but he could throw in any
little ornaments to suit the taste of his readers; and if they found out
a want of scrupulous fidelity, he might freely say that he did not aim
at such details. Working, therefore, upon the given data, he could
enjoy a considerable amount of freedom, and throw his whole energy into
the task of forcible expression without feeling himself trammelled at
every step. The result would certainly not be Homer, but it might be a
fine epic poem as epic poetry was understood in the days of Anne and
George I.--a hybrid genus, at the best, something without enough
constitutional vigour to be valuable when really original, but not
without a merit of its own when modelled upon the lines laid down in the
great archetype. When we look at Pope's Iliad upon this understanding,
we cannot fail, I think, to admit that it has merits which makes its
great success intelligible. If we read it as a purely English poem, the
sustained vivacity and emphasis of the style give it a decisive
superiority over its rivals. It has become the fashion to quote Chapman
since the noble sonnet in which Keats, in testifying to the power of the
Elizabethan translator, testifies rather to his own exquisite
perception. Chapman was a poet worthy of our great poetic period, and
Pope himself testifies to the "daring fiery spirit" which animates his
translation, and says that it is not unlike what Homer himself might
have written in his youth--surely not a grudging praise. But though this
is true, I will venture to assert that Chapman also sins, not merely by
his love of quaintness, but by constantly indulging in sheer doggerel.
If his lines do not stagnate, they foam and fret like a mountain brook,
instead of flowing continuously and majestically like a great river. He
surpasses Pope chiefly, as it seems to me, where Pope's conventional
verbiage smothers and conceals some vivid image from nature. Pope, of
course, was a thorough man of forms, and when he has to speak of sea or
sky or mountain generally draws upon the current coin of poetic
phraseology, which has lost all sharpness of impression in its long
circulation. Here, for example, is Pope's version of a simile in the
fourth book:--

As when the winds, ascending by degrees
First move the whitening surface of the seas,
The billows float in order to the shore,
The waves behind roll on the waves before,
Till with the growing storm the deeps arise,
Foam o'er