Then to the Trojans turning to the throng,
He called aloud to scale the lofty wall.'

No doubt even here it would be possible to fasten on a few expressions which do not strictly represent those of the original. Homer speaks of Hector not as wishing to give his arm its utmost power, but as anxious that his weapon should not fall short of its mark, and again he describes the hinges not merely as giving way, but as torn off by the force of the blow. But these are really no defects, while the lines bring before us the marvellous succession of terrific images, each hightening the effect of that which has gone before, until we feel that no other English translation has thus enabled us to enter into the full spirit of Homer himself.

Of all the splendid incidents in the Iliad few are more magnificent than the arming of Achilles: and the original has lost little of its power, its grace and its beauty in Lord Derby's hand:

Thick as the snow-flakes that from heaven descend
Before the sky-born Boreas' chilling blast,

So thick outpouring from the ships the stream
Of helmets polished bright, and bossy shields,
And breastplates firmly brac'd, and ashen spears:
Their brightness flashed to heaven, and laughed the earth
Beneath the brazen glare. Loud rang the tramp
Of armed men,-Achilles in the midst,

The godlike chief, in dazzling arms arrayed.
His teeth were gnashing audibly: his eye

Blazed with the light of fire; but in his heart
Was grief unbearable.'

The breastplate wrought by Hephaestus in the far-off Eastern land covers his broad chest; his silver-studded sword is flung over his shoulder. From his vast shield there gleams

A light refulgent as the full-orbed moon;
Or as to seamen o'er the wave is borne

English Essays.

5

The watch-fires' light, which high among the hills
Some shepherd kindles in his lonely fold,

As they reluctant by the stormy winds,

Far from their friends, are o'er the waters driven:
So from Achilles' shield bright, richly wrought,
The light was thrown. The weighty helm he raised
And placed it on his head; the plumed helm
Shone like a star, and waved the hairs of gold,
Thick set by Vulcan in the gleaming crest.
Then all the arms Achilles proved to know
If well they fitted to his graceful limbs;

Like wings they seemed to lift him from the ground.'
(Bk. XIX, 432.)

In the struggle which immediately follows gods and men, powers human and superhuman, are mingled together in one wild turmoil. In Mr. Grote's judgment the idea of such a conflict led the poet to indulge in fantastic conceptions which are either bewildering or oppressive: but there is a point of view from which this mighty battle becomes the most wonderful portion of the Iliad, and throws a singular light on the origin of the poem. But the uncouthness of the images, if uncouth they be, nowhere breaks the even flow and sustained vigour of Lord Derby's translation. From the struggle in which the river complains that his 'lovely stream is filled with dead' and cannot pour its current to the sea, we are carried to the last fight, at the close of which we see Achilles trampling on the corpse of the bravest andbest of all the Ilian heroes.

'Loose hung his glossy hair, and in the dust Was laid that noble head, so graceful once;'

while, hoping against hope, his wife Andromache was making ready for his victorious return.

The sudden rush of footsteps, and the sounds of irrepressible grief rouse her fears:

"Then from the house she rushed like one distract,
With beating heart; and with her went her maids.
But when the tower she reached, where stood the crowd,
And mounted on the wall, and looked around,
And saw the body trailing in the dust,

Which the fleet steeds were dragging to the ships,
A sudden darkness overspread her eyes.
Backward she fell, and gasped her spirit away.
Far off were flung the adornments of her head,
The net, the fillet, and the woven bands.'

(Bk. XXII, 550.)

The closing scenes of the poem are rendered with great
beauty. The victory of Achilles is achieved: but his
very success only makes him feel the more how vain
a thing is the life of mortal man. His own heart is
full of grief, grief for the loss of his friend, grief for
his kinsfolk who must soon bemoan him at home; but
before him kneels a weak and aged man smitten down with
an anguish deeper still moved by a generous impulse:-
'He rose and with his hand the aged sire

He raised, and thus with gentle words addressed:
"Alas! what sorrows, poor old man, are thine?
How could'st thou venture to the Grecian ships
Alone and to the presence of a man
Whose hand hath slain so many of thy sons
Many and brave? an iron heart is thine;
But sit thou on this seat; and in our hearts,
Though filled with grief, let us that grief suppress;
For woeful lamentation nought avails.

Such is the thread the Gods for mortals spin."
(Bk. XXIV, 613.)

So, but a little while after the last rites had been paid to the body of Patroclus, the chieftains of Ilion gather round the funeral pile of Hector. Priam is there and Hecuba, and Andromache, and Paris, the cause of all their grief and ruin: but yet another stood near, with a heart riven by a more biting pain,—

68 LORD DERBY'S TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD.

'The daughter of the gods divinely tall,
And most divinely fair.'

It was meet that the lay of Ilion should close with
parting words of love from her whose fatal gift of
beauty had deluged the earth with blood:-
'Hector, of all my brethren dearest thou!
True, godlike Paris claims me as his wife,
Who bore me hither. Would I then had died!
But twenty years have passed, since here I came,
And left my native land; yet ne'er from thee
I heard one scornful, one degrading word;
And when from others I have borne reproach,
Thy brothers, sisters, or thy brothers' wives,
Or mother (for thy sire was ever kind,

Ev'n as a father)-thou hast checked them still
With tender feeling and with gentle words.'

We have followed Lord Derby through some portions of a poem which the judgment of the ancient and the modern world pronounces the finest epic ever written, and we do not hesitate to say that his translation is one which conveys no unworthy or inadequate idea of the original. Its great merit is, as we observed in commencing these remarks, that it can be read with pleasure; and although the matchless art in which Pope handled the heroic couplet makes his translation of the Homeric poems unapproachable in its own form, yet Lord Derby has given to England a version far more closely allied to the original and superior to any that has yet been attempted in the blank verse of our language. We hope that restored health and continued leisure may induce him to turn for further recreation to the charming pages of the 'Odyssey,' and that in two or three years more he may complete a task which deserves to give him a lasting place in our literature.

EDMUND KEAN. *

[Athenaeum, 1869, No. 2160.]

A generation has passed away since the greatest [English] actor of modern times was carried to his grave in Richmond Churchyard. For Edmund Kean's contemporaries, Mr. Procter wrote a sketchy, and as some think a not too generous, life of the inimitable tragedian. Various biographical notices of him followed at intervals. And now-to refresh the memories of such of Kean's contemporaries as survive, and to give a more full and elaborate portrait of the long-departed glory of the theatre to a new generation which knows no master-mind upon our many stages-Mr. Hawkins has written a work which manifests zeal, industry, exercise of critical power, and a somewhat over-abounding generosity of spirit.

There is one especial point of view in which these volumes will be found useful. Whenever an old admirer of Edmund Kean speaks with enthusiasm of him who was identified with Shylock, Richard, Hamlet, Lear, and Othello, he is taunted with being a laudator temporis acti. He is treated with no more candid courtesy than Dryden had for the old gentlemen of his time, who, he said, because they had supped in their sallad days with Ben Jonson, in the Apollo, foolishly thought * The life of Edmund Kean. From Published and Original Sources. By F. W. Hawkins. 2 vols. London, 1869.