fourteener

Updated: May 17, 2025

In his translation of the Odyssey, Chapman employed the ten-syllabled heroic line chosen by most of the standard translators; but for the Iliad he used the long "fourteener." Certainly all later versions Pope's and Cowper's and Lord Derby's and Bryant's seem pale against the glowing exuberance of Chapman's English, which degenerates easily into sing-song in the hands of a feeble metrist.

Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers - From Chaucer to Tennyson