Notes and Queries, Number 25, April 20, 1850Various
History
Notes and Queries, Number 25, April 20, 1850
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
At p. 16. Spence had written:--"Yellow is a proper epithet of fruit; but
not of fruit that we say at the same time is ripening into gold." Upon
which Pope observes:--"I think yellow may be s'd to ripen into gold, as
gold is a deeper, fuller colour than yellow." Again: "What is proper in
one language, may not be so in another. Were Homer to call the sea a
thousand times by the title of [Greek: porphureos], 'purple deeps' would
not sound well in English. The reason's evident: the word 'purple' among
us is confined to one colour, and that not very applicable to the deep.
Was any one to translate the _purpureis oloribus_ of Horace, 'purple
swans' would not be so literal as to miss the sense of the author
entirely." Upon which Pope has remarked:--"The sea is actually of a deep
purple in many places, and in many views."
Upon a passage in Spence's _Criticism_, at p. 45., Pope says:--"I think
this too nice." And the couplet objected to by Spence--
"Deep in my soul the trust shall lodge secur'd,
With ribs of steel, and marble heart immur'd,"
he pronounced "very bad." And of some tumid metaphors he says, "All too
forced and over-charged."
At p. 51. Spence says:--"Does it not sound mean to talk of lopping a
man? of lopping away all his posterity? or of trimming him with brazen
sheers? Is there not something mean, where a goddess is represented as
beck'ning and waving her deathless hands; or, when the gods are dragging
those that have provok'd them to destruction by the Links of fate?" Of
the two first instances, Pope says:--"Intended to be comic in a
sarcastic speech." And of the last:--"I think not at all mean, see the
Greek." The remarks are, however, expunged.
The longest remonstrance occurs at p. 6. of the Fifth Dialogue. Spence
had written:--"The _Odyssey_, as a moral poem, exceeds all the writings
of the ancients: it is perpetual in forming the manners, and in
instructing the mind; it sets off the duties of life more fully as well
as more agreeably than the Academy or Lyceum. _Horace ventured to say
thus much of the Iliad, and certainly it may be more justly said of this
later production by the same hand_." For the words in Italics Pope has
substituted:--"Horace, who was so well acquainted with the tenets of
both, has given Homer's poems the preference to either:" and says in a
note:--"I think you are mistaken in limiting this commendation and
judgment of Horace to the _Iliad_. He says it, at the beginning of his
Epistle, of Homer in general, and afterwards proposes both poems equally
as examples of morality; though the _Iliad_ be mentioned first: but then
follows--'_Rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit, Utile proposuit
nobis exemplar Ulyssem_,' &c. of the Odyssey."
At p. 34. Spence says:--"There seems to be something mean and awkward in
this image:--
"'His _loose head_ tottering as with wine opprest
Obliquely drops, and _nodding_ knocks his breast.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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