As regards the style, the
Germans have not the same feeling as we have about technicalities in
literature. To our ears such words as 'phoreion,' 'secos,' 'oionistes,'
'Thyrides' and the like sound harshly in a novel and give an air of
pedantry, not of picturesqueness. Yet in its tone Aphrodite reminds us
of the late Greek novels. Indeed, it might be one of the lost tales of
Miletus. It deserves to have many readers and a better binding.

(1) Astray: A Tale of a Country Town. By Charlotte M. Yonge, Mary
Bramston, Christabel Coleridge and Esme Stuart. (Hatchards.)

(2) Betty's Visions. By Rhoda Broughton. (Routledge and Sons.)

(3) That Other Person. By Mrs. Alfred Hunt. (Chatto and Windus.)

(4) A Child of the Revolution. By the Author of Mademoiselle Mori.
(Hatchards.)

(5) Aphrodite. Translated from the German of Ernst Eckstein by Mary J.
Safford. (New York: Williams and Gottsberger; London: Trubner and Co.)

A POLITICIAN'S POETRY

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 3, 1886.)

Although it is against etiquette to quote Greek in Parliament, Homer has
always been a great favourite with our statesmen and, indeed, may be said
to be almost a factor in our political life. For as the cross-benches
form a refuge for those who have no minds to make up, so those who cannot
make up their minds always take to Homeric studies. Many of our leaders
have sulked in their tents with Achilles after some violent political
crisis and, enraged at the fickleness of fortune, more than one has given
up to poetry what was obviously meant for party. It would be unjust,
however, to regard Lord Carnarvon's translation of the Odyssey as being
in any sense a political manifesto. Between Calypso and the colonies
there is no connection, and the search for Penelope has nothing to do
with the search for a policy. The love of literature alone has produced
this version of the marvellous Greek epic, and to the love of literature
alone it appeals. As Lord Carnarvon says very truly in his preface, each
generation in turn delights to tell the story of Odysseus in its own
language, for the story is one that never grows old.

Of the labours of his predecessors in translation Lord Carnarvon makes
ample recognition, though we acknowledge that we do not consider Pope's
Homer 'the work of a great poet,' and we must protest that there is more
in Chapman than 'quaint Elizabethan conceits.' The metre he has selected
is blank verse, which he regards as the best compromise between 'the
inevitable redundancy of rhyme and the stricter accuracy of prose.' This
choice is, on the whole, a sensible one. Blank verse undoubtedly gives
the possibility of a clear and simple rendering of the original. Upon
the other hand, though we may get Homer's meaning, we often miss his
music. The ten-syllabled line brings but a faint echo of the long roll
of the Homeric hexameter, its rapid movement and continuous harmony.