whence all violent emotion, or, at least, the expression
of it, is excluded. This latter highly artificial
and polished dialect is accordingly as suitable to
the Mock-Heroic (like “The Rape of the Lock”)
as it is inefficient and even distasteful when employed
for the higher and more serious purposes of poetry.
It was most fortunate for English poetry that our
translation of the Bible and Shakspeare arrested our
language, and, as it were, crystallized it, precisely
at its freshest and most vigorous period, giving us
an inexhaustible mine of words familiar to the heart
and mind, yet unvulgarized to the ear by trivial associations.
The whole question of Homeric translation in its entire
range, between Chapman on the one hand and Pope and
Cowper on the other, is opened afresh by this controversy.
The difficulty of the undertaking, and still more of
dogmatizing on the proper mode of executing it, is
manifest from the fact that Mr. Newman is quite as
successful in turning some specimens of Mr. Arnold’s
into ridicule as the latter had been with his.
Meanwhile we commend the two little books to our readers
as containing an able and entertaining discussion
on a question of general and permanent interest, and
as showing that the “Quarrels of Authors”
may be conducted in a dignified and scholarly way.
* * * *
*
The last English steamer brings us the sad news of
the death of Arthur Hugh Clough. Mr. Clough had
so many personal friends, as well as warm admirers,
in America, that his death will be felt by numbers
of our readers both as a private grief and a public
loss. The earth will not soon close over a man
of more lovely character or more true and delicate
genius. This is not the place or the occasion
to do justice to the many eminent qualities of his
heart and mind, and we only allude to his death at
all because in him the “Atlantic” has lost
one of its most valued contributors.
