_The pow’rs of Ilium_ gave the first assault, _Embattled_ close;
but it is strictly, ‘The Trojans _knocked-forward_ (or, thumped, _butted_, forward) in close pack’. The verb is too coarse for later polished prose, and even the adjective is very strong (_packed together_). I believe, that ‘Forward in _pack_ the Troians _pitch’d_’, would not be really unfaithful to the Homeric colour; and I maintain that ‘Forward in mass the Troians pitch’d’, would be an irreprovable rendering.
Dryden in this respect is in entire harmony with Homeric style. No critic deals fairly with me in isolating any of these strong words, and then appealing to his readers whether I am not ignoble. Hereby he deprives me of the ἀγὼν, the ‘mighty current’ of Mr Arnold, and he misstates the problem; which is, whether the word is suitable, _then_ and _there_, for the work required of it, as the coalman at the pit, the clown in the furrow, the huntsman in the open field.
3. There is a small number of words not natural plebeians, but patricians on which a most unjust bill of attainder has been passed, which I seek to reverse. On the first which I name, Mr Arnold will side with me, because it is a Biblical word, _wench_. In Lancashire I believe that at the age of about sixteen a ‘girl’ turns into ‘a wench’, or as we say ‘a young woman’. In Homer, ‘girl’ and ‘young woman’ are alike inadmissible; ‘maid’ or ‘maiden’ will not always suit, and ‘wench’ is the natural word. I do not know that I have used it three times, but I claim a right of using it, and protest against allowing the heroes of slang to deprive us of excellent words by their perverse misuse. If the imaginations of some men are always in satire and in low slang, so much the worse for them: but the more we yield to such demands, the more will be exacted. I expect, before long, to be told that _brick_ is an ignoble word, meaning a jolly fellow, and that _sell_, _cut_ are out of place in Homer. My metre, it seems, is inadmissible with some, because it is the metre of Yankee Doodle! as if Homer’s metre were not that of the Margites. Every noble poem is liable to be travestied, as the Iliad and Æschylus and Shakspeare have been. Every burlesque writer uses the noble metre, and caricatures the noble style. Mr Arnold says, I must not render τανύπεπλος ‘trailing-rob’d’, because it reminds him of ‘long petticoats sweeping a dirty pavement’. What a confession as to the state of his imagination! Why not, of ‘a queen’s robe trailing on a marble pavement’? Did he never read