"Fateful" is not in Homer. Lord Derby apparently took it on the suggestion of Dryden, whose "feathered fates," repeated by Pope, is even worse. "Night-cloud" darkens the sense, "Like Night" says Homer simply, that is, darkened with anger. "Bolt," if taken in its proper English meaning, arms Apollo with a cross-bow. Perhaps Lord Derby wished to give the Homeric alliteration of βέλος and βάλλ', but even then "shaft" would have answered his purpose, and “shot” would have been better than "sped," which is one of those attempts to avoid the familiar, as if the trite were better, of which Pope set the example. The suddenness of Homer's Báλa', standing alone at the head of the verse with an abrupt pause after it, and making the phrase twang, as it were, is admirable, and should put a translator on his mettle. The "arrowy storm" is as bad as it can be; a single bowman "pours" nothing of the kind. It is one of those common-property phrases too frequent with Lord Derby, the mere shoddy which verse-makers keep at hand for filling-in. Tickell's version of this passage is painfully halting for a man who could write original verses good enough to be favorites with Thackeray; and Pope rivals him, drawing out "the weighty bullion of the line " into "French wire" of rare tenuity. Dryden, who wrote more sensibly than anybody else about translation, flounders helplessly in Homer. Cowper attempts to give the ring of the apyvpéolo βιοίο by

"Dread-sounding, bounding on the silver bow,"

which only too fatally recalls the old Scottish dancing-tune,

"Amaisit I gaisit

To see, led at command,
A strampant and rampant
Ferss lyon in his hand."

The attempt was in the right direction, however, for Homer, like Dante and Shakespeare, like all who really command language, seems fond of playing with assonances.

We do not mean to say that Lord Derby's translation is comparatively a failure, for it is better than those of his two latest predecessors. Pope's was a piece of job-work, maintained with singular spirit to the end, it is true, and with many fine lines, full of that nervous energy which characterizes his verse; but it was job-work nevertheless. Too often he vapors and rants where he should be passionate, and puts us off with tumidity as cheaper than simple grandeur. The bassdrum plays too large a part in his rather limited orchestra. There is something incongruous with the true Homeric sentiment in his style, an anachronism of costume, as it were, like Garrick playing Macbeth in a major-general's uniform. Cowper's translation, whatever its mer

its, and it has many, is not easy reading. His own "John Gilpin" is more Homeric. That, at least, gallops; but here he seems to have mounted an elephant by mistake for Pegasus, and he whose own blank verse has the ease of prose is as stiff and unwieldy in the armor of Milton as the champion on a Lord Mayor's day. In comparing Lord Derby with Chapman, we did not mean to put the old poet above him for mere closeness of rendering, but to bring into strong relief the difference between the soul and the body of poetry, and to hint that it takes a poet to translate a poet. Which should we prefer, — a cast taken unmistakably after death, or a likeness, less obviously true, perhaps, to the mere features, but instinct with the expression and genius of the original? With all his faults, Chapman has made for us the best poem that has yet been Englished out of Homer, and in so far gives us a truer idea of him. Of all translators he is farthest removed from the fault with which he charges others, when he says that "our divine master's most ingenious imitating the life of things (which is the soul of a poem) is never respected nor perceived by his interpreter's only standing pedantically on the grammar and words, utterly ignorant of the sense and grace of him." The Earl of Derby has achieved, on the other hand, a most fatally respectable translation, a Homer toned down to the decorum of the drawing-room, shaved, with irreproachable candor of neck-tie, and speaking the too faultless English of the House of Lords after it has been groomed by the "Times" reporter. In spite of his Lordship's contempt for the English hexameter, we are inclined to think that the translation is yet to be made in that measure by some young poet, who has not so far stiffened into a mannerism of his own, as insensibly to sophisticate Homer with it. We have said that Keats might have done it. Perhaps the late Mr. Clough, with his thorough Greek scholarship and his exquisitely pliant genius, would have been even more competent. Among his manuscripts are some fragments of a version full of promise. The hexameter is as alien to German as to English, yet it grows supple and homely to the master-hand of Goethe. Even Voss makes it give a better notion of Homer than Lord Derby's blank verse. His Lordship's concluding line,

"Such were the rites to glorious Hector paid,"

hardly comes so near the original as even the following attempt at an hexameter by a sleepy reviewer who never wrote one before,

"So paid they funeral rites to Hector, the tamer of horses."

LIST OF SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

1. History of England from the Fall of Woolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By John Antony Froude, M. A. New York: Charles Scribner and Company. 1865. 2 vols. Sm. 8vo. pp. 447, 501.

[These are the first two volumes of a reprint of Mr. Froude's well-known work. The style in which they are issued does credit to the American publishers. We shall hereafter have occasion to speak at length of the mixed character of the book as an historical treatise.]

2. History of Julius Cæsar. [By Napoleon III.] Vol. I. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1865. 8vo. pp. xv., 463.

[A very handsome reprint of the English translation of the most noted historical treatise of the day. It is by an emperor who is also a scholar, — and whose learning is of much better quality than his principles. The book would have been read, even if its author had been a less notorious character.]

3. Travels in Central Asia; being the Account of a Journey from Teheran across the Turkoman Desert on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian to Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand. Performed in the Year 1863. By Arminius Vámbéry. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1865. 8vo. pp. 493. [An interesting narrative of curious adventures in a part of Asia rarely visited by Europeans.]

4. History of Congregationalism from about A. D. 250 to the Present Time. By George Punchard. Second Edition. Rewritten and greatly enlarged. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1865. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. xvi., 562; xiii., 519.

5. Life of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. From the German of W. A. Lampadius. With Supplementary Sketches by Julius Benedict, Henry F. Chorley, Ludwig Rellstab, Bayard Taylor, R. S. Willis, and J. S. Dwight. Edited and Translated by William Leonhard Gage. New York and Philadelphia: Frederick Leypoldt. 1865. 16mo. pp. 271. 6. Canada: its Defences, Condition, and Resources. concluding Volume of "My Diary, North and South." sell, LL. D. Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham. 1865. 12 mo.

Being a second and By W. Howard Rus

pp. xii., 311. 7. Our Country: its Trial and its Triumph. A Series of Discourses by George Peck, D. D. New York: Carleton and Porter. 1865. 16mo. pp. 300. 8. The Promises of the Declaration of Independence. Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln, delivered before the Municipal Authorities of the City of Boston, June 1, 1865. By Charles Sumner. Boston. 8vo. pp. 67. [An eloquent, feeling, and discriminating discourse.]

9. An Address upon the Life and Services of Edward Everett; delivered before the Municipal Authorities and Citizens of Cambridge, February 22, 1865. By Richard H. Dana, Jr. Cambridge: Sever and Francis. 1865. 8vo. pp. 70.

[Of permanent value for its historic character and its just appreciations.] 10. Know the Truth; a Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation, including some Strictures upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel

and Mr. Herbert Spencer. By Jesse H. Jones. New York: Published for the Author by Hurd and Houghton. 1865. 16mo. pp. ix., 225.

11. Methods of Instruction. That part of the Philosophy of Education which treats of the Nature of the several Branches of Knowledge and the Methods of teaching them according to that Nature. By James Ryle Wickersham, A. M. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1865. 12mo. pp. 496. 12. A View at the Foundations; or, First Causes of Character, as operative before Birth, from Hereditary and Spiritual Sources, being a Treatise on the Organic Structure and Quality of the Human Soul as determined by pre-natal Conditions in the Parentage and Ancestry, and how far we can direct and control them. By Woodbury M. Fernald. Boston: Willlam V. Spencer. 1865. 16mo. pp. 210.

13. Hypodermic Injections in the Treatment of Neuralgia, Rheumatism, Gout, and other Diseases. By Antoine Ruppaner, M. D. Boston: T. 0. H. P. Burnham. 1865. 16mo. pp. 160.

14. Affixes in their Origin and Application, exhibiting the Etymologic Structure of English Words. By S. S. Haldeman, A. M. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1865. 16mo. pp. 271.

15. A Grammar of the Anglo Saxon Tongue from the Danish of Erasmus Rask. By Benjamin Thorpe. Second Edition, corrected and improved. London: Trübner & Co. 1865. 16mo. pp. 192.

16. Remember Me; or the Holy Communion. By Ray Palmer. Boston: The American Tract Society. 16mo. pp. 102.

17. A Commentary on the Lord's Prayer. By Rev. W. Denton, M. A. Edited and enlarged by Rev. Henry J. Fox, M. A. New York: Carleton and Porter. 1865. 16mo. pp. 208.

18. The Ideal Attained. By Eliza W. Farnham. New York: C. M. Plumb & Co. 1865. 12mo. pp. 510.

19. A Son of the Soil. A Novel. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1865. 8vo. pp. 241.

20. The Gayworthys; a Story of Threads and Thrums. By the Author of "Faith Gartney's Girlhood." Boston: Loring. 1865. 12mo. pp. 399. 21. A Book of Golden Deeds of all Times and all Lands, gathered and narrated by the Author of “The Heir of Redclyffe." Cambridge: Sever and Francis. 1862. 16mo. pp. xi., 466. (Golden Treasury Series.)

22. The Jest Book. The choicest Anecdotes and Sayings, selected and arranged by Mark Lemon. Cambridge: Sever and Francis. 1865. 16mo. pp. viii., 389. (Golden Treasury Series.)

23. Sybil: a Tragedy, in five Acts. By John Savage. New York: James B. Kirker. 1865. 12mo. pp. 100.

24. Companion Poets for the People. Illustrated. - Household Poems, by Henry W. Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865. 16mo. pp. 96. 25. Poems. By R. W. Emerson. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865. 32mo. pp. 254. (Blue and Gold.)

26. Essays. By R. W. Emerson. First and Second Series. Boston. Ticknor and Fields. 1865. 32mo. pp. 515. (Blue and Gold.)

27. Walt Whitman's Drum Taps. New York. 1865. pp. 72.

The Life of Thomas Jefferson. By HENRY S. Randall.

1. The Works of JOHN C. CALHOUN. Edited by RICHARD K. CRALLÉ.

2. Thirty Years' View: or a History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850. With Historical Notes and Illustrations, and some Notices of eminent deceased Cotemporaries. By a Senator of Thirty Years.

3. Life of Andrew Jackson. By JAMES PARTON.

4. Retrospect of Northern Travel. By HARRIET MAR

TINEAU.

IV. IS THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE A PHYSICAL SCIENCE? 434 1. Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in April, May, and June, 1861. By MAX MÜLLER, M. A.

V.

VI.

2. Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft. Von AUG. SCHLEICHER.

474

BELLIGERENT WAR VESSELS IN NEUTRAL PORTS
Messages of the President of the United States to Con-
gress, with accompanying Documents.

ENGLISH UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

1. On the Cam. Lectures on the University of Cambridge in England. By WILLIAM EVERETT.

2. Education in Oxford. By JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS.

3. The Students' Guide to the University of Cambridge. 4. National Review. Vol. II. University Reform,Cambridge.

5. Pass and Class. By MONTAGu Burrows.

515