “to,” which is not in the original, from another version. Lovelace wrote “ayër.” We have noted two other cases (pp. 203 and 248) where he makes the word a dissyllable. On the same page we have “shewe’s” changed to “shew” because Mr. Hazlitt did not know it meant “show us” and not “shows.” On page 170, “their” is substituted for “her,” which refers to Lucasta, and could refer to nothing else.

Mr. Hazlitt changes “quarrels the student Mercury” to “quarrels with,” not knowing that quarrels was once used as a transitive verb. (p. 189.)

Wherever he chances to notice it, Mr. Hazlitt changes the verb following two or more nouns connected by an “and” from singular to plural. For instance:—

for “files.” Lovelace commonly writes so;—on p. 181, where it escaped Mr. Hazlitt’s grammatical eye, we find,—

Indeed, it was usual with writers of that day. Milton in one of his sonnets has,—

and Leigh Hunt, for the sake of the archaism, in one of his, “Patience and Gentleness is power.”

Weariness, and not want of matter, compels us to desist from further examples of Mr. Hazlitt’s emendations. But we must also give a few specimens of his notes, and of the care with which he has corrected the punctuation.

In a note on “flutes of canary” (p. 76) too long to quote, Mr. Hazlitt, after citing the glossary of Nares (edition of 1859, by Wright and Halliwell, a very careless book, to speak mildly), in which flute is conjectured to mean cask, says that he is not satisfied, but adds, “I suspect that a flute of canary was so called from the cask having several vent-holes.” But flute means simply a tall glass. Lassel, describing the glass-making at Murano, says, “For the High Dutch they have high glasses called Flutes, a full yard long.” So in Dryden’s Sir Martin Mar-all, “bring two flute-glasses and some stools, ho! We’ll have the ladies’ health.” The origin of the word, though doubtful, is probably nearer to flood than flute. But conceive of two gentlemen, members of one knows not how many learned societies, like Messrs. Wright and Halliwell, pretending to edit Nares, when they query a word which they could have found in any French or German dictionary!

On page 93 we have,—

Mr. Hazlitt annotates thus: “Rav’d seems here to be equivalent to reav’d or bereav’d. Perhaps the correct reading may be ’reav’d.’ See Worcester’s Dictionary, art. Rave?, where Menage’s supposition of affinity between rave and bereave is perhaps a little too slightingly treated.”

The meaning of Lovelace was, “the fire that raved.” But what Mr. Hazlitt would make with “reaved o’er my purer thoughts,” we cannot conceive. On the whole, we think he must have written the note merely to make his surprising glossological suggestion. All that Worcester does for the etymology, by the way, is to cite Richardson, no safe guide.

The comma in this verse has, of course, no right there, but Mr. Hazlitt leaves the whole passage so corrupt that we cannot spend time in disinfecting it. We quote it only for the sake of his note on “so so.” It is marvellous.

That the editor of an English poet need not understand Italian we may grant, but that he should not know the meaning of a phrase so common in his own language as so-so is intolerable. Lovelace has been saying that a certain play might have gained applause under certain circumstances, but that everybody calls it so-so,—something very different from “an exclamation of approval,” one should say. The phrase answers exactly to the Italian così così, while sì (not si) is derived from sic, and is analogous with the affirmative use of the German so and the Yankee jes’ so.

The note on fryed is,—

“Evidently!” An instance of the unsafeness of rhyme as a guide to pronunciation. It was die that had the sound of dee, as everybody (but Mr. Hazlitt) knows. Lovelace himself rhymes die and she on p. 269. But what shall we say to our editor’s not knowing that fry was used formerly where we should say burn? Lovers used to fry with love, whereas now they have got out of the frying-pan into the fire. In this case a martyr is represented as burning (i. e. longing) to be fried (i. e. burned).

Mr. Hazlitt’s note is,—

We should think not, as Mr. Hazlitt understands it! Did he never hear of the golden hair of Apollo,—of the intonsum Cynthium? Don Quixote was a better scholar where he speaks of las doradas hebras de sus hermosos cabellos. But hair never meant what Mr. Hazlitt says it does, even when used as he supposes it to be here. It had nothing to do with “outward form, nature, or character,” but had a meaning much nearer what we express by temperament, which its color was and is thought to indicate.

On p. 232 “wild ink” is explained to mean “unrefined.” It is a mere misprint for “vild.”

Page 237, Mr. Hazlitt, explaining an illusion of Lovelace to the “east and west” in speaking of George Sandys, mentions Sandys’s Oriental travels, but seems not to know that he translated Ovid in Virginia.

Pages 251, 252:—

Mr. Hazlitt reads his for this in the last verse, and his note on “bone” is:—

Could the farce of “editing” go further? To make a “splinter of Castriot” an ass’s jawbone is a little too bad. We refer Mr. Hazlitt to “The Life of George Castriot, King of Epirus and Albania,” &c., &c., (Edinburgh, 1753,) p. 32, for an explanation of this profound difficulty. He will there find that the Turkish soldiers wore relics of Scanderbeg as charms.

Perhaps Mr. Hazlitt’s most astounding note is on the word pickear. (p. 203.)

“In the sense in which it is here used this word seems to be peculiar to Lovelace. To pickear, or pickeer, means to skirmish.” And, pray, what other possible meaning can it have here?

Of his corrections of the press we will correct a few samples.

Page 34, for “Love nee’re his standard,” read “neere.” Page 82, for “fall too,” read “fall to” (or, as we ought to print such words, “fall-to”). Page 83, for “star-made firmament,” read “star, made firmament.” Page 161, for “To look their enemies in their hearse,” read, both for sense and metre, into. Page 176, for “the gods have kneeled,” read had. Page 182, for “In beds they tumbled off their own,” read of. Page 184, for “in mine one monument I lie,” read owne. Page 212, for “Deucalion’s blackflung stone,” read “backflung.” Of the punctuation we shall give but one specimen, and that a fair average one:—

Our readers over ten years of age will easily correct this for themselves.

Time brings to obscure authors[30] an odd kind of reparation, an immortality, not of love and interest and admiration, but of curiosity merely. In proportion as their language was uncouth, provincial, or even barbarous, their value becomes the greater. A book of which only a single copy escaped its natural enemies, the pastry-cook and trunk-maker, may contain one word that makes daylight in some dark passage of a great author, and its name shall accordingly live forever in a note. Is not, then, a scholiastic athanasy better than none? And if literary vanity survive death, or even worse, as Brunetto Latini’s made him insensible for a moment to the rain of fire and the burning sand, the authors of such books as are not properly literature may still comfort themselves with a non omnis moriar, laying a mournful emphasis on the adjective, and feeling that they have not lived wholly in vain while they share with the dodo a fragmentary continuance on earth. To be sure, the immortality, such as it is, belongs less to themselves than to the famous men they help to illustrate. If they escape oblivion, it is by a back door, as it were, and they survive only in fine print at the page’s foot. At the banquet of fame they sit below the salt. After all, perhaps, the next best thing to being famous or infamous is to be utterly forgotten, for this also is to achieve a kind of definite result by living. To hang on the perilous edge of immortality by the nails, liable at any moment to drop into the fathomless ooze of oblivion, is at best a questionable beatitude. And yet sometimes the merest barnacles that have attached themselves to the stately keels of Dante or Shakespeare or Milton have an interest of their own by letting us know in what remote waters those hardy navigators went a pearl-fishing. Has not Mr. Dyce traced Shakespeare’s “dusty death” to Anthony Copley, and Milton’s “back resounded Death!” to Abraham Fraunce? Nay, is it not Bernard de Ventadour’s lark that sings forever in the diviner air of Dante’s Paradise?