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GENERAL INDEX TO THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 401, forming Volume CCI., and containing a General Index to the volumes from CLXXXII. to CC. of the QUARTERLY REVIEW, is available (Price 6/- net), and a new Index, forming Volume CCXXII., comprising the volumes from CCII. to CCXXI., has been published, and is obtainable through any bookseller.

The QUARTERLY REVIEW is published on or about the 15th of
January, April, July, and October.

Price Twenty-four Shillings per Annum, post free.

Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limited,

London and Beccles, England.

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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 445.-OCTOBER, 1915.

Art. 1.-GREEK POETRY IN ENGLISH VERSE.

1. Ancient Gems in Modern Settings; being versions of the Greek Anthology by various writers. Edited by G. B. Grundy. Oxford: Blackwell, 1913.

2. The Iliad of Homer. By A. S. Way. Two vols. London: Sampson Low, 1886, 1888.

3. The Odyssey of Homer. Two vols. By A. S. Way. London: Macmillan, Third edition, 1904.

4. The Odyssey in English Verse. By J. W. Mackail. Three vols. London: Murray, 1903-1910.

5. Homer's Odyssey. By H. B. Cotterill. One vol. London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1911.

6. The Athenian Drama. By Gilbert Murray, J. S. Phillimore, and G. C. Warr. Three vols. London: Allen, 1900-1902.

7. The Agamemnon of Eschylus. By Walter Headlam. Cambridge: University Press, 1910.

8. The House of Atreus, Eschylus' Suppliant Maidens, Persians, etc. By E. D. A. Morshead. London: Macmillan, 1908.

9. Sophocles in English Verse. By A. S. Way. London: Macmillan, 1914.

10. Sophocles' Edipus, King of Thebes. By Gilbert Murray. London: Allen, 1911.

11. The Trojan Women of Euripides. The Iphigeneia in Tauris. By Gilbert Murray. London: Allen, 1905, 1910.

12. The Plays of Aristophanes: Text, Translation, and Commentary. By B. B. Rogers. Five vols. London: Bell, 1902-1910.

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Is translation to be regarded chiefly as an art, an exercise, or an amusement? The last it certainly is, for every one with any taste for letters knows how it 'tickles the senses' with a more than Epicurean pleasure to hit on a happy rendering of some finely fashioned phrase, while age, which dulls most delights, has often found in this playing with words a form of recreation, which brings relief without weariness, and entertainment without exhaustion. As an exercise, on the other hand, every schoolboy knows its use; and, so long as speech remains the distinction of our race, that training in its fit employment which comes from the transference of thought from one language to another can never, assuredly, be put aside. But, when it comes to translation as an 'art,' then the question becomes by no means simple. That there should be such an art no one denies; but what its nature is no one knows. Translators lay down principles in their prefaces; professional critics have elaborated rules; and reviewers sometimes claim to understand the just method; but, after all, nothing final is achieved. Horace's Odes have all been rendered a hundred times, and yet what rendering of any of them really lives upon the lips? And with Homer it is the same. Translations come and disappear. They have their day and are superseded. Keats, no doubt, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' felt

'like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken,'

but to-day, no one except curious students looks into Chapman's Homer at all; and of modern versions of classical authors it is, perhaps, doubtful whether any will win the full approval of another century. Here and there, beyond question, some fortunate fragment will survive; and of such work as Mr Cory's rendering of the famous epigram on Heraclitus it may justly be said in his own words:

'And Death he taketh all away, but this he cannot take.'

But, on the whole, translations are not less mortal than their writers. Renderings of prose authors may sometimes, perhaps, hope for a longer span; for, where the

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