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ERBY, EDWARD GEOFFREY SMITH STANLEY, EARL OF, an English statesman; born at Knowsley Park, Lancashire, March 29, 1799; died there, October 23, 1869. He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself in classical scholarship, gaining the prize for Latin verse in 1819. Up to 1835, he was styled simply Mr. Stanley; then, his father succeeding to the earldom of Derby, he was known by the courtesy-title" of Lord Stanley; in 1844 he was summoned by writ to the House of Lords, as Baron Stanley of Bickerstaff; and upon the death of his father in 1851, he succeeded as fourteenth earl to the earldom of Derby, and to the great ancestral estates of the family in England and Ireland. Under all of these names and titles Lord Derby was eminent as a states

He first entered Parliament in 1821, at the age of twenty-two, and soon took rank among the foremost orators of the time. From time to time he held various cabinet positions, the largest being that of Prime Minister (for the fourth time) in 1866-68. In literature he is known almost wholly by his translation of the Iliad, of which the first edition appeared in

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1864, and the sixth, with many corrections, in 1867. In the Preface to the first edition, he says:

ON TRANSLATING HOMER.

Numerous as have been the translators of the Iliad, or parts of it, the metres which have been selected are almost as various: the ordinary couplet in rhyme, the Spenserian stanza, the trochaic or ballad metre, all have had their partisans, even to that "pestilent heresy" of the so-called English hexameter; a metre wholly repugnant to the genius of our language; which can only be pressed into the service by a violation of every rule of prosody. . . . But in the progress of the work I have been more and more confirmed in the opinion that (whatever may be the extent of my own individual failure), if justice is ever to be done to the easy flow and majestic simplicity of the grand old poet, it can only be in the heroic blank verse.

I have adopted, not without hesitation, the Latin rather than the Greek nomenclature for the heathen deities. I have been induced to do so from the manifest incongruity of confounding the two; and from the fact that though English readers may be familiar with the names of Zeus, or Aphrodite, or even Poseidon, those of Hera, or Ares, or Hephaestus, or Leto would hardly convey to them a definite signification. It has been my aim throughout to produce a translation, and not a paraphrase: not indeed such a translation as would satisfy, with regard to each word the rigid requirements of accurate scholarship; but such as would fairly and honestly give the sense and meaning of every passage, and of every line; omitting nothing, and expanding nothing; and adhering, as closely as our language will allow, even to every epithet which is capable of being translated, and which has, in the particular passage, anything of a special and distinctive character.-Preface to the Translation of the Iliad.

VULCAN FORGES THE ARMOR OF ACHILLES.

He left her thus, and to his forge returned;
The bellows then directing to the fire,

He bade them work: through twenty pipes at once
Forthwith they poured their diverse-tempered blasts;
Now briskly seconding his eager haste,
Now at his will and as the work required.

The stubborn brass, and tin, and precious gold,
And silver, first he melted in the fire;

Then on its stand his weighty anvil placed;
And with one hand the hammer's ponderous weight
He wielded, while the other grasped the tongs.
And first a shield he fashioned, vast and strong,
With rich adornment; circled with a rim,
Threefold, bright-gleaming, whence a silver belt
Depended; of five folds the shield was formed;
And on its surface many a fair design

Of curious art his practised skill had wrought.
Thereon were figured earth, and sky, and sea,
The ever-circling sun, and full-orbed moon,
And all the Signs that crown the vault of heaven;
Pleiads, and Hyads, and Orion's might,

And Arctos, called the Wain, who wheels on high

His circling course, and on Orion waits;

Sole star that never bathes in the ocean wave.

And two fair populous towns were sculptured there

In one were marriage, pomp, and revelry,

And brides, in gay procession, through the streets.
With blazing torches from their chambers borne,
While frequent rose the hymeneal song.

Youths whirled around in joyous dance, with sound
Of flute and harp; and, standing at their doors,
Admiring women on the pageant gazed.

Meanwhile a busy throng the forum filled:
There between two a fierce contention rose,
About a death-fine; to the public one
Appealed, asserting to have paid the whole;
While one denied that he had aught received.
Both were desirous that before the judge

The issue should be tried; with noisy shouts
Their several partisans encouraged each.
The heralds stilled the tumult of the crowd.
On polished chairs, in solemn circle, sat
The reverend Elders; in their hands they held
The loud-voiced herald's sceptres; waving these,
They heard the alternate pleadings; in the midst
Two talents lay of gold, which he should take
Who should before them prove his righteous cause.
Before the second town two armies lay,

In arms refulgent; to destroy the town

The assailants threatened, or among themselves
Of all the wealth within the city stored
An equal half as ransom to divide.
The terms rejecting, the defenders manned
A secret ambush; on the walls they placed
Women and children mustered for defence,
And men by age enfeebled; forth they went,
By Mars and Pallas led; these wrought in gold,
In golden arms arrayed, above the crowd
For beauty and stature, as befitting gods,
Conspicuous shone; of lesser height the rest.
But when the destined ambuscade was reached,
Beside the river, where the shepherds drove
Their flocks and herds to water, down they lay,
In glittering arms accoutred; and apart
They placed two spies, to notify betimes

The approach of flocks of sheep and lowing herds.
These, in two shepherds' charge, ere long appeared,
Who, unsuspecting as they moved along,
Enjoyed the music of their pastoral pipes.
Then on the booty, from afar discerned,
Sprang from their ambuscade; and cutting off
The herds and fleecy flocks, their guardians slew.
Their comrades heard the tumult, where they sat
Before their sacred altars, and forthwith
Sprang on their cars, and with fast-stepping steeds
Pursued the plunderers, and o'ertook them soon.
There on the river's bank they met in arms,
And at each other hurled their brazen spears.
And there were figured Strife and Tumult wild,