Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862», sayfa 19

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

Lectures on the Science of Languages, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in April, May, and June, 1861. By MAX MÜLLER, M.A., Fellow of All-Souls College, Oxford; Corresponding Member of the Imperial Institute of France. London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts. 1861. 8vo. pp. xii., 399.

The name of Mr. Max Müller is familiar to American students as that of a man who, learned in the high German fashion, has the pleasant faculty, unhappily too rare among Germans, of communicating his erudition in a way not only comprehensible, but agreeable to the laity. The Teutonic Gelehrte, gallantly devoting a half-century to his pipe and his locative case, fencing the result of his labors with a bristling hedge of abbreviations, cross-references, and untranslated citations that take panglottism for granted as an ordinary incident of human culture, too hastily assumes a tenacity of life on the part of his reader as great as his own. All but those with whom the study of language is a specialty pass him by as Dante does Nimrod, gladly concluding

 
“Che così è a lui ciascun linguaggio,
Come il suo ad altrui, che a nullo è noto.”
 

The brothers Grimm are known to what is called the reading public chiefly as contributors to the literature of the nursery; and as for Bopp, Pott, Zeuss, Lassen, Diefenbach, and the rest, men who look upon the curse of Babel as the luckiest event in human annals, their names and works are terrors to the uninitiated. They are the giants of these latter days, of whom all we know is that they now and then snatch up some unhappy friend of ours and imprison him in their terrible castle of Nongtongpaw, whence, if he ever escape, he comes back to us emaciated, unintelligible, and with a passion for roots that would make him an ornament of society among the Digger Indians.

Yet though in metaphor giants of learning, their office seems practically rather that of the dwarfs, as gatherers and guardians of treasure useless to themselves, but with which some luck’s-child may enrich himself and his neighbors. Other analogies between them and the dwarfs, such as their accomplishing superhuman things and being prematurely subject to the dryness of old ago, (“Der Zwerg ist schon im siebenten Jahr ein Greis,” says Grimm,) will at once suggest themselves.

Mr. Müller is one of the agreeable luck’s-children who lay these swarthy miners under contribution for us, understand their mystic sign-language, and save us the trouble of climbing the mountain and scratching through the thickets for ourselves. Happy the man who can make knowledge entertaining! Thrice happy his readers! The author of these Lectures is already well known as not only, perhaps, the best living scholar of Sanscrit literature, (and by scholar we mean one who regards study as a means, not an end, and who is capable of drawing original conclusions,) but a savant who can teach without tiring, and can administer learning as if it were something else than medicine. Whoever reads this volume will regret that Mr. Müller’s eminent qualifications for the Boden Professorship at Oxford should have failed to turn the scale against the assumed superior orthodoxy of his competitor. Was it in Sanscrit that he was heterodox? or in Hindoo mythology?

The Lectures are nine in number. The titles of them will show the range and nature of Mr. Müller’s dissertations. They are, (1.) On the science of language as one of the physical sciences; (2.) On the growth of language in contradistinction to the history of language; (3.) On the empirical stage in the science of language; (4.) On the classificatory stage in the same; (5.) On the genealogical classification of languages; (6.) On comparative grammar; (7.) On the constituent elements of language; (8.) On the morphological classification of languages; (9.) On the theoretical stage in the science of languages and the origin of language. An Appendix contains a genealogical table of languages; and an ample Index (why have authors forgotten, what was once so well known, that an index is all that saves the contents of a book from being mere birds in the bush?) makes the volume as useful on the shelf as it is interesting and instructive in the hand. Of the catholic spirit in which Mr. Müller treats his various topics of discussion and illustration, his own theory of the true method of investigation is the best proof.

“There are two ways,” he says, in discussing the origin of language, “of judging of former philosophers. One is, to put aside their opinions as simply erroneous, where they differ from our own. This is the least satisfactory way of studying ancient philosophy. Another way is, to try to enter into the opinions of those from whom we differ, to make them, our a time at least, our own, till at least we discover the point of view from which each philosopher looked at the facts before him and catch the light in which he regarded them. We shall then find that there is much less of downright error in the history of philosophy than is commonly supposed; nay, we shall find nothing so conducive to a right appreciation of truth as a right appreciation of the error by which it is surrounded.” (p. 360. The Italics are ours.)

A mere philologist might complain that the book contained nothing new. And this is in the main true, though by no means altogether so, especially as regards the nomenclature of classification, and the illustration of special points by pertinent examples. In this last respect Mr. Müller is particularly happy, as, for instance, in what he says of “Yes ’r and Yes ’m.” (pp. 210 ff.) And as regards originality in the treatment of a purely scientific subject, a good deal depends on the meaning we attach to the term. If we understand by it striking conclusions drawn from theoretic premises, (as in Knox’s “Races of Man,”) clever generalizations from fortuitous analogies and coincidences insufficiently weighed, (as in Pococke’s “India in Greece,”) or, to take a philologic example, speculations suggestive of thought, it may be, but too insecurely based on positive data, (as in Rapp’s “Physiologie der Sprache,”) we shall vainly seek for such originality in Mr. Müller’s Lectures. But if we take it to mean, as we certainly prefer to do, safety of conclusion founded on thorough knowledge and comparison, clear statement guarded on all sides by long intimacy with the subject, and theory the result of legitimate deduction and judicial weighing of evidence, we shall find enough in the book to content us. Mr. Müller does not now enter the lists for the first time to win his spurs as an original writer. The plan of the work before us necessarily excluded any great display of recondite learning or of profound speculation. Delivered at first as popularly scientific lectures, and now published for the general reader, it seems to us admirably conceived and executed. Easily comprehensible, and yet always pointing out the sources of fuller investigation, it is ample both to satisfy the desire of those who wish to get the latest results of philology and to stimulate the curiosity of whoever wishes to go farther and deeper. It is by far the best and clearest summing-up of the present condition of the Science of Language that we have ever seen, while the liveliness of the style and the variety and freshness of illustration make it exceedingly entertaining.

We hope that a book of such slight assumption and such solid merit, a model of clear arrangement and popular treatment, may be widely read in this country, where the ignorance, carelessness, or dishonest good-nature even of journals professedly literary is apt to turn over the unlearned reader to such blind guides as Swinton’s “Rambles among Words,” compounds of plagiarism and pretension. Philology as a science is but just beginning to assert its claims in America, though we may already point with satisfaction to several distinguished workers in the field. The names of Professor Sophocles, at Cambridge, and Professor Whitney, at New Haven, rank with those of European scholars; and we have already borne the warmest testimony in these pages to the value of Mr. Marsh’s contributions to the study of English, a judgment which we are glad to see confirmed by the weighty authority of Mr, Müller.

1 On Translating Homer. Three Lectures given at Oxford by MATTHEW ARNOLD, M.A., Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, and formerly Fellow of Oriel College. London: Longmans. 1861. pp. 104.

2 Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice. A Reply to Matthew Arnold, Esq., Professor of Poetry at Oxford. By FRANCIS W. NEWMAN, a Translator of the Iliad. London: Williams & Norgate. 1801. pp. 104.

MR. F.W. NEWMAN, Professor of Latin in the University of London, probably without much hope of satisfying himself, and certain to dissatisfy every one who could read, or pretend to read, the original, did nevertheless complete and publish a translation of the “Iliad.” And now, unmindful of Bentley’s dictum, that no man was ever written down but by himself, he has published an answer to Mr. Arnold’s criticism of his work. Thackeray has said that it is of no use pretending not to care if your book is cut up by the “Times”; and it is not surprising that Mr. Newman should be uneasy at being first held up as an awful example to the youth of Oxford in academical lectures, and then to the public of England in a printed monograph, by a man of so much reputation for scholarship and taste as the present incumbent of Thomas Warton’s chair.

Mr. Arnold’s little book is, we need scarcely say, full of delicate criticism and suggestion. He treats his subject with great cleverness, and on many points carries the reader along with him. Especially good is all that he says about the “grand style,” so far as his general propositions are concerned. But when he comes to apply his criticisms, he instinctively feels the want of an absolute standard of judgment in aesthetic matters, and accordingly appeals to the verdict of “scholars,”—a somewhat vague term, to be sure, but by which he evidently understands men not merely of learning, but of taste. Of course, his reasoning is all a posteriori, and from the narrowest premises,—namely, from an unpleasant effect on his own nerves, to an efficient cause in the badness of Mr. Newman’s translation.

No quarrels, perhaps, are so bitter as those about matters of taste: hardly even is the odium theologicum, so profound as the odium æstheticum. A man, perhaps, will more easily forgive another for disbelieving his own total depravity than for believing that Guido is a great painter or Tupper an inspiring poet. The present dispute, therefore, tenderly personal as it is on the part of one of the pleaders, is especially interesting as showing a very decided and gratifying advance in the civilization of literary men to-day as compared with that of a century or indeed half a century ago. If we go back still farther, matters were still worse, and we find Luther and even Milton raking the kennel for dirt dirty enough to fling at an antagonist. But even within the memory of man, the style of the “Dunciad” was hardly obsolete in “Blackwood” and the “Quarterly.” It is very pleasant, in the present case, to see both attack and defence conducted with so gentlemanlike a reserve,—and the latter, which is even more surprising, with an approach to amenity.

In Mr. Newman the Professor of Poetry finds an able and wary antagonist, and one who, in point of learning, carries heavier metal than himself. The dispute turns partly on the character of Homer’s poetry, partly on the true method of translation, (especially Homeric translation,) and partly on the particular merits of Mr. Newman’s attempt as compared with those of others. Of course, many side-topics are incidentally touched upon, among others, the English hexameter, Mr. Newman’s objections to which are particularly worthy of attention.

Mr. Newman instantly sees and strikes at the weak point of his adversary’s argument. “You appeal to scholars,” he says in substance; “you admit that I am one; now you don’t like my choice of words or metre; I do; who, then, shall decide? Why, the public, of course, which is the court of last appeal in such cases.” It appears to us, that, on most of the points at issue, the truth lies somewhere between the two disputants. We do not think that Mr. Newman has made out his case that Homer was antiquated, quaint, and even grotesque to the Greeks themselves because his cast of thought and his language were archaic, or strange to them because he wrote in a dialect almost as different from Attic as Scotch from English. The Bible is as far from us in language and in the Orientalism of its thought and expression as Homer was from them; yet we are so familiar with it that it produces on us no impression of being antiquated or quaint, seldom of being grotesque, and what is still more to the purpose, produces that impression as little on illiterate persons to whom many of the words are incomprehensible. So, too, it seems to us, no part of Burns is alien to a man whose mother-tongue is English, in the same sense that some parts of Béranger are; because Burns, though a North Briton, was still a Briton, as Homer, though an Ionian, was still a Greek. We think he does prove that neither Mr. Arnold nor any other scholar can form any adequate conception of the impression which the poems of Homer produced either on the ear or the mind of a Greek; but in doing this he proves too much for his own case, where it turns upon the class of words proper to be used in translating him. Mr. Newman says he sometimes used low words; and since his theory of the duty of a translator is, that he should reproduce the moral effect of his author,—be noble where he is noble, barbarous, if he be barbarous, and quaint, if quaint,—so he should render low words by words as low. But here his own dilemma meets him: how does he know that Homer’s words did seem low to a Greek? We agree with him in refusing to be conventional; so would Mr. Arnold; only one would call conventional what the other would call elegant, the question again resolving itself into one of personal taste. We agree with him also in his preference for words that have it certain strangeness and antique dignity about them, but think he should stop short of anything that needs a glossary. He might learn from Chapman’s version, however, that it is not the widest choice of archaic words, but intensity of conception and phrase, that gives a poem life, and keeps it living, in spite of grave defects. Where Chapman, in a famous passage, (“Odyssey,” v. 612,) tells us, that, when Ulysses crawled ashore after his shipwreck, “the sea had soaked his heart through,” it is not the mere simplicity of the language, but the vivid conception which went before and compelled the simplicity, that is impressive. We believe Mr. Newman is right in refusing to sacrifice a good word because it may be pronounced mean by individual caprice, wrong in attempting the fatal impossibility of rescuing a word which to all minds alike conveys a low or ludicrous meaning, as, for example, pate, and dopper, for which he does battle doughtily. Mr. Newman is guilty of a fallacy when he brings up brick, sell, and cut as instances in support of his position, for in these cases Mr. Arnold would only object to his use of them in their slang sense. He himself would hardly venture to say that Hector was a brick, that Achilles cut Agamemnon, or that Ulysses sold Polyphemus. It is precisely because Hobbes used language in this way that his translation of Homer is so ludicrous. Wordsworth broke down in his theory, that the language of poetry should be the every-day speech of men and women, though he nearly succeeded in finally extirpating “poetic diction.” We think the proper antithesis is not between prosaic and poetic words, nor between the speech of actual life and a conventionalized diction, but between the language of real life (which is something different from the actual, or matter-of-fact) and that of artificial life, or society,—that is, between phrases fit to express the highest passion, feeling, aspiration, and those adapted to the intercourse of polite life, whence all violent emotion, or, at least, the expression of it, is excluded. This latter highly artificial and polished dialect is accordingly as suitable to the Mock-Heroic (like “The Rape of the Lock”) as it is inefficient and even distasteful when employed for the higher and more serious purposes of poetry. It was most fortunate for English poetry that our translation of the Bible and Shakspeare arrested our language, and, as it were, crystallized it, precisely at its freshest and most vigorous period, giving us an inexhaustible mine of words familiar to the heart and mind, yet unvulgarized to the ear by trivial associations.

The whole question of Homeric translation in its entire range, between Chapman on the one hand and Pope and Cowper on the other, is opened afresh by this controversy. The difficulty of the undertaking, and still more of dogmatizing on the proper mode of executing it, is manifest from the fact that Mr. Newman is quite as successful in turning some specimens of Mr. Arnold’s into ridicule as the latter had been with his. Meanwhile we commend the two little books to our readers as containing an able and entertaining discussion on a question of general and permanent interest, and as showing that the “Quarrels of Authors” may be conducted in a dignified and scholarly way.

OBITUARY

The last English steamer brings us the sad news of the death of Arthur Hugh Clough. Mr. Clough had so many personal friends, as well as warm admirers, in America, that his death will be felt by numbers of our readers both as a private grief and a public loss. The earth will not soon close over a man of more lovely character or more true and delicate genius. This is not the place or the occasion to do justice to the many eminent qualities of his heart and mind, and we only allude to his death at all because in him the “Atlantic” has lost one of its most valued contributors.