Mr. Bryant's translation of this passage is even more literal than Lord Derby's:

"And now, when met the armies in the field,

The ox-hide shields encountered, and the spears,
And might of warriors mailed in brass; then clashed
The bossy bucklers, and the battle din

Was loud; then rose the mingled shouts and groans
Of those who slew and those who fell; the earth
Ran with their blood."

This is not faultless; the inversion in the first line, the added word "their" in the last, and still more the rather inelegant use of " those," and the rhyme it makes with "rose" in the previous line, are obvious, though slight, imperfections, and bring this passage below the average of Mr. Bryant's best work. But it is far superior to every other translation of these six lines into English which we can find, in its faithfulness to the sense and spirit of Homer, in the vigor and directness of its language, and in the beauty of its versification.

Mr. Bryant's excellence, in all these respects, is not uniform. Passages may be found in which he has misunderstood the meaning of the Greek; but they are very few,* and at

*This remark applies to the second volume, and to the first volume as now published, many errors having been corrected in the earlier books since the first issue. The critical reader will still wish for corrections in the following places: Book I. 66, ȧpvŵv, "bulls "; 296, "nor think I shall," for "I do not mean to "; 501, "lifted up his right," for "took him by the chin "; II. 143," who heard him not," for " who had not heard the council"; 598, "nine" muses, the Iliad knows no such number; it appears first in latest part of the Odyssey (see Od. XXIV. 60); IV. 380, "we," for "they"; V. 227, "descend to fight on foot," for "mount the car to fight"; IX. 122, déka, “six," also 264, 536; "alone" omitted, a misprint; X 306, "swifter than," for "the best at"; 513, "steed," for "car," no warrior mounts a horse in Homer; XI. 97, "stained the brain with blood," for "the brains were spattered"; 162, the intense bitterness quite missed; 242, Iphidamas is made a "Trojan,” “fighting for his country": neither is true, nor in Homer; 559, "shaft," for "stick"; XIII. 761, ávoλé@povs, "o'ercome"; XV. 714, "slain" and "lopped arms" are wrong; XVI. 63, my ships," emphatically; not "the fleet" at large; 195, "Pelides" should be "the companion of Pelides," i. e. Patroclus. Achilles was not a Myrmidon: 394, Mr. Bryant mistakes the Trojans, cut off by Patroclus, for his own men; 458, "he" misprint for "she"; 858, "dying," for “dead”; XX. 289, "to save his threatened life" is wrong; XXIII. 465, "either," "or," misapprehension of nè, etc.; 497, "for well ye know," for "then shall ye know"; 832, 833, "if," "many," for "although," five"; XXIV. 574, "he," for "they."

To these may be added the occasional neglect of the classical quantity or division of syllables in proper names: thus, Book II. 133 (of the translation), A-tre-us; 647, Calliarus; 653, Chalcŏdon; 886, Olizon; 1057, Cicōnes; V. 83, Threno for Theano;

least twice as many errors of this class are chargeable to every one of his predecessors, except Professor Newman, and perhaps Professor Blackie, whose translations are distinguished for accurate scholarship, but are not readable.* Passages may be found in which he has lost much by a somewhat loose paraphrase, when a translation in his best style is to be desired.t A few lines may be detected by a nice ear, which interrupt the nearly unbroken flow and melody of his verse. But if the imperfections be not merely counted, but weighed, they will be found inconsiderable in comparison with those of any other English version. They may be remedied upon revision, without affecting the general tone and style; and were they all corrected, so that no positive error or marked defect could be found, few readers would notice any change. There is no other English Iliad which could be made by corrections to represent Homer, on the whole, as well as Mr. Bryant's represents him now; and until that distant day, when a poet no less eminent than he shall, with fuller knowledge, and before a world of richer intel

VIII. 148, Eniopeus; XII. 26, Granicus; XIV. 603, Iliōneus; XV. 693, Perkŏte ; XVII. 370,"Phocians" for "Phocaeans "; XXI. 233, Aeācus; XXIII. 170, 173, Sperchĭus (ei).

In the first edition of Books I. - XIII. there were some omissions, two of them at II. 464, V. 663, of five lines each, but none which left a sensible gap in the meaning. Most of these have since been supplied. There are still clauses of more or less importance wanting in Book I. 496; II. 118, 240; XII. 143, 407; XIV. 6 (Abii); XV. 308; XVII. 639; XXI. 366. Entire lines are missing, II. 102; VI. 317; IX. 311; XV. 563; XVI 557 ; and in one place four lines, IX. 458-461.

* It is curious to observe that some errors run through all the translations, whether in prose or verse. For instance, we cannot find one which gives the true force of the closing sneer of Achilles, in his threat to Agamemnon (I. 171) :

οὐδέ σ' δΐω

ἐνθάδ ̓ ἄτιμος ἐὼν, ἄφενος καὶ πλοῦτον ἀφύξειν,

"and I do not mean, staying here in dishonor, to gather plenty and riches for thee." Beyond doubt o' is σo (as μ for μo, VI. 165); both verbs have the same subject, and the warrior's own purpose is what he declares. The translators make it a prediction; and, following them all, from Chapman to Voss and Lord Derby, even Mr. Bryant writes:

"But here, where I am held

In little honor, thou wilt fail, I think,

To gather, in large measure, spoil and wealth."

So in Book XXIV. 506, Priam did not kiss Achilles's hand, as all the translators, except Professor Newman, suppose, but as a suppliant stretched out to him his own hand. (Schol. ὀρέγεσθαι ἀντὶ τοῦ ἐκτείνειν.)

† For example, Book III. 180; XV. 31–33; XVII. 508; and a few more.

ligence, be content to give his maturest years of labor to the singing of these old songs again, Mr. Bryant's translation will assuredly be recognized wherever our mother tongue is read as its best echo of the old Greek epic. So far, at last, have genius and scholarship together brought us on the way George Chapman marked out for himself nearly three hundred years ago:

The future of this noble work cannot yet be predicted in detail; but it will surely do more than many volumes of scientific inquiry to spread among English readers, for generations to come, the knowledge and love of the early heroic poetry, and will lead innumerable minds to the useful and fascinating study of man in conditions of life far different from ours, and especially of the dawn of civilization.

Nor is it only in the information he gives that Homer, singing afresh in English, has a lesson for these days. The mysticism of contemporary poetry, and its increasing disposition to abandon the common ground of humanity, and to address an exclusive circle of peculiar culture, are becoming intolerable. Swinburne, Rossetti, and many kindred poets, are reaping in its ripeness the pernicious harvest Tennyson sowed in his youth; and are offering shadows for pictures, hints for facts, dreams for reflections. Homer is, as Mr. Bryant represents him, intolerant of all this, and floods the mind with manly vigor from the high places of clear, serene perception and thought. They who write for a class write its dialect, sometimes its jargon; but he speaks the homely speech of all men. They obtain delicacy and tenderness by wrapping a mental haze around thoughts which bear close study as the beauty of a violet or of an eye bears dissection; but he seeks no effects which a firm touch and a bold outline cannot reach, and is therefore the poet of the world. The condition of such work is a lofty earnestness, born of other motives than personal impulses and the ambition of the moment; a directness which sees noth- NO. 231.

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ing but its theme, an unreserved surrender of the singer to his song. The writer of English verses, who longs to escape from the hot-house culture of the day into the free air and natural growth of all that is permanent in literature, may learn of Homer, and more impressively through Mr. Bryant than any other interpreter, the first lesson of noble art, that simplicity is the richest fertility, and a single eye the best guide to suggestive work.

CHARLTON T. LEWIS.

ART. IV. - MODERN ARCHITECTURE.

II.

THERE is great need of public museums of industrial art. It is to be hoped that before many years have passed our older and larger cities at least will have them. As it now is, Americans see so little of fine art applied to industry, that those who make it their business to study and apply the principles of" ornamental" art, especially so called, find it hard to make the community understand what they would be at. There is nothing to look at, for the student; nothing to point to, for the critic. It will be the duty of the new museums of art, now organizing in Boston and New York with good prospects of success, to make collections of industrial art which will be really instructive. As they cannot bring over and set up in their court-yards much that is instructive in the way of beautiful architecture, as whole buildings are unwieldy, and parts of buildings apt to be deceptive and misleading and sure to be unsatisfactory, let them concentrate their energies upon more portable articles. The application of fine art to building is the same in principle with its application to furniture, metal-work, textile fabrics, jewelry, and crockery vessels. Greek vases, Venice glasses, mediæval carved furniture, Renaissance hammered iron, Persian carpets, Japanese embroideries, Chinese enamels, and the like, will enable our workmen to see what is simple and natural design, and what it

is capable of when free from the curse of imitation and trimestrial changes of fashion. The Turkish, Persian, and Indian rugs and carpets in many of our houses are almost the only familiar instances of good art applied to common things in daily use. The gradual introduction of better tapestries and wall-papers than those of ten years ago is almost the only sign there is of the beginning of better times. Unfortunately these are nearly all imported, and they are unreasonably costly to the purchaser at a New York or Boston furniture warehouse, partly because of the high duties upon them, partly because of the huge profits looked for where there is little competition and considerable uncertainty as to what will sell readily.

It is certain that good designing is impossible to men who see nothing beautiful about them. A born designer, even, is nearly sure to come to nothing in one of our cities, where there is nothing beautiful to look at, except the sky and some human faces, from year's end to year's end. The South Kensington Museum, which would be most useful anywhere, is especially needful to London if London designers are to be helped in any way; for the exterior of London is peculiarly unbeautiful, and there is there not even a blue sky with changing and sunlit clouds. But where there is any feeling for beauty of design and any natural power that way, a piece of iron wrought into leaf-work by a sixteenth-century Florentine, or a panel of terra-cotta bearing a Grecian bas-relief, yes, even a Japanese lacquered box of the better and rarer sort, will do much to develop it; more, certainly, than the modern buildings one sees. Very few of the buildings, and very little of the decora tive work of Europe and European America, during the century ending with 1850, were fine or even interesting. Together all the arts of ornamental design were sunk into oblivion, or were saved from total eclipse by the efforts of a few men, such as Wedgwood. The loveliest remains of old art were destroyed, or covered with whitewash, or "restored" out of recognition. It was a darkness out of which we are now trying painfully to emerge.

"The world," says Mr. Burges, quoting some writer he does not name, "has been for fifty years in its working dress"; no