After Mr Arnold has laid upon me the sins of Shakspeare, he amazes me by adding, p. 92: ‘The idiomatic language of Shakspeare, such language as “prate of his _whereabout_”, “_jump_ the life to come”, “the damnation of his _taking-off_”, “_quietus make_ with a bare bodkin”, should be carefully observed by the translator of Homer; although in every case he will have to decide for himself, whether the use, by him, of Shakspeare’s liberty, will or will not clash with his indispensable duty of nobleness’.
Of the Shakspearianisms here italicized by Mr Arnold, there is not one which I could endure to adopt. ‘His whereabout’, I regard as the flattest prose. (The word _prate_ is a plebeian which I admit in its own low places; but how Mr Arnold can approve of it, consistently with his attacks on me, I do not understand.) Damnation and Taking-off (for Guilt and Murder), and Jump, I absolutely reject; and ‘quietus make’ would be nothing but an utterly inadmissible _quotation_ from Shakspeare. _Jump_ as an active verb is to me monstrous, but _Jump_ is just the sort of modern prose word which is not noble. _Leap_, _Bound_, for great action, _Skip_, _Frisk_, _Gambol_ for smaller, are all good.
I have shown against Mr Arnold—(1) that Homer was out-and-out antiquated to the Athenians, even when perfectly understood by them; (2) that his conceptions, similes, phraseology and epithets are habitually quaint, strange, unparalleled in Greek literature; and pardonable only to semibarbarism; (3) that they are intimately related to his noblest excellences; (4) that many words are so peculiar as to be still doubtful to us; (5) I have indicated that some of his descriptions and conceptions are horrible to us, though they are not so to his barbaric auditors; (6) that considerable portions of the poem are not poetry, but rhythmical prose like Horace’s Satires, and are interesting to us not as poetry but as portraying the manners or sentiments of the day. I now add (7) what is inevitable in all high and barbaric poetry, perhaps in all high poetry, many of his energetic descriptions are expressed in _coarse physical words_. I do not here attempt proof, for it might need a treatise: but I give one illustration; Il. 13, 136, Τρῶες προὒτυψαν ἀολλέες. Cowper, misled by the _ignis fatuus_ of ‘stateliness’, renders it absurdly