journey to Verona with which he saw he was beset. He advised him to send for

his family physician, which he promised to do, but did not. At length, on the 9th August, the Duke was so much struck with his manner, that, after walking with him to the Foreign Office, he went to his medical attendant, Dr Bankhead, and not finding him at home, wrote a letter expressing his apprehensions, and not obscurely hinting at mental delusion. Dr Bankhead no sooner received this alarming intelligence than he went out to Cray Farm, Lord Castlereagh's seat in Kent, and, seeing the Duke of Wellington's fears too well founded, he slept in the house the next two nights, and gave orders to his valet to remove the razors from his Lordship's dressing-case, and take other precautions against self-destruction. He did so without being observed; but unfortunately, not recollecting that there was a penknife belonging to the case in one of the drawers of the washing-stand, he neglected to secure it. The conse quences were fatal. During the 10th and 11th of August he remained in bed, wandering, but expressing no alarming intentions. On the morning of the 12th August, Lady Londonderry, who was with him, reported that he had passed a restless night, and that he wished to see Dr Bankhead, who was in an adjoining apartment. When Dr Bankhead went into his dressing-room, he found him standing opposite the window looking out, with his hands above his head, with his throat cut, and bleeding profusely. Consciousness, as is often the case, returned with the flow of blood. He threw his arms round the doctor's neck, and, saying in a feeble voice, Bankhead, let me fall on your arm; I have opened my neck; it is all over,' sank on the ground and expired."

We do not hesitate to affirm that Lord Castlereagh was the greatest Foreign Minister that England ever had. No Minister ever had to confront greater perils and difficulties -none ever accomplished such great results. His fame has been long obscured by the unscrupulous antagonism of party, but these volumes of the distinguished historian of Europe come at the right time, and will not fail successfully to establish the noble patriotism and transcendent statesmanship of the great Minister. It has become

somewhat of a fashion with literary men to extol Canning to the disparagement of Castlereagh. But the comparison is not only unjust

it is absurd. Canning sailed in smooth waters-Castlereagh had to face, and ruled, the storm. Canning was a matchless talker, a splendid orator; but as a practical administrator of foreign affairs he was never to be compared to his great predecessor. The recognition of the independence of the South American republics, as we have seen, was not his doing, but Castlereagh's. The British Government stood pledged to that measure before he ever became Foreign Minister. But the fame and popularity of Canning, compared with the hitherto narrow renown of Castlereagh, is typical of the lot of English statesmen. One who is an accomplished orator always gets his due generally a great deal more; and if he is more studious of Parliamentary applause than of the real interests of his country, he will become a more popular man than another who, as an administrator and diplomatist, is infinitely his superior. Lord Russell's highsounding enunciation of what Castlereagh rightly called "hazardous general declarations," and the occasional patriotic bluster of Lord Palmerston, win for these statesmen wise fall to their lot as practical more popularity than would otherdiplomatists. Their words always go far beyond their deeds. If a Castlereagh, an Aberdeen, or a Malmesbury fail in their efforts, their objects and intentions go for nought, for they say little about them. But a Canning and a Russell proclaim their principles so loudly that their failures are overlooked in the blaze of their professions. This is a natural and unavoidable result of our Parliamentary institutions, and Ministers are perhaps right to reckon upon it; but the verdict of history and of political criticism must not be so led astray, and must ever award the palm of statesmanship to the doers rather than to the

to the early numbers of the Magazine. Wilson, Lockhart, Hamilton, Galt, Croly, Hogg, Delta, De Quincey-those old familiar faces, who still look down upon us from the picture-frames in Ebony's saloonhave all passed to their rest. Sir Archibald alone is left-still strong and vigorous, we are happy to say, and strong and vigorous may he long remain ! Forty-three years have passed since, whilst a youth, his literary talent sufficed to enrol him among the contributors to Maga. Since then, Maga and he have grown old together the mutual friendship has stood the strain alike of time and circumstances-and we rejoice to see the victor's wreath encircling the brows of one who

first won his spurs in the service of Maga. As we turn over the pages of past volumes, we recognise the "Roman hand" of Sir Archibald with a frequency second only to that of our venerated "Christopher North" himself. The last of a goodly race, we greet him. And with natural pride we love to recognise in the veteran historian of Europe a life-long contributor to these pages, and the youth who, three-and-forty years ago, commenced his literary career and his connection with Maga with articles on the National Monument and Robert the Bruce, in which the style of the now distinguished historian may be seen already formed in the coups-d'essai of the youthful essayist.

66

THE Oxford Professor of Poetry had surely read the omens wrong, when he foreboded to his eager audience that "the study of Classical Literature" was probably on the decline." If he meant thereby merely to allude, in delicate and professional language, to the notorious fact, that the proportion of "plucks" amongst the junior class of his listeners had alarmingly increased of late years-or even that accurate scholarship was rarer than of old in certain of our great public schools-he was undoubtedly right. But if he meant that the study of Latin and Greek was becoming unpopular, that there was any present probability of such a change in the higher public educational course, as to make a competent knowledge of the classics no longer indispensable for a gentleman, we really believe he made a great mistake. To most observers the wonder probably is, that in this utilitarian age, when

men live fast and work hard, the old belief in the infallibility of the classics should be almost the only one which has remained unshaken. True, there are people who cry now, as in past generations, "What is the use of all this Latin and Greek?" But the practical answer seems to be, that, whether useful or not, we cannot get on without it. We are not going to attempt to discuss here for the hundredth time the utility of classical learning; we merely point to the fact that, whatever its rightful claims may be, its prestige is as great as ever. Men, whom of all others the practical life would seem to absorb most entirely -whose whole time and thoughts might appear necessarily taken up with the prosaic realities of the present-are seen devoting their few and precious moments of leisure to this literature of the past, and going back again, as it were, to school for a holiday. Chancel

lors of the Exchequer burrow in these fields of ancient lore, as diligently as if they expected to find something there to stop a deficit. Mr Gladstone must have bestowed at least as much pains upon Homer as upon his budget; and Sir Cornewall Lewis will perhaps live as a scholar when he is forgotten as a politician. The facts of Roman history, the fables of Babrius, the astronomy of the Egyptians, are in his eyes as important as the bills of the current session. Plato has lately found three competent translators of the sex which alone he would have recognised as competent, and would be startled to find a fourth now announced in the person of a lady. Young ladies were very lately seen with brooches of the severest classical type-like those with which the Athenian fashionables pricked the man to deathbearing Greek mottoes which must occasionally have puzzled an admiring cornet who had left Eton early; and young gentlemen who have forgotten their Horace, will hardly appreciate Mr Thackeray. The study of Latin and Greek " on the decline?" We look in vain for the symptoms.

Homer, at any rate, is in no present danger of neglect. If seven Greek cities quarrelled over his imaginary bones, not less than six English scholars are now trying their hands in (we hope) amicable rivalry in translating him. Mr Wright, Mr F. Newman, and Mr Landon, have chosen the Iliad; Dean Alford and Mr Worsley have employed themselves upon the Odyssey. We add Mr Arnold to the number, because, though he has not given us a translation of his own, he has told us, ex cathedra, what he conceives to be the true principles upon which such translations should be made, and has even furnished us with some slight specimens of what he would make them. Of what may be distinguished from these as amateur translators of the Prince of Poets who have exercised their taste and fancy in occasional versions into

English of some detached passages of his poems-the name is Legion. The late Dr Maginn, Professor Aytoun, and Dr Hawtrey of Eton, may be mentioned as amongst the most successful; but the happy treatment of some tempting and favourite passage is a very different thing from the careful and continuous labour required for a complete translation, in which not only the "telling" scenes, which are pretty sure, in able hands, to "bring down the house," are to be reproduced, but all the more level passages, comparatively prosaic (to English ears at least) have to be rendered as best they may, painfully and conscientiously, where the poetic fire flags in the translator, and he becomes utterly a captive chained to the car of the ancient conqueror of hearts. Some of the translations first enumerated are indeed at present incomplete; and we have only included them in the same list because they seem to imply an intention on the part of their authors to proceed continuously with their work.

We believe, in spite of Mr Arnold, that the critical canons of poetical translation are still wholly unfixed. We much doubt if a successful or unsuccessful attempt can be accounted for under any canons at all, except those of general taste and language. Nor can we agree altogether with the Professor's dictum, that the proper aim of the translator is to reproduce on the intelligent scholar the general effect of Homer." In the first place, because, happily or unhappily, the thing is impossible. Only Homer himself-or a Greek poet who was equal to Homer-could reproduce the effect of Homer on the scholar who understands and appreciates Greek heroic verse. Its effect depends as much upon the grand simplicity of the diction, as upon the beauty of the thought. If you put Homer into English prose-which is the only way to retain the simplicity of the original-then the poetic element is lost; and if you

put him into English verse, the change, though of another kind, is quite as great to the ear and fancy of the scholar. Who could so translate Shakespeare into any other language as to reproduce the effect of Shakespeare upon the intelligent English scholar? and the modern Greek student, it must be remembered, understands Homer, if not quite as an old Greek would have understood him, still in a totally different way from what any one besides a classical scholar can understand him now. The fact is, that the scholar will not thank you for even the best possible translation. True, he alone can recognise its excellences; but he will be painfully sensible of its defects. To him the best version will seem inadequate; in the passages which charm him most, the sound is so perfectly wedded to the sense that man cannot put them asunder. He would tell the unlearned reader who wishes to enter into and share his admiration, that the thing is simply impossible, unless you first gain that additional sense by which alone he has become capable of this enjoyment the knowledge of the language in which the poet wrote. If Mr Arnold had said that the scholar alone could judge of the faithfulness of any translation from a classic author, he would have been right; but there are many other qualities in a good translator besides that of fidelity to the word and sense, and qualities quite as important to his real success. audience, whom he is bound to do his best to satisfy, for himself and for his original, is the general public-not the scholar. He has to produce upon them, as far as he may, something of the effect which the original produces on the mind of scholars. He has to choose, amongst the varieties of English poetical diction, that which may best correspond with the poetical diction of the original. The literal version, which would in some sense reproduce Homer's idea to the scholar who has the original in his

His

mind, would sound exceedingly bald and poor to the unlearned reader, who listens anxiously for the sound of the music which charmed all hearts so long. We very much fear that this will be the effect both of Mr Newman's Iliad and Dean Alford's Odyssey. In both, the melody of the poet's strain is gone; and it is not replaced, as in the case of Pope's version, by a melody of another kind. They have given the sense of Homer faithfully enough; but there must be something besides sense in poetry. They will interest the scholar as ingenious scholastic performances; they might greatly assist a learner in understanding the text; but will they win for themselves readers, as Pope's version with all its defects does still, among those who can only make acquaintance with a Greek poet through the medium of an English translation?

We believe, then, that Mr Worsley has judged rightly, in presenting Homer to English readers, to endeavour at "a version free enough to avoid harshness," as well as to choose a metre familiar to the ears of all readers of the Faery Queen as already consecrated to the English Epic. We agree with him, that the summary way in which Mr Arnold disposes of the claims of the Spenserian stanza as a vehicle of translation for the Prince of Poets, because it does not admit of "the grand style," is not warranted either in theory or by facts, and could be refuted by a score of examples which any reader of taste could produce from Spenser himself, from Byron's Childe Harold (as Mr Worsley remarks), and even from Fairfax's translation of Tasso. It has, besides, the double advantage, that while admirably suited for the grand and sublime, it adapts itself with almost equal felicity to those simple details of ordinary domestic life which the poets of a ruder age thought not unworthy of their song, and which, long discarded as too mean and trivial for