eminently applicable in a case where no one now supposes we are bound by the perhaps unascertainable, perhaps hopelessly contradictory, opinions of the Reformers. It was not likely that a Prayer-book compiled under the unhappy auspices that attended either the beginning or the end of the reign of Edward VI. would have been perfect, or all that could be desired, after the lapse of three centuries. But when it is considered that the Articles were drawn up at a time when theology had reached nearly its lowest level in the Church of England, and were remodelled after the accession of Elizabeth, when the tone of religious belief was still lower, one is really tempted to ask with wonder, How is it that men have placed such implicit belief in them? And no other answer can be given than that they have been neglected and ignored. Of course, there has been a large party who swear by them, and the existence of whose form of belief in the Church of England is guaranteed by their being retained; but it is impossible to deny that they contain statements or implications that are verbally false, and others that are very difficult to reconcile with truth. In the times that are coming over the Church of England, the question will arise, What service have the Articles of the Church of England ever done? and of what use are they at the present day? The latter question must be answered very fully and satisfactorily, if the answer is to be any makeweight against the condemnation of them virtually pronounced by the Eirenicon. We say virtually, for it is, after all, only an implicit, and not an explicit condemnation of them, that the volume contains. The slight difference of opinion (if difference there is, as regards what the framers of the Articles intended) between ourselves and the respected author of the 'Eirenicon' need not be remarked on here. But we venture to go a step beyond any suggestion contained in this volume, and boldly proclaim our own opinion, that before union with Rome can be effected, the Thirty-nine Articles must be wholly withdrawn. They are virtually withdrawn at the present moment; for the very fact of the endorsement of the view of the Eirenicon by its reviewer in the Times, proves that, as far as the most important of them are concerned, there are persons who sign them in senses absolutely contradictory. As we close this article, which has already been overtaken in its course by two or three notices and rejoinders which we have thought it our duty to remark upon, we may observe, that the assertion we made at its commencement is in a fair way to be falsified before it meets our reader's eyes. Already the Eirenicon is beginning to create a literature of its own. Already the republication of No. 90 is beginning to introduce it to a class of The readers too young to remember the stirring days of 1841. subject which has been pent up for five and twenty years is beginning to revive, and seems likely to bear its late fruit amid the constrained acquiescence of those who were then fighting the battle of Protestantism against Catholicism, and the joyful acclamation of those who have been brought up in the 'sweet uses of adversity.' We shall, no doubt, have to recur to the subject in our next number. Meanwhile, we offer to all our readers, and to all wellwishers for the Union of Christendom, hopes for a happy new year, whilst we ask them to join with us in our prayer, that the year 1866 may advance us another step towards so magnificent a result. 190 ART. VII.-The Iliad of Homer, in English Hexameter Verse. By J. HENRY DART, M.A. of Exeter College, Oxford. London: Longmans. 1865. If the following pages were to be a sermon instead of an essay, our text would be written in a few words of Lord Derby's preface to his translation of the Iliad: That pestilent heresy of so-called English hexameters.' On this we are about to dwell, it is true, but only in the way of improving' the occasion, as the old Puritans used to improve any tremendous error, whether of faith or of practice. In that way we shall endeavour to improve the Earl's dictum.1 But, as we shall have occasion over and over again to refer to the Iliad, let us begin by adding our suffrage in a matter which has largely, of late, employed the popular voice. If we take the principal translations in comparison one with another (leaving such trash as Ogilvie's and MacPherson's out of the question), it would seem to us that they ought to be ranked thus: Dart's, like his favourite Antilochus, winning the prize by daring; then (however deficient in scholarship) Chapman's; then-far too little known-Wright's; then (and not much behind) Lord Derby's; then-longo sed proximus intervalloCowper's; then, and with a far deeper fall still," Pope's. "Your Homer? your Homer? ah, now I remember, Mr. Pope, what you mean. It is a very pretty thing, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.' So said the prince of all classical scholars, Bentley, when interrogated by Pope about 'his Homer.' And afterwards, when some friend of the great Master of Trinity inquired how it came to pass that the latter should have found a place in the Dunciad, replied (no doubt in his loftiest manner), 'Sir, because I would not praise his translation; and the portentous cub never forgives.' 'The passage is as follows: 'The ordinary couplet in rhyme, the Spenserian stanza, the Trochaic or ballad metre, all have had their partisans, even to that "pestilent heresy" of the so-called English Hexameter, a metre wholly repugnant to the genius of our language; which can only be pressed into the service by a violation of every rule of prosody; and of which, notwithstanding my respect for the eminent men who have attempted to naturalise it, I could never read ten lines without being irresistibly reminded of Canning's Dactylics call'st thou them? God help thee, silly one!' It is singular to find Lord Derby speaking of Chapman's version as in 'trochaic or ballad metre.' It is, of course, purely Iambic. 2 We have not yet had the pleasure of examining Mr. Worsley's translation. If it be of the same merit as his version of the Odyssey (to which however his metre is perhaps better suited), it must be first-rate. It is our purpose, in the following paper, to do two things: the one, often done before, to defend the principle of English hexameters; the other, which has not been done before, to lay down some rule, as regards them, about English quantity. If the latter may seem a rather presumptuous undertaking, the writer can only say that there are not many days during several years in which he has not, more or less, thought about the subject. 6 I. It is a most true rule of the schoolmen, He that may do more, may do less.' Now, having already the hexameter-only in an elongated form-in our language, we may certainly take any part of it by itself. A dog is not the less a dog if you cut off his tail. So-called long metre is none the less English if, by extracting two syllables from the second and fourth lines, you cut it down into common metre. Common metre is not less popular if, by withdrawing two syllables from the first line, you make it into short metre. Or, to take another example. Many of our common ballads are written in (what would technically be called) iambic tetrameter catalectic: as for example: 'A captain bold of Halifax, who lived in country quarters.' Now, by taking off one syllable at the beginning, and adding one to the end, you turn this, of course, into trochaic tetrameter catalectic: 'Weeping, weeping, late and early, slowly pacing up and down, Sadly mourned the Lord of Burleigh, Burleigh House by Stamford town.' Precisely in the same way Aristophanic anapæsts are very popular even to an untrained ear; what is there of 'heresy,' what is there of un-Englishness, in asserting that the same metre, docked of a foot and a half at the beginning, should equally approve itself-which we take to be the great test of the innate vitality of any metre-to uneducated persons? If every body feels the exquisite music as well as sense of the stanza: Lightly they'll speak of the spirit that's gone, But little he'll reck, so they let him sleep on If it be not heresy to admire that rhythm, why should it be so to admire-leaving the sense out of the question, which is not now the point-the rhythm of those two hexameters? 'Speak of the spirit that's gone, and o'er his cold ashes upbraid him; Reck, so they let him sleep on, in the grave where a Briton has laid him.' We think that one consideration amply proves our point. Lord Derby himself helps us to another instance. metre: Compare the 'Dactylics call'st thou them? God help thee, silly one!' with that of Scott's ballad :— 'Hail to the chief that in triumph advances ! Loud should Clan-Alpine then ring from her deepmost glen, Let it be observed that the only difference between Canning's verse, and the first and third of these lines, is, that while it is Dactylic tetrameter acatalectic, they are catalectic: the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth being brachycatalectic: while the fifth and seventh are EXACTLY THE VERY SAME as Canning's. Lord Derby is here, like the eagle, shot by his own feather: for he would scarcely say that Scott was one of the silly ones' that needed help. II. We are sure that Lord Derby would not assert that English, as a language, had less power in it than German. We are even more certain that he would not believe that a language like ours, which owes so much to the Latin, had less capacity for hexameters than one which, like theirs, owes so little to it. And yet, we not only know how the Germans take to hexameters, but how also their only great epic poem-however it may be the fashion of the present century to depreciate it was written in that measure. We know how their greatest translator, Voss, in that measure made Homer vernacular in Germany; we know how Goethe deliberately committed himself to the heresy' in his pastoral poem-would he had written all things as well!'Hermann and Dorothea.' To Voss we shall have occasion to return again; but who, with any pretensions to an ear, and with the slightest knowledge of German, can be insensible to the exquisite melody of lines like these: 'Endlich erhub aus seiner Entzückungen Meere sich Adam, Aus den Strömen des Lichts, in denen er sank. Die Gedanken Schnell, wie die Schwänge des Blitzes, indem er dem Auge vorauseit ; Steht bey dem Kreuz, und strecket den Arm nach Jesus, des Todes Sieger, aus: Ich schwöre bey dir, der ewig lebet! Dass nun Tod nicht länger der Tod ist, und dass an dem Tage Deiner grossen Vollendung sic all' erwachen, die schlafen's. |