, here and there into the English version? or by
availing ourselves of what Professor Blackie again calls attention to,
the "compensating powers"[B] of English? I think with him that it was
hard to speak of our language as one which "transforms _boos megaloio
boeien_ into 'great ox's hide.'" Such phrases as 'The Lord is a man of
war,' 'The trumpet spake not to the armed throng,' are to my ear quite
as grand as Homer: and it would be equally fair to ask what we are to
make of a language which transforms Milton's line into [Greek: e
shalpigx ohy proshephe ton hoplismhenon hochlon.][C] But be this as it
may, these phenomena are surely too rare and too arbitrary to be
adequately represented by any regularly recurring rhyme: and the
question remains, what is there in the unrhymed original to which rhyme
answers?
To me its effect is to divide the verse into couplets, triplets, or (if
the word may include them all) _stanzas_ of some kind. Without rhyme we
have no apparent means of conveying the effect of stanzas. There are of
course devices such as repeating a line or part of a line at stated
intervals, as is done in 'Tears, idle tears' and elsewhere: but clearly
none of these would be available to a translator. Where therefore he has
to express stanzas, it is easy to see that rhyme may be admissible and
even necessary. Pope's couplet may (or may not) stand for elegiacs, and
the _In Memoriam_ stanza for some one of Horace's metres.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25