t can be said is said, how really
admirable is this whole translation! If we set aside its noble qualities
as a poem and look on it purely from the scholar's point of view, how
straightforward it is, how honest and direct! Its fidelity to the
original is far beyond that of any other verse-translation in our
literature, and yet it is not the fidelity of a pedant to his text but
rather the fine loyalty of poet to poet.

When Mr. Morris's first volume appeared many of the critics complained
that his occasional use of archaic words and unusual expressions robbed
his version of the true Homeric simplicity. This, however, is not a very
felicitous criticism, for while Homer is undoubtedly simple in his
clearness and largeness of vision, his wonderful power of direct
narration, his wholesome sanity, and the purity and precision of his
method, simple in language he undoubtedly is not. What he was to his
contemporaries we have, of course, no means of judging, but we know that
the Athenian of the fifth century B.C. found him in many places difficult
to understand, and when the creative age was succeeded by the age of
criticism and Alexandria began to take the place of Athens as the centre
of culture for the Hellenistic world, Homeric dictionaries and glossaries
seem to have been constantly published. Indeed, Athenaeus tells us of a
wonderful Byzantine blue-stocking, a _precieuse_ from the Propontis, who
wrote a long hexameter poem, called _Mnemosyne_, full of ingenious
commentaries on difficulties in Homer, and in fact, it is evident that,
as far as the language is concerned, such a phrase as 'Homeric
simplicity' would have rather amazed an ancient Greek. As for Mr.
Morris's tendency to emphasize the etymological meaning of words, a point
commented on with somewhat flippant severity in a recent number of
_Macmillan_'_s Magazine_, here Mr. Morris seems to us to be in complete
accord, not merely with the spirit of Homer, but with the spirit of all
early poetry. It is quite true that language is apt to degenerate into a
system of almost algebraic symbols, and the modern city-man who takes a
ticket for Blackfriars Bridge, naturally never thinks of the Dominican
monks who once had their monastery by Thames-side, and after whom the
spot is named. But in earlier times it was not so. Men were then keenly
conscious of the real meaning of words, and early poetry, especially, is
full of this feeling, and, indeed, may be said to owe t