"His fine knowledge of the Greek is best demonstrated by his admirable and witty translations from Lucian and his Homeric Ballads, which for antique dignity and faithfulness are unsurpassed by any versions in our language, and will carry his name down to all time with that of Pope; the one being like a sculptor who relies on the simple and unstudied grandeur of the naked figure; the other resembling a statuary who enchants every eye by the gorgeous drapery in which he invests the marble, and the picturesque adjuncts with which he surrounds it. Both are entirely distinct, and both inimitable in their way. One is a translation - the other a paraphrase. Those who wish to know what and how Homer wrote, must meet Maginn - those who seek to be delighted with The Iliad, must peruse Pope. The first may be illustrated by the Parthenon of Athens, a model of severe beauty, standing alone upon its classic hill, amid the wild olives, under the crystal skies of Hellas; the second by the Church of St. Peter's at Rome, where every extraneous ornament of price or brilliancy-painting, sculpture, cameos of gems and gold, perfume and stately arras-is added to give lustre to the temple. No one but a scholar could have completed the former. Pope was able to accomplish the latter." Elsewhere, Mr. Kenealy says:-"The writings on which he appears to have bestowed most care, were the Homeric Ballads; and for the last few years he was seldom without a copy of the Iliad and Odyssey in his room, or on his bed. For those translations, indeed, he felt almost an enthusiasm ferred to them with satisfaction." and always re Of the prose accompaniments -Introductions and Notesof the Homeric Ballads, a few words must be said. The notes, for the most part, refer to the original text, on which Maginn was a very exacting critic. When the Ballads originally appeared in Fraser, the Greek text was also given—I have taken the liberty of here omitting what to the generality of readers might present its too formidable appearance - Maginn pleasantly saying: "My translation is accompanied by the original, side by side; so that half of my page at least is good." The notes are of a miscellanous character. Some will be interesting to the profound scholar, some will interest the mass of readers, as they refer to general subjects connected with what may be called Homeric Literature. Of learned writers, Maginn was one of the least pedantic. Except where he considered it absolutely necessary, he avoided classical quotations and scholastic disquisitions. Addressing himself, almost from boyhood to mature age, rather to the great body of the reading public than to ripe scholars, he avoided the display of mere learning-though, no doubt, his erudition enabled him to decorate even his simplest style with the grace and ornament of a pervading spirit of classical taste. In the Introductions to these Ballads, there are occasional sketches of considerable merit;-such are the characters of Ulysses and of Helen, drawn with a combination of force, grace, and discernment, which mark the master-hand. Upon one important point-namely the question, Was Homer a man or a myth?—Dr. Maginn has here given a full, explicit, and important opinion. We need not wonder that little is known of "The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," who probably flourished nine or ten centuries before the Christian era, when it is recollected how scanty is the personal information respecting Shakespeare, who died only two hundred and forty years ago. The writers of antiquity, who lived comparatively within traditional propinquity to Homer, agreed, as with one consent, that the Iliad and the Odyssey were the productions of a single mind. Some modern critics, at whose head Wolf, a German professor, placed himself, assume the theory of divided authorship-not only judging, from the difference of style, that the Iliad and the Odyssey must have been written by at least two distinct poets, but that neither of the whole of either of those poems was the work of one mind, but consisted of a variety of songs by several bards. It may be conceded that there is not an entire unity of plan in these poems (the Iliad, in particular, is deficient in this respect), but it is impossible to say, when we speak of epics probably composed before the art of writing books was known-when, perhaps, writing was even not in ordinary use—what alterations may have been made in poems handed down, at first and for a long time after, through the medium of memory only. That there is a difference in the style of the Iliad and that of the Odyssey can not be denied. But the subject of each epic appears to demand a difference. The Iliad, a heroic poem, treating of battle and chivalrous adventure, is naturally full of animation and boldness, while the Odyssey, relating the melancholy wanderings of Ulysses, on his return from Troy to Ithaca, is naturally pitched in a lower key and breathes the subdued tone of suffering. Nor is it improbable that one poem was composed in the spring of life, while the other was produced in more advanced years-this, of itself, would make the difference. "It was reserved," says Dr. Maginn, "for modern times to start the astounding doctrine that these divine poems are the productions of different hands. I am not ignorant of the talent, learning, and industry of Wolf: but I should as soon believe in four-and-twenty contemporary, or nearly contemporary, Homers, as in four-and-twenty contemporary Shakespeares, or Miltons, or Dantes." The previous English translations of Lucian are so indifferent that it is to regretted that Dr. Maginn did not proceed farther with the version which he had commenced, the only examples of which are those forming the concluding portion of this volume. Had he chosen to devote himself to the task, con amore, we might have had something corresponding with the fidelity and spirit of Mitchell's translation-I might almost call it transfusion-of the satirical comedies of Aristophanes. The manner in which Maginn has put the "Timon" and "Charon" into English, gives assurance of sufficient ability to have conveyed the rest of Lucian into our own vernacular. R. SHELTON MACKENZIE. NEW YORK, April 10, 1856. |