‘Dum hos artus vita regit; Quando nox sepulchro tegit; Mortuos cum stare jubes, Sedens Judex inter nubes; Jesu, pro me perforatus, Condar intra Tuum latus.’ In 1863 Mr. Gladstone printed his translation of the first book of the ‘Iliad.’ He sent a copy to Lord Lyndhurst, then in his ninety-first year. The aged critic replied in the following letter. The accident to which it alludes was one which had happened some days before to Mr. Gladstone when riding in the Park: ‘MY DEAR GLADSTONE, ‘We are very sorry for your accident, but rejoice that the consequence is not likely to be serious. What should we do with the surplus without you? I return with thanks the translation. It is a remarkable effort of ingenuity, literal almost to a fault, and in a poetical form. But is the trochee suited to our heroic verse? Its real character is in some degree disguised by your mode of printing the lines. If the usual mode were adopted, the defect would at once appear: ‘“Of Achilles, son of Peleus, How the deadly wrath arose! How the hosts of the Achaians Rued it with ten thousand woes!” Written and read in this way, it has a sort of ballad air. If I am wrong, correct me. Perhaps I have been too long accustomed to the iambic measure with variations, as best suited to English heroic poetry, to be able to form a correct opinion. As an example of trochaic lines, there are several in Dryden’s “Alexander’s Feast”: ‘“Bacchus, ever fair and young, Drunken joys did first ordain,” etc.’ Mr. Gladstone thought so highly of this criticism that he wrote back asking permission to print it in a contemplated preface to his translation. ‘It is not,’ he said, ‘from a mere wish to parade you as my correspondent, though this wish may have its share. Your observation on my metre, which has great force, cuts, I think, deep into the matter—into the principles of Homeric translation. So pray let me have your permission.’ As an illustration of Mr. Gladstone’s skill as a translator, let me add some verses from his version of the ‘Hecuba’ of Euripides, seven pages of which appeared in the _Contemporary Review_ a few years since, though the translation was made in his Eton days: ‘ANTISTROPHE I. ‘’Twas dead of night, and silence deep Buried all in dewy sleep, For feast, and dance, and slaughter done, Soft slumber’s season had begun. The lyre was hushed, the altar cold, The sword, the lance, all bloodless lay; My husband, softly resting, told The toils and dangers of the day: No longer watching for the foe Sworn to lay proud Ilion low. ‘STROPHE II.