Iberia Won 6

Iberia Won 6

“A stately palace built of squared brick,

“Which cunningly was without mortar laid”

 

with Milton’s Pandemonium!

 

Superadded to Spenser’s roughness, which the antique style

affected by him in some degree palliates, are very frequent

imperfect rhymes and slovenly repetitions of the same identical

metrical sounds, as _plain_, _plane_, and _complain_, _see_ and

_sea_, rhyming in the same stanza--liberties which now are utterly

inadmissible. It is very true that the recurrence of four lines

which rhyme together and of three lines which likewise rhyme with

each other in each stanza makes the Spenserian stanza in a long

poem extraordinarily difficult, without an occasional manifestation

of these defects; but the exigencies of modern criticism, I think

justly, require that the difficulty be overcome. And a portion,

doubtless, of the superiority of modern English to modern French

and Italian poetry arises from explosion of imperfect rhymes.

If the poets of these days are degenerate in grasp of thought,

they are at least superior to their predecessors and to their

continental contemporaries in the mechanism of their art.

 

Having said thus much of the stanza which I have chosen, I shall

add that, rejecting classical conformity in all those matters

wherein I conceive the advanced spirit of the age to demand modern

treatment, I have availed myself largely of classical allusion,

and to a certain extent of classical imagery, to impart interest

to a subject which might otherwise smell too much of “villanous

saltpetre,” and have in some cases adhered more closely to true

classical nomenclature than has hitherto been the custom. I regard

it as one of the advantages of the acuteness of modern scholarship

to have cleared away much rubbish and removed many an excrescence.

But the Grecian may unhappily descend into the Græculist, and by

adopting too much spoil every thing. Thus I conceive no good effect

to be produced by writing the name Pisistratus in a serious work

“Peisistratus,” and I would not imitate in modern poetry Homer’s

not at all ignobly meant comparison of Aias (Ajax) to an ass any

more than I would adopt the word _hog_ as applied to Achilles: ὅγ’

ὣς εἰπὼν “he thus speaking”--“_Hog_ thus speaking” would be rather

offensive to English ears. Neither would I write “Klutaimnestra”

for Clytemnestra, “Loukas” for Luke, “Dabid” for David, or “Eua”

for our first mother. In matters of taste, like these, above all

things we must observe the _modus in rebus_. Quintilian, a master

in all that relates to elegance of speech, explains very well that

such things must be regulated by feeling. Speaking of the beauty

of one of the smallest of particles in a passage of Cicero, he

says: “Cur _hosce_ potiùs quàm _hos_? Rationem fortassè non reddam;

sentiam esse melius,” _Instit._ ix. 4. “Aias” I would at once

reclaim from the vulgar tyranny of “Ajax,” which, as we pronounce

it, scarcely differs from _a jakes_. This pronunciation, be it

observed, is purely British and German, for it is nearly certain

that the Latins pronounced the word which they spelt _Ajax_ quite

like the Greek _Aias_, _Ajax_ being pronounced _Aias_ in nearly

all the languages of Southern Europe at this day. In this poem,

accordingly, I spell the name “Aias.” In the same way I restore the

ancient and true spelling of the name “Leonides.” (Herod. lib. vii.

_passim._ Thucyd. i, 132.) Achilles I would retain because more

musical than “Achilleus;” but I would expunge the word “Hectoring”

from our language, as originating in disgraceful ignorance, because

so far from being a bully, Hector was a hero of the noblest and

most amiable character, and is so described by Homer. Helen thus

apostrophizes his dead body:

 

Ἕκτωρ, ἐμῷ θυμῷ δαέρων πολὺ φίλτατε πάντων, * *

Ἀλλ’ οὔπω σεῦ ἄκουσα κακὸν ἔπος, οὐδ’ ἀσύφηλον·

Ἀλλ’ εἴτις με καὶ ἄλλος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἐνίπτοι,

* * σὺ τόνγ’ ἐπέεσσι παραιφάμενος κατέρυκες,

Σῇ τ’ ἀγανοφροσύνῃ, καὶ σοῖς ἀγανοῖς ἐπέεσσι.

_Iliad._ xxiv. 762.

 

“Hector, to my soul far dearest of all my brothers-in-law! Never

from you have I heard a bad or contumelious word; but if any other

in all the household reproached me, you with admonishing voice

restrained him--with your bland humanity and gentle words.” Yet

with gross and disgusting ignorance this high-souled hero is thus

slaughtered in all our dictionaries:--

 

“HECTOR--a bully, a blustering, turbulent, noisy fellow!!”

 

I have adopted the Homeric names in preference to the common Latin

forms, as Aphrodité instead of Venus, Atrides for Menelaüs (where

so substituted in the original) for the same reasons which have

influenced Archdeacon Williams in the spirited prose translations

which accompany his learned Essay, “_Homerus_,” Mr. Guest of

Caius College, Cambridge, in the specimen of translation of the

first book of Homer into hexameters which is introduced into his

ingenious _History of English Rhythms_, the Translator of Homer in

the late numbers of _Blackwood’s Magazine_, and the learned Voss

in his hexametrical German version. I have chosen the name Paris,

however, in place of Alexander, for the sake of clearness and

appropriateness in the allusion, and to avoid confusion with the

better-known hero of that name. I do not know that it is necessary

to extend my poetical confessions on this subject further. But I

shall just add that in pronunciation I have adhered to classical

quantity, wherever it could be done without a sacrifice of beauty,

but have unhesitatingly departed from it in such cases as that of

the word “Hyperion,” in which Shakspeare has fixed the accent

on the antepenultimate, with so fine an effect in the way of

improvement on the (to merely English ears) intolerable “Hyperíon”

which is of classical _rigueur_, as to have induced the otherwise

uncompromising Cooke, translator of Hesiod, to follow his too

sweetly sinning example. I hope I shall not be exorcised for thus

erring with Shakspeare.

 

The best image that I can offer of the Græculist carver of

cherry-stones is such a realization of Buridan’s ass suspended

between two rival and opposite bundles of hay, as might be

presented by a bad concocter of College exercises, puzzled in an

address to Prometheus to choose between the heptasyllabic form

“Iapetionides” and the tetrasyllabic “Japetides,” to commence his

puling hexameter!

 

The earliest military expedition into Spain, of which there is

mention amongst ancient poets or doubt amongst historians, is that

of Hercules, amongst whose twelve labours is recorded his victory

over Geryon and obtaining possession of his crown. Geryon, the son

of Crysaör, was King of the Balearic Isles, and hence by poetical

fiction he was endowed with three bodies, and is commonly called

_tricorpor_, _triplex_, or _tergeminus_, and sometimes _Pastor

Iberus_. Virgil describes Hercules proceeding to the conquest of

Cacus from that of Geryon thus:

 

----Nam maximus ultor,

Tergemini nece Geryonis spoliisque superbus,

Alcides aderat, taurosque huc victor agebat

Ingentes: vallemque boves amnemque tenebant.

_Æn._ viii. 201.

 

Of these Cacus stole four of the finest, and though he ingeniously

dragged them by the tails, was the cause of his own destruction.

And that was not the first time that meddling with Spanish affairs

was fatal to a foreign robber! Horace likewise alludes to this

expedition of Hercules, in compliment to Augustus (_Carm._

iii. 14), where he compares the victorious return of the Roman

from Iberia to that of Hercules--“Herculis ritu.” The first

authenticated occupation of the country was by the Phœnicians, who

colonized it extensively, but according to their usual practice

endeavoured long to keep their discovery secret. The name of the

country “_Span_” in the Phœnician signifies “a mystery.” The