My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This was Francis Newman’s response to a series of three lectures that Matthew Arnold did on translating Homer. Arnold viscously, but with full explanations, attacked Newman’s translation of Homer’s Iliad. While Newman could have provided a calm and nuanced response, he didn’t. This is a 104 page screed against Arnold, making personal attacks and unsubstantiated claims. There is no organization to his thoughts, argument or the entire work. It’s as if he scribbled it down within moments of reading Arnold’s essays and then never went back over what he wrote. It is simply an incoherent, unorganized rant. Almost as if he wanted to prove Arnold’s analysis, Newman provides many at-length translations that are awful to read (pp. 28-30).

This book is good to read in the flow of Arnold’s original three essays and Arnold’s response to Newman’s response. As a whole, they are worth the read together. But this work on its own, as well as Newman’s translations, are best left to history.