owing is the passage: "There will never be an
endurable translation of Homer, unless its words are chosen with skill
and are full of variety, of freshness, and of charm. It is also
essential that the diction should be as antique, as simple, as are the
manners, the events, and the personages portrayed. With our modern style
everything attitudinizes in Homer, and his heroes seem fantastic figures
which personate the grave and proud."{95}

{92 _Life_, ii. 15.}

{93 I here follow the condensed version of Mr. W. P. Andrews, (_Atlantic
Monthly_, lxvi., 733).}

{94 _The New England Poets_, p. 138.}

{95 Il n'y aura jamais de traduction d'Homere supportable, si tous les
mots n'en sont choisis avec art et pleins de variete, de nouveaute et
d'agrement. Il faut, d'ailleurs, que l'expression soit aussi antique,
aussi nue que les moeurs, les evenements et les personnages mis en scene.
Avec notre style moderne, tout grimace dans Homere, et ses heros
semblent des grotesques qui font les graves et les fiers.--_Pensees de
J. Joubert_, p. 342.}

CHAPTER XXI

THE LOFTIER STRAIN: CHRISTUS

After all, no translation, even taken at its best, can wholly satisfy an
essentially original mind. Longfellow wrote in his diary, November 19,
1849, as follows: "And now I long to try a loftier strain, the sublimer
Song whose broken melodies have for so many years breathed through my
soul in the better hours of life, and which I trust and believe will ere
long unite themselves into a symphony not all unworthy the sublime
theme, but furnishing 'some equivalent expression for the trouble and
wrath of life, for its sorrow and its mystery.'"

This of course refers to the great poetic design of his life, "Christus,
a Mystery," of which he wrote again on December 10, 1849, "A bleak and
dismal day. Wrote in the morning 'The Challenge of Thor' as prologue or
'_Introitus_' to the second part of 'Christus.'" This he laid aside;
just a month from that time he records in his diary, "In the evening,
pondered and meditated the sundry scenes of 'Christus.'" Later, he wrote
some half dozen scenes or more of "The Golden Legend" which is Part
Second of "Christus," representing the mediaeval period. He afterwards
wished, on reading Kingsley's "Saint's Tragedy," that he had chosen the
theme of Elizabeth of Hungary in place of the minor one employed (Der
Arme Heinrich), although if we are to judge by the comparative interest
inspired by the two books, th