period of the war would be the scene of constant encounters between the opposing navies, has been undisturbed, except for occasional encounters between small craft and the destruction of merchant and fishing vessels. This in itself constitutes the most convincing evidence of the moral ascendency which the British Fleet has obtained over the second greatest Naval Power of the world. From the opening of the war, the German Navy has been out-manœuvred and out-fought in every encounter which has occurred in the North Sea; and with every week that has passed its material inferiority has been increased, irrespective of the loss of morale which must have been incurred.

The operations in the Dardanelles have assumed a fresh phase. On March 18, the general naval attack on the forts in the Narrows was marked by the destruction of three of the Allied battleships, the Irresistible,' 'Ocean' and 'Bouvet.' There subsequently intervened a period of unfavourable weather, which prevented a resumption of the operations; and, in the meantime, it was realised that naval force alone could not achieve success. It was generally assumed, when the bombardment by the Allied men-of-war began, that adequate provision had been made for military support in order to enable the batteries put out of action by fire from the sea to be demolished by landing parties. That assumption proved unfortunately incorrect, the only military force available being the Royal Naval Division, consisting of a comparatively small number of officers and men. After the losses sustained on March 18, a period of six weeks intervened; and on April 25 a large force of British, Dominion and French troops was thrown ashore under the cover of the guns of the men-of-war and succeeded in obtaining a footing, in spite of determined opposition on the part of the Turks. It is impossible to read General Sir Ian Hamilton's despatch, published on July 7, without being convinced that, if the Navy alone could not force the Dardanelles, the Army, unsupported by the guns of the men of war, could never have landed, and, having landed, could not have advanced or even held its ground. As Sir Ian remarks, the Royal Navy has been father and mother to the Army.'

The time has not yet come for reviewing in detail the action taken with a view to destroying the Turkish power in Europe. Events have, however, shown that, whatever defects there were in the original naval and military plans, the objective in view was of the utmost importance in its bearing upon the general course of the war. It is impossible to over-estimate the influence which the Dardanelles operations have exercised on opinion in Italy, Greece and the Balkan countries; and the demonstration in the eyes of the people of the Near East of the long arm of sea-power has been invaluable. Evidence of the impression which this new campaign made upon the naval and military staffs of Germany is provided by the decision to detach considerable bodies of naval and military officers to direct and stiffen the Turkish defence, and by the risks which must have been run in dispatching one or more submarines from northern to southern waters in the hope of thereby embarrassing the transport arrangements and injuring the ships of the Allied Fleets while engaged in supporting the military forces ashore. As a result of the new campaign initiated by the Allied Governments, Turkey as an Ally of the two Central Powers of Europe has become not a support, but a grave embarrassment. Every military consideration compelled Germany to attempt to save Turkey from annihilation; and the diversion of force has contributed to the weakening of the German arms in other theatres of war. On the other hand, the Allied Governments found in these operations employ. ment for surplus men-of-war, for the most part obsolescent, which they possessed after making adequate provision to contain the main fleets of Germany and Austria-Hungary. It was not to be expected that the Dardanelles could be forced without some loss. The eventual success of the operations will prove ample compensation for more considerable reductions in the strength of pre-Dreadnoughts than have yet been incurred.

ARCHIBALD HURD.

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.

.

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

matter of an author is of chief importance, a clear and accurate version by a competent scholar may well supply all needs. But where style enters into the question it is otherwise. No translation of Thucydides to-day holds the field, and certainly none of Demosthenes, whose combination of simplicity with strength, and of self-restraint with passion, seems to elude reproduction. And who, at the opposite pole of oratory, has ever given us a version that really makes us hear the long majestic roll, the swelling rhythm and the stately cadences of Cicero? Who has produced a rendering of Tacitus that plants, as he does, its incisive phrases on the very core of memory, or so dealt with Seneca's artificial rhetoric that it does not lose almost half of its effect? These great writers of prose seem, indeed, to mock our efforts at imitation; and their translators clothe themselves, as it were, in the lion's skin but speak too often with another voice.

Before touching on the question of poetical versions -of which a large list forms the particular subject of this article-it may, perhaps, be relevant to consider for a moment a fact so strange. For strange indeed it is. Not only does there appear to be nothing in the nature of things which should prevent the conveying of the exact meaning of words from one language to another in such a way that in their new dress they should lose nothing of their old power, but we have in English at least one translation-the English Bible-which is the supreme model of all excellence. How has this, humanly speaking, come about? How is it that amid innumerable failures this is the one full success? Assuredly for two chief reasons, one that is in a way accidental, the other essential and of abiding importance. When the Authorised Version was made our English tongue was for the particular purpose at its best. For other ends it has since become more ductile and more convenient; it can achieve much now which, perhaps, it could not have achieved then; but to express great things greatly, to set upon truth its proper seal of simplicity, to touch the heart, as it ever must be touched, by words that are pure and without alloy-for these and other like ends the honest homely speech of the Elizabethan period has never been surpassed either in its strength or in its sweetness. Take one out of instances innumerable: