{95 Il n'y aura jamais de traduction d'Homère supportable, si tous les mots n'en sont choisis avec art et pleins de variété, de nouveauté et d'agrément. Il faut, d'ailleurs, que l'expression soit aussi antique, aussi nue que les mœurs, les événements et les personnages mis en scène. Avec notre style moderne, tout grimace dans Homère, et ses héros semblent des grotesques qui font les graves et les fiers.--_Pensées de J. Joubert_, p. 342.} CHAPTER XXI THE LOFTIER STRAIN: CHRISTUS After all, no translation, even taken at its best, can wholly satisfy an essentially original mind. Longfellow wrote in his diary, November 19, 1849, as follows: "And now I long to try a loftier strain, the sublimer Song whose broken melodies have for so many years breathed through my soul in the better hours of life, and which I trust and believe will ere long unite themselves into a symphony not all unworthy the sublime theme, but furnishing 'some equivalent expression for the trouble and wrath of life, for its sorrow and its mystery.'" This of course refers to the great poetic design of his life, "Christus, a Mystery," of which he wrote again on December 10, 1849, "A bleak and dismal day. Wrote in the morning 'The Challenge of Thor' as prologue or '_Introïtus_' to the second part of 'Christus.'" This he laid aside; just a month from that time he records in his diary, "In the evening, pondered and meditated the sundry scenes of 'Christus.'" Later, he wrote some half dozen scenes or more of "The Golden Legend" which is Part Second of "Christus," representing the mediæval period. He afterwards wished, on reading Kingsley's "Saint's Tragedy," that he had chosen the theme of Elizabeth of Hungary in place of the minor one employed (Der Arme Heinrich), although if we are to judge by the comparative interest inspired by the two books, there is no reason for regret. At any rate his poem was published--the precursor by more than twenty years of any other portion of the trilogy of "Christus." The public, and even his friends, knew but little of his larger project, but "The Golden Legend" on its publication in 1851 showed more of the dramatic quality than anything else he had printed, and Ruskin gave to it the strong praise of saying, "Longfellow in his 'Golden Legend' has entered more closely into the temper of the monk, for good or for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian, though they may have given their life's labor to the analysis."{96} It is to be noted that the passage in the book most criticised as unjust is taken from a sermon of an actual Italian preacher of the fifteenth century. But its accuracy or depth in this respect was probably less to the general public than its quality of readableness or that which G. P. R. James, the novelist, described as "its resemblance to an old ruin with the ivy and the rich blue mould upon it." If the rest of the long planned book could have been as