Selections from the Prose Writings of Matthew Arnold (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n Translating tomer. . . . Nunquamne reponam ? It has more than once been suggested to me that I should translate Homer. That is a task for which I have neither the time nor the courage; but the suggestion led me to regard yet more closely a poet whom I had already long studied, and for one or two years 5 She works of Homer were seldom out of my hands. The study of classical literature is probably on the decline; but, whatever may be the fate of this study in general, it is certain that, as instruction spreads and the number of readers increases, attention will be 10 more and more directed to the poetry of Homer, not indeed as part of a classical course, but as the most important poetical monument existing. Even within the last ten years two fresh translations of the Iliad have appeared in England: one by a man of great 15 ability and genuine learning, Professor Newman; the other by Mr. Wright, the conscientious and painstaking translator of Dante. It may safely be asserted that neither of these works will take rank as the standard translation of Homer; that the task of so rendering him will still be attempted by other translators. It may perhaps be possible to render to these some service, to save them some loss of labour, by pointing out rocks on which their predecessors split, and the right objects on which a translator of Homer should fix his attention. It is disputed what aim a translator should propose to himself in dealing with his original. Even this 5 preliminary is not yet settled. On one side it is said that the translation ought to be such " that the reader should, if possible, forget that it is a translation at all, and be lulled into the illusion that he is reading an original work?something original " (if the translation lobe ...