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Nation 139Newman’s “aberrations” were the same ones that Arnold noticed,especially the archaism, which the reviewer described as “aconsistent, though we think mistaken theory” (ibid.:96). TheSaturday Review’s distaste for Newman’s translation was in turnconsistent with its other literary judgments: it tended to ridiculeliterary experiments that deviated from transparent discourse, likeRobert Browning’s “obscure” poetry, and to attack literary formsthat were populist as well as popular, like Dickens’s novels(Bevington 1941:208–209, 155–167).The liberal British Quarterly Review, a nonconformist religiousperiodical edited by a Congregationalist minister, questionedArnold’s desire “to imitate in England the French Academy”(British Quarterly Review 1865:292; Houghton et al. 1987:IV, 114–125). This was considered “an intellectual foppery” since thefundamental individualism of English culture resisted any notionof a national academy: “Mr. Arnold seems determined to ignore thefact that an academic style is impossible among the English, whoare by nature original” (British Quarterly Review 1865:292). Yet thereviewer agreed “that Homeric translation demands a noblesimplicity,” adding thatunquestionably Mr. Arnold is right in placing Homer in a verydifferent class from the ballad-poets with whom he has frequentlybeen compared. The ballad, in its most perfect form, belongs to arude state of society—to a time when ideas were few. This cannot besaid of Homer. His very existence is sufficient proof of a socialdevelopment quite equal to that of Shakespeare’s time, though farsimpler in its form.(ibid.:293)The reviewer assumed both Newman’s historicist concept of theballad and the Whig historiography on which it was based. ButNewman’s populist reading of Homer was rejected in favor ofArnoldian nobility. This move made a liberal periodical like the BritishQuarterly Review no different from the Tory Dublin UniversityMagazine, in which a review of two hexameter translations inspiredby Arnold’s lectures singled out Newman’s version for specialcriticism: “his unrhymed ballad metre, his quaint flat diction, and hislaughtermoving epithets” amounted to an “unlucky burlesque”(Dublin University Magazine 1862:644; Sullivan 1983b:119–123).Newman’s verse form was described as “the mongrel ballad measure