powers feeble. Without this, we should never have got anything so picturesque.
Homer never sees things in the same proportions as we see them. To omit his digressions, and what I may call his 'impertinences', in order to give to his argument that which Mr Arnold is pleased to call the proper 'balance', is to value our own logical minds, more than his picturesque[1] but illogical mind.
Mr Arnold says that I am not quaint, but grotesque, in my rendering of κυνὸς κακομηχάνου. I do not hold the phrase to be quaint: to me it is excessively coarse. When Jupiter calls Juno 'a bitch', of course he means a snarling cur; hence my rendering, 'vixen' (or she-fox), is there perfect, since we say vixen of an irascible woman. But Helen had no such evil tempers, and beyond a doubt she meant to ascribe impurity to herself. I have twice committed a pious fraud by making her call herself 'a vixen', where 'bitch' is the only faithful rendering; and Mr Arnold, instead of thanking me for throwing a thin veil over
- ↑ It is very singular that Mr Gladstone should imagine such a poet to have no eye for colour. I totally protest against his turning Homer's paintings into leadpencil drawings. I believe that γλαυκὸς is grey (silvergreen), χάροψ blue; and that πρασινὸς, 'leek-colour', was too mean a word for any poets, early or late, to use for 'green', therefore χλωρὸς does duty for it. Κῦμα πορφύρεον is surely 'the purple wave', and ἰοειδέα πόντον 'the violet sea'.
