On Translating Homer, published in January 1861, was a printed version of the series of public lectures given by Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...

 as Professor of Poetry at Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 from 3 November 1860 to 18 December 1860.

Arnold's purpose was to discuss how his principles of literary criticism

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

 applied to the two Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

ic epic

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

s and to the translation of a classical text. He comments with disapproval on John Ruskin

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...

's 1860 review article "The English translators of Homer" in the National Review

National Review (London)

The National Review was founded in 1883 by the English writers Alfred Austin and William Courthope.It was launched as a platform for the views of the British Conservative Party, its masthead incorporating a quotation of the former Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli:Under editor Leopold...

. He gives much space to comparing and criticising already-published translations of the epics, notably

• George Chapman
  George Chapman
  George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...
  
  ’s Odyssey
  Odyssey
  The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
  
  
• Alexander Pope
  Alexander Pope
  Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
  
  ’s Iliad
  Iliad
  The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
  
  
• William Cowper
  William Cowper
  William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
  
  's Iliad
• Ichabod Charles Wright
  Ichabod Charles Wright
  Ichabod Charles Wright was an English scholar, translator, poet and accountant. He is best known for his translation of important works of Italian literature, notably the works of Dante's Divine Comedy.-Biography:...
  
  's Iliad (vol. 1, 1859; vol. 2 was to appear in 1865)
• F. W. Newman
  Francis William Newman
  Francis William Newman , the younger brother of Cardinal Newman, was an English scholar and miscellaneous writer.-Life:...
  
  's Iliad (1856)

He adds polite comments on William Maginn

William Maginn

William Maginn , journalist and miscellaneous writer, born at Cork, became a contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, and after moving to London in 1824 became for a few months in 1826 the Paris correspondent to The Representative, a paper started by John Murray, the publisher...

's Homeric Ballads (which first appeared in Fraser's Magazine

Fraser's Magazine

Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country was a general and literary journal published in London from 1830 to 1882, which initially took a strong Tory line in politics. It was founded by Hugh Fraser and William Maginn in 1830 and loosely directed by Maginn under the name Oliver Yorke until about 1840...

, where Arnold intended to publish these lectures).

Arnold identifies four essential qualities of Homer the poet to which the translator must do justice:

that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble

After a discussion of the meters employed by previous translators, and in other existing English narrative poetry, he argues the need for a translation of the Iliad in hexameter

Hexameter

Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...

s in a poetical dialect, like the original. He notes the German translations of the Iliad and Odyssey into hexameters by Johann Heinrich Voss. He quotes English hexameter translations of short Homeric passages by himself and by E. C. Hawtrey

Edward Craven Hawtrey

Edward Craven Hawtrey was an English educationalist.He was born at Burnham in Norfolk, the son of the vicar of the parish. He was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, and in 1814 was appointed assistant master at Eton under Dr John Keate...

 and also surveys original English hexameter poetry, including

• Arthur Hugh Clough
  Arthur Hugh Clough
  Arthur Hugh Clough was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to ground-breaking nurse Florence Nightingale...
  
  , The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
  
  , Evangeline
  Evangeline
  Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, is an epic poem published in 1847 by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the Expulsion of the Acadians.The idea for the poem came from...
  
  

Arnold reserved much space for the criticism of the recently published translation of the Iliad into a ballad-like metre by F. W. Newman. Newman took offence at Arnold's public criticism of his translation, and published a reply, Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice. To this Arnold in turn responded, with a last lecture, given at Oxford on 30 November 1861, afterwards separately published in March 1862 under the title On Translating Homer: last words.

External links

• Matthew Arnold, On Translating Homer, e-text (PDF) from victorianprose.org