THE ILIAD OF HOMER. TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE, BY WILLIAM COWPER, OF THE INNER TEMPLE, ESQ. VOL. I.

THE ILIAD AND ODYSSEY OF HOMER. Translated into English Blank Verse. WILLIAM COWPER EDITED BY ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D. IN FOUR VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. MDCCCXLVII.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE EARL COWPER, THIS TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD, THE INSCRIPTION OF WHICH TO HIMSELF, THE LATE LAMENTED EARL, • BENEVOLENT TO ASE, AND ESPECIALLY KIND TO THE AUTHOR, • HAD NOT DISDAINED TO ACCЕРУ, ... IS HUMBLY OFFERED,. ACSMALL BUT GRATEFUL TRIBUTE, ... TO THE MEMORY OF HIS FATHER, June 4, 1791. BY HIS LORDSHIP'S AFFECTIONATE KINSMAN AND SERVANT, 3541 WILLIAM COWPER.

PREFACE.

WHETHER a translation of HOMER may be best executed in blank verse or in rhyme, is a question in the decision of which no man can find difficulty, who has ever duly considered what translation ought to be, or who is in any degree practically acquainted with those very different kinds of versification. I will venture to assert that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme, is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomes itself a snare, and the readier he is at invention and expedient, the more likely he is to be betrayed into the widest departures from the guide whom he professes to follow. Hence it has happened, that although the public have long been in possession of an English HOMER by a poet whose writings have done immortal honour to his country, the demand of a new one, and especially in blank verse, has been repeatedly and loudly made by some of the best judges and ablest writers of the present day.

I have no contest with my predecessor. None is supposeable between performers on different instruments. Mr. Pope has surmounted all difficulties in his version of HOMER that it was possible to surmount in rhyme. But he was fettered, and his fetters were his choice. Accustomed always to rhyme, he had formed to himself an ear which probably could not be much gratified by verse that wanted it, and determined to encounter even impossibilities, rather than abandon a mode of writing in which he had excelled every body, for the sake of another to which, unexercised in it as he was, he must have felt strong objections.

I number myself among the warmest admirers of Mr. Pope as an original writer, and I allow him all the merit he can justly claim as the translator of this chief of poets. He has given us the Tale of Troy divine in smooth verse, generally in correct and elegant language, and in diction often highly poetical. But his deviations are so many, occasioned chiefly by the cause already mentioned, that, much as he has done, and valuable as his work is on some accounts, it was yet in the humble province of a translator that I thought it possible even for me to follow him with some advantage.

That he has sometimes altogether suppressed the sense of his author, and has not seldom intermingled his own ideas with it, is a remark which, on this occasion, nothing but necessity should have extorted from me. But we differ sometimes so widely in our matter, that unless this remark, invidious as it seems, be premised, I know not how to obviate a suspicion, on the one hand, of careless oversight, or of factitious embellishment on the other. On this head, therefore, the English reader is to be admonished, that the matter found in me, whether he like it or not, is found also in Homer, and that the matter not found in me, how much soever he may admire it, is found only in Mr. Pope. I have omitted nothing; I have invented nothing.

There is indisputably a wide difference between the case of an original writer in rhyme and a translator. In an original work the author is free; if the rhyme be of difficult attainment, and he cannot find it in one direction, he is at liberty to seek it in another; the matter that will not accommodate itself to his occasions he may discard, adopting such as will. But in a translation no such option is allowable; the sense of the author is required, and we do not surrender it willingly even to the plea of necessity. Fidelity is indeed of the very essence of translation, and the term itself implies it. For which reason, if we suppress the sense of our original, and force into its place our own, we may call our work an imitation, if we please, or perhaps a paraphrase, but it is no longer the same author only in a different dress, and therefore it is not translation. Should a painter, professing to draw the likeness of a beautiful woman, give her more or fewer features than belong to her, and a general cast of countenance of his own invention, he might be said to have produced a jeu d'esprit, a curiosity perhaps in its way, but by no means the lady in question.

It will however be necessary to speak a little more largely to this subject, on which discordant opinions prevail even among good judges.

The free and the close translation have, each, their advocates. But inconveniences belong to both. The former can hardly be true to the original author's style and manner, and the latter is apt to be servile. The one loses his peculiarities, and the other his spirit. Were it possible, therefore, to find an exact medium, a manner so close that it should let slip nothing of the text, nor mingle any thing extraneous with it, and at the same time so free as to have an air of originality, this seems precisely the mode in which an author might be best rendered. I can assure my readers from my own experience, that to discover this very delicate line is difficult, and to proceed by it when found, through the whole length of a poet voluminous as HOMER, nearly impossible. I can only pretend to have endeavoured it.

It is an opinion commonly received, but, like many others, indebted for its prevalence to mere want of examination, that a translator should imagine to himself the style which his author would probably have used, had the language into which he is rendered been his own. A direction which wants nothing but practicability to recommend it. For suppose six persons, equally qualified for the task, employed to translate the same Ancient into their own language, with this rule to guide them. In the event it would be found that each had fallen on a manner different from that of all the rest, and by probable inference it would follow that none had fallen on the right. On the whole, therefore, as has been said, the translation which partakes equally of fidelity and liberality, that is close, but not so close as to be servile, free, but not so free as to be licentious, promises fairest; and my ambition will be sufficiently gratified, if such of my readers as are able, and will take the pains to compare me in this respect with Homer, shall judge that I have in any measure attained a point so difficult.

As to energy and harmony, two grand requisites in a translation of this most energetic and most harmonious of all poets, it is neither my purpose nor my wish, should I be found deficient in either, or in both, to shelter myself under an unfilial imputation of blame to my mother-tongue. Our language is indeed less musical than the Greek, and there is no language with which I am at all acquainted that is not. But it is musical enough for the purposes of melodious verse, and if it seem to fail, on whatsoever occasion, in energy, the blame is due, not to itself, but to the unskilful manager of it. For so long as Milton's works, whether his prose or his verse, shall exist, so long there will be abundant proof that no subject, however important, however sublime, can demand greater force of expression than is within the compass of the English language.

I have no fear of judges familiar with original Homer. They need not be told that a translation of him is an arduous enterprize, and as such, entitled to some favour. From these, therefore, I shall expect, and shall not be disappointed, considerable candour and allowance. Especially they will be candid, and I believe that there are many such, who have occasionally tried their own strength in this bow of Ulysses. They have not found it supple and pliable, and with me are perhaps ready to acknowledge that they could not always even approach with it the mark of their ambition. But I would willingly, were it possible, obviate uncandid criticism, because to answer it is lost labour, and to receive it in silence has the appearance of stately reserve, and self-importance.

To those, therefore, who shall be inclined to tell me hereafter that my diction is often plain and unelevated, I reply beforehand that I know it, that it would be absurd were it otherwise, and that Homer himself stands in the same predicament. In fact, it is one of his numberless excellencies, and a point in which his judgement never fails him, that he is grand and lofty always in the right place, and knows infallibly how to rise and fall with his subject. Big words on small matters may serve as a pretty exact definition of the burlesque; an instance of which they will find in the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, but none in the Iliad.

By others I expect to be told that my numbers, though here and there tolerably smooth, are not always such, but have, now and then, an ugly hitch in their gait, ungraceful in itself, and inconvenient to the reader. To this charge also I plead guilty, but beg leave in alleviation of judgement to add, that my limping lines are not numerous, compared with those that limp not. The truth is, that not one of them all escaped me, but, such as they are, they were all made such with a wilful intention. In poems of great length ther is no blemish more to be feared than sameness of numbers, and every art is useful by which it may be avoided. A line, rough in itself, has yet its recommendations; it saves the ear the pain of an irksome monotony, and seems even to add greater smoothness to others. Milton, whose ear and taste were exquisite, has exemplified in his Paradise Lost the effect of this practice frequently.

Having mentioned Milton, I cannot but add an ob- servation on the similitude of his manner to that of Homer. It is such, that no person familiar with both, can read either without being reminded of the other; and it is in those breaks and pauses, to which the numbers of the English poet are so much indebted both for their dignity and variety, that he chiefly copies the Greecian. But these are graces to which rhyme is not competent; so broken, it loses all its music; of which any person may convince himself by reading a page only of any of our poets anterior to Denham, Waller, and Dryden. A translator of Ho- mer, therefore, seems directed by Homer himself to the use of blank verse, as to that alone in which he can be rendered with any tolerable representation of his manner in this particular. A remark which I am naturally led to make by a desire to conciliate, if pos- sible, some, who, rather unreasonably partial to rhyme, demand it on all occasions, and seem persuaded that poetry in our language is a vain attempt without it. Verse, that claims to be verse in right of its metre only, they judge to be such rather by courtesy than by kind, on an apprehension that it costs the writer little trouble, that he has only to give his lines their prescribed number of syllables, and, so far as the mechanical part is concerned, all is well. Were this true, they would have reason on their side, for the author is certainly best entitled to applause who suc- ceeds against the greatest difficulty, and in verse that calls for the most artificial management in its con- struction. But the case is not as they suppose. To rhyme, in our language, demands no great exertion of ingenuity, but is always easy to a person exercised in the practice. Witness the multitudes who rhyme, but have no other poetical pretensions. Let it be consi- dered too, how merciful we are apt to be to unclassical and indifferent language for the sake of rhyme, and we shall soon see that the labour lies principally on the other side. Many ornaments of no easy purchase are required to atone for the absence of this single recommendation. It is not sufficient that the lines of blank verse be smooth in themselves, they must also be harmonious in the combination. Whereas the chief concern of the rhymist is to beware that his couplets and his sense be commensurate, lest the regularity of his numbers should be (too frequently at least) inter- rupted. A trivial difficulty this, compared with those which attend the poet unaccompanied by his bells. He, in order that he may be musical, must exhibit all the variations, as he proceeds, of which ten syllables are susceptible; between the first syllable and the last there is no place at which he must not occasionally pause, and the place of the pause must be perpetually shifted. To effect this variety, his attention must be given, at one and the same time, to the pauses he has already made in the period before him, as well as to that which he is about to make, and to those which shall succeed it. On no lighter terms than these is it possible that blank verse can be written which will not, in the course of a long work, fatigue the ear past all endurance. If it be easier, therefore, to throw five balls into the air and to catch them in succession, than to sport in that manner with one only, then may blank verse be more easily fabricated than rhyme. And if to these labours we add others equally requisite, a style in general more elaborate than rhyme requires, farther removed from the vernacular idiom both in the language itself and in the arrangement of it, we shall not long doubt which of these two very different species of verse threatens the composer with most expense of study and contrivance. I feel it unpleasant to appeal to my own experience, but, having no other voucher at hand, am constrained to it. As I affirm, so I have found. I have dealt pretty largely in both kinds, and have frequently written more verses in a day, with tags, than I could ever write without them. To what has been here said (which whether it have been said by others or not, I cannot tell, having never read any modern book on the subject) I shall only add, that to be poetical without rhyme, is an argument of a sound and classical constitution in any language.

A word or two on the subject of the following trans- lation, and I have done.

My chief boast is that I have adhered closely to my original, convinced that every departure from him would be punished with the forfeiture of some grace or beauty for which I could substitute no equivalent. The epithets that would consent to an English form I have preserved as epithets; others that would not, I have melted into the context. There are none, I be- lieve, which I have not translated in one way or other, though the reader will not find them repeated so often as most of them are in HOMER, for a reason that need not be mentioned.

Few persons of any consideration are introduced either in the Iliad or Odyssey by their own name only, but their patronymic is given also. To this ceremonial I have generally attended, because it is a circumstance of my author's manner.

HOMER never allots less than a whole line to the introduction of a speaker. No, not even when the speech itself is no longer than the line that leads it. A practice to which, since he never departs from it, he must have been determined by some cogent reason. He probably deemed it a formality necessary to the majesty of his narration. In this article, therefore, I have scrupulously adhered to my pattern, considering these introductory lines as heralds in a procession ; important persons, because employed to usher in per- sons more important than themselves.

In the affair of style, I have endeavoured neither to creep nor to bluster, for no author is so likely to be- tray his translator into both these faults, as HOMER, though himself never guilty of either. I have cauti- ously avoided all terms of new invention, with an abundance of which, persons of more ingenuity than judgement have not enriched our language, but incum- bered it. I have also everywhere used an unabbreviated fullness of phrase as most suited to the nature of the work, and, above all, have studied perspicuity, not only because verse is good for little that wants it, but be- cause HOMER is the most perspicuous of all poets.

In all difficult places I have consulted the best com- mentators, and where they have differed, or have given, as is often the case, a variety of solutions, I have ever exercised my best judgement, and selected that which appears, at least to myself, the most pro- bable interpretation. On this ground, and on account of the fidelity which I have already boasted, I may venture, I believe, to recommend my work as promi- sing some usefulness to young students of the original.

The passages which will be least noticed, and possi- bly not at all, except by those who shall wish to find me at a fault, are those which have cost me abun- dantly the most labour. It is difficult to kill a sheep with dignity in a modern language, to flay and to pre- pare it for the table, detailing every circumstance of the process. Difficult also, without sinking below the level of poetry, to harness mules to a waggon, parti- cularizing every article of their furniture, straps, rings, staples, and even the tying of the knots that kept all together. HOMER, who writes always to the eye, with all his sublimity and grandeur, has the minuteness of a Flemish painter.

But in what degree I have succeeded in my version either of these passages, and such as these, or of others more buoyant and above-ground, and especially of the most sublime, is now submitted to the decision of the reader, to whom I am ready enough to confess that I have not at all consulted their approbation, who ac- count nothing grand that is not turgid, or elegant that is not bedizened with metaphor.

I purposely decline all declamation on the merits of HOMER, because a translator's praises of his author are liable to a suspicion of dotage, and because it were impossible to improve on those which this author has received already. He has been the wonder of all countries that his works have ever reached, even dei- fied by the greatest names of antiquity, and in some places actually worshipped. And to say truth, were it possible that mere man could entitle himself by pre- eminence of any kind to divine honours, Homer's astonishing powers seem to have given him the best pretensions.

I cannot conclude without due acknowledgements to the best critic in HOMER I have ever met with, the learned and ingenious Mr. FUSELI. Unknown as he was to me when I entered on this arduous undertaking, (indeed to this moment I have never seen him) he yet voluntarily and generously offered himself as my re- visor. To his classical taste and just discernment I have been indebted for the discovery of many blemishes in my own work, and of beauties, which would other- wise have escaped me in the original. But his neces- sary avocations would not suffer him to accompany me farther than to the latter books of the Iliad, a circum- stance which I fear my readers, as well as myself, will regret with too much reason¹.

I have obligations likewise to many friends, whose names, were it proper to mention them here, would do me great honour. They have encouraged me by their approbation, have assisted me with valuable books, and have eased me of almost the whole labour of tran- scribing.

And now I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended. To the illustrious Greek I owe the smooth and easy flight of many thousand hours. He has been my companion at home and abroad, in the study, in the garden, and in the field; and no measure of success, let my labours succeed as they may, will ever compensate to me the loss of the innocent luxury that I have enjoyed, as a Translator of HOMER.

Some of the few notes subjoined to my translation of the Odyssey are by Mr. FUSELI, who had a short opportunity to peruse the MSS. while the Iliad was printing. They are marked with his initial.

PREFACE PREPARED BY MR. COWPER, FOR A SECOND EDITION.

Soon after my publication of this work, I began to prepare it for a second edition, by an accurate revisal of the first. It seemed to me, that here and there, perhaps, a slight alteration might satisfy the demands of some, whom I was desirous to please; and I com- forted myself with the reflection, that if I still failed to conciliate all, I should yet have no cause to account myself in a singular degree unfortunate. To please an unqualified judge, an author must sacrifice too much; and the attempt to please an uncandid one were altogether hopeless. In one or other of these classes may be ranged all such objectors, as would deprive blank verse of one of its principal advantages, the variety of its pauses; together with all such as deny the good effect, on the whole, of a line, now and then, less harmonious than its fellows.

With respect to the pauses, it has been affirmed with an unaccountable rashness, that Homer himself has given me an example of verse without them. Had this been true, it would by no means have concluded against the use of them in an English version of Ho- mer; because, in one language, and in one species of metre, that may be musical, which in another would be found disgusting. But the assertion is totally un- founded. The pauses in Homer's verse are so frequent and various, that to name another poet, if pauses are a fault, more faulty than He, were, perhaps, impos- sible. It may even be questioned, if a single passage of ten lines flowing with uninterrupted smoothness could be singled out from all the thousands that he has left us. He frequently pauses at the first word of the line, when it consists of three or more syllables ; not seldom when of two; and sometimes even when of one only. In this practice he was followed, as was observed in my Preface to the first Edition, by the Author of the Paradise Lost. An example inimitable indeed, but which no writer of English heroic verse without rhyme can neglect with impunity.

Similar to this is the objection which proscribes absolutely the occasional use of a line irregularly con- structed. When Horace censured Lucilius for his lines incomposito pede currentes, he did not mean to say, that he was chargeable with such in some instances, or even in many, for then the censure would have been equally applicable to himself; but he designed by that expression to characterize all his writings. The cen- sure therefore was just; Lucilius wrote at a time when the Roman verse had not yet received its polish, and instead of introducing artfully his rugged lines, and to serve a particular purpose, had probably seldom, and never but by accident, composed a smooth one. Such has been the versification of the earliest poets in every country. Children lisp, at first, and stammer; but, in time, their speech becomes fluent, and, if they are well taught, harmonious.

Homer himself is not invariably regular in the con- struction of his verse. Had he been so, Eustathius, an excellent critic and warm admirer of Homer, had never affirmed, that some of his lines want a head, some a tail, and others a middle. Some begin with a word that is neither Dactyl nor Spondee, some con- clude with a Dactyl, and in the intermediate part he sometimes deviates equally from the established cus- tom. I confess that instances of this sort are rare; but they are surely, though few, sufficient to warrant a sparing use of similar license in the present day. Unwilling, however, to seem obstinate, in both these particulars, I conformed myself in some measure to these objections, though unconvinced myself of their propriety. Several of the rudest and most unshapely lines I composed anew; and several of the pauses least in use I displaced for the sake of an easier enun- ciation. And this was the state of the work after the revisal given it about seven years since.

Between that revisal and the present a considerable time intervened, and the effect of long discontinuance was, that I became more dissatisfied with it myself, than the most difficult to be pleased of all my judges. Not for the sake of a few uneven lines or unwonted pauses, but for reasons far more substantial. The diction seemed to me in many passages either not sufficiently elevated, or deficient in the grace of ease, and in others I found the sense of the original either not adequately expressed or misapprehended. Many elisions still remained unsoftened; the compound epi- thets I found not always happily combined, and the same sometimes too frequently repeated.

There is no end of passages in Homer, which must creep unless they are lifted; yet in such, all embellish- ment is out of the question. The hero puts on his clothes, or refreshes himself with food and wine, or he yokes his steed, takes a journey, and in the evening preparation is made for his repose. To give relief to subjects prosaic as these without seeming unseason- ably tumid is extremely difficult. Mr. Pope much abridges some of them, and others he omits; but nei- ther of these liberties was compatible with the nature of my undertaking. These, therefore, and many similar to these, have been new-modelled; somewhat to their advantage I hope, but not even now entirely to my satisfaction. The lines have a more natural move- ment, the pauses are fewer and less stately, the ex- pression as easy as I could make it without meanness, and these were all the improvements that I could give them.

The elisions, I believe, are all cured, with only one exception. An alternative proposes itself to a modern versifier, from which there is no escape, which occurs perpetually, and which, choose as he may, presents him always with an evil. I mean in the instance of the particle (the). When this particle precedes a vowel, shall he melt it into the substantive, or leave the hiatus open? Both practices are offensive to a delicate ear. The particle absorbed occasions harsh- ness, and the open vowel a vacuity equally inconve- nient. Sometimes, therefore, to leave it open, and sometimes to ingraft it into its adjunct seems most adviseable; this course Mr. Pope has taken, whose authority recommended it to me; though of the two evils I have most frequently chosen the elision as the least.

Compound epithets have obtained so long in the poetical language of our country, that I employed them without fear or scruple. To have abstained from them in a blank verse translation of Homer, who abounds with them, and from whom our poets probably first adopted them, would have been strange indeed. But though the genius of our language favours the forma tion of such words almost as much as that of the Greek, it happens sometimes, that a Greecian com- pound either cannot be rendered in English at all, or, at best, but awkwardly. For this reason, and because I found that some readers much disliked them, I have expunged many; retaining, according to my best judge- ment, the most eligible only, and making less frequent the repetitions even of these.

I know not that I can add any thing material on the subject of this last revisal, unless it be proper to give the reason why the Iliad, though greatly altered, has undergone much fewer alterations than the Odyssey. The true reason I believe is this. The Iliad demanded my utmost possible exertions; it seemed to meet me like an ascent almost perpendicular, which could not be surmounted at less cost than of all the labour that I could bestow on it. The Odyssey on the contrary seemed to resemble an open and level country, through which I might travel at my ease. The latter, there- fore, betrayed me into some negligence, which, though little conscious of it at the time, on an accurate search, I found had left many disagreeable effects behind it.

I now leave the work to its fate. Another may labour hereafter in an attempt of the same kind with more success; but more industriously, I believe, none ever will.

PREFACE BY J. JOHNSON, LL.B. CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH.

I HAVE no other pretensions to the honourable name of Editor on this occasion, than as a faithful tran- scriber of the Manuscript, and a diligent corrector of the Press, which are, doubtless, two of the very hum- blest employments in that most extensive province. I have wanted the ability to attempt any thing higher; and, fortunately for the Reader, I have also wanted the presumption. What, however, I can do, I will. Instead of critical remark, I will furnish him with anecdote. He shall trace from beginning to end the progress of the following Work; and in proportion as I have the happiness to engage his attention, I shall merit the name of a fortunate Editor.

It was in the darkest season of a most calamitous depression of his spirits, that I was summoned to the house of my inestimable friend the Translator, in the month of January, 1794. He had happily completed a revisal of his Homer, and was thinking of the Pre- face to his new Edition, when all his satisfaction in the one, and whatever he had projected for the other, in a moment vanished from his mind. He had fallen into a deplorable illness; and though the foremost wish of my heart was to lessen the intenseness of his misery, I was utterly unable to afford him any aid. I had however a pleasing though a melancholy op- portunity of tracing his recent footsteps in the Field of Troy, and in the Palace of Ithaca. He had mate- rially altered both the Iliad and Odyssey; and, so far as my ability allowed me to judge, they were each of them greatly improved. He had also, at the request of his bookseller, interspersed the two Poems with copious Notes; for the most part translations of the ancient Scholia, and gleaned, at the cost of many valu- able hours, from the pages of Barnes, Clarke, and Villoisson. It has been a constant subject of regret to the admirers of "The Task," that the exercise of such marvellous, original powers, should have been so long suspended by the drudgery of Translation; and, in this view, their quarrel with the illustrious Greek will be, doubtless, extended to his Commentators .

During two long years from this most anxious pe- riod, the Translation continued as it was; and though, in the hope of its being able to divert his melancholy, I had attempted more than once to introduce it to its Author, I was every time painfully obliged to desist. But in the summer of ninety-six, when he had resided with me in Norfolk twelve miserable months, the intro- duction, long wished for, took place. To my inex- pressible astonishment and joy, I surprised him, one morning, with the Iliad in his hand; and with an ex- cess of delight, which I am still more unable to describe, I the next day discovered that he had been writing.— Were I to mention one of the happiest moments of my life, it might be that which introduced me to the following lines :—

В. XXIII. L. 429. Mistaken meanings corrected, admonente G. Wakefield. that the nave Of thy neat wheel seem e'en to grind upon it. L. 865. As when (the North wind freshening) near the bank Up springs a fish in air, then falls again And disappears beneath the sable flood, So at the stroke, he bounded. L. 1018. Thenceforth Tydides o'er his ample shield Aim'd and still aim'd to pierce him in the neck. Or better thus— Tydides, in return, with spear high-poised O'er the broad shield, aim'd ever at his neck, Or best of all— Then Tydeus' son, with spear high-poised above The ample shield, stood aiming at his neck.

He had written these lines with a pencil, on a leaf at the end of his Iliad; and when I reflected on the cause which had given them birth, I could not but admire its disproportion to the effect. What the voice of persuasion had failed in for a year, accident had silently accomplished in a single day. The circum- stance I allude to was this: I received a copy of the Iliad and Odyssey of Pope, then recently published by the Editor above-mentioned, with illustrative and cri- tical notes of his own. As it commended Mr. Cowper's Translation in the Preface, and occasionally pointed out its merits in the Notes, I was careful to place it in his way; though it was more from a habit of experi- ment which I had contracted, than from well-grounded hopes of success. But what a fortunate circumstance was the arrival of this Work! and by what name worthy of its influence shall I call it? In the mouth of an indifferent person it might be Chance; but in mine, whom it rendered so peculiarly happy, common gratitude requires, that it should be Providence.

As I watched him with an indescribable interest in his progress, I had the satisfaction to find, that, after a few mornings given to promiscuous correction, and to frequent perusal of the above-mentioned Notes, he was evidently settling on the sixteenth Book. This he went regularly through, and the fruits of an applica- tion so happily resumed were, one day with another, about sixty new lines. But with the end of the six- teenth Book he had closed the corrections of the year. An excursion to the Coast, which immediately followed, though it promised an accession of strength to the body, could not fail to interfere with the pursuits of the mind. It was therefore with much less surprise than regret, that I saw him relinquish the " Tale of Troy Divine."

Such was the prelude to the Last Revisal, which, in the month of January, ninety-seven, Mr. Cowper was persuaded to undertake; and to a faithful copy, as I trust, of which, I have at this time the honour to con- duct the Reader. But it may not be amiss to observe, that with regard to the earlier Books of the Iliad, it was less a revisal of the altered text, than of the text as it stands in the first Edition. For though the inter- leaved copy was always at hand, and in the multitude of its altered places could hardly fail to offer some things worthy to be preserved, but which the ravages of illness and the lapse of time might have utterly effaced from his mind, I could not often persuade the Translator to consult it. I was therefore induced, in the course of transcribing, to compare the two Revisals as I went along, and to plead for the continuance of the first correction, when it forcibly struck me as better than the last. This, however, but seldom oc- curred; and the practice, at length, was completely left off, by his consenting to receive into the number of the Books which were daily laid open before him, the interleaved Copy to which I allude.

At the end of the first six Books of the Iliad, the arrival of Spring brought the usual interruptions of exercise and air, which increased as the Summer ad- vanced to a degree so unfavourable to the progress of Homer, that in the requisite attention to their salutary claims, the Revisal was, at one time, altogether at a stand. Only four Books were added in the course of nine months; but opportunity returning as the Winter set in, there were added, in less than seven weeks, four more: and thus ended the year ninety-seven.

As the Spring that succeeded was a happier Spring, so it led to a happier Summer. We had no longer air and exercise alone, but exercise and Homer hand in hand. He even followed us thrice to the Sea; and whether our walks were "on the margin of the land, O'er the green summit of the" cliffs, "whose base Beats back the roaring surge," " or on the shore Of the untillable and barren Deep," they were always within hearing of his magic Song. About the middle of this busy summer, the revisal of the Iliad was brought to a close; and on the very next day, the 24th of July, the correction of the Odys- sey commenced, —a morning rendered memorable by a kind and unexpected visit from the Patroness of that Work, the Dowager Lady Spencer!

It is not my intention to detain the Reader with a progressive account of the Odyssey revised, as cir- cumstantial as that of the Iliad, because it went on smoothly from beginning to end, and was finished in less than eight months.

I cannot deliver these Volumes to the Public with- out feeling emotions of gratitude towards Heaven, in recollecting how often this corrected Work has ap- peared to me an instrument of divine mercy, to miti- gate the sufferings of my excellent Relation. Its progress in our private hours was singularly medicinal to his mind: may its presentment to the Public prove not less conducive to the honour of the departed Au- thor, who has every claim to my veneration! As a copious Life of the Poet is already in the Press, from the pen of his intimate friend Mr. Hayley, it is unne- cessary for me to enter on such extensive commenda- tion of his character, as my own intimacy with him might suggest; but I hope the Reader will kindly allow me the privilege of indulging, in some degree, the feelings of my heart, by applying to Him, in the close of this Preface, an expressive verse (borrowed from Homer) which He inscribed Himself, with some little variation, on a Bust of his Grecian Favourite.

Ως τε πατὴρ ὦ παιδὶ, καὶ ἔποτε λήσομαι αὐτῶ.

Loved as his Son, in him I early found A Father, such as I will ne'er forget. Very few signatures had at this time been affixed to the Notes; but I afterward compared them with the Greek, note by note, and endeavoured to supply the defect; more espe- cially in the last three Volumes, where the Reader will be pleased to observe that all the notes without signatures are Mr. Cowper's, and that those marked B. C. V. are respectively found in the Editions of Homer by Barnes, Clarke, and Villois- son. But the employment was so little to the taste and incli- nation of the Poet, that he never afterward revised them, or added to their number more than these which follow:— In the Odyssey, Vol. I. Book xi., the note 32.—Vol. II. Book xv., the note 13.—The note 10, Book xvi., of that volume, and the note 14, Boox xix., of the same.

ADVERTISEMENT.

It is incumbent upon the present Editor to state the reasons which have induced him, between two editions of Cowper's Homer, differing so materially from each other that they might almost be deemed different ver- sions, to prefer the first.

Whoever has perused the translator's letters must have perceived that he had considered with no ordi- nary care the scheme of his versification, and that when he resolved upon altering it in a second edition, it was in deference to the opinion of others.

It seems to the Editor that Cowper's own judge- ment is entitled to more respect than that of any, or all his critics; and that the version which he composed when his faculties were most active and his spirits least subject to depression, indeed in the happiest part of his life, ought not to be superseded by a revisal, or rather reconstruction, which was undertaken three years before his death, not like the first translation as " a pleasant work, an innocent luxury," the cheer- ful and delightful occupation of hope and ardour and ambition, but as " a hopeless employment," a task to which he gave "all his miserable days, and often many hours of the night," seeking to beguile the sense of utter wretchedness, by altering as if for the sake of alteration.

The Editor has been confirmed in this opinion by the concurrence of every person with whom he has communicated on the subject. Among others he takes the liberty of mentioning Mr. Cary, whose authority upon such a question is of especial weight, the Trans- lator of Dante being the only one of our countrymen who has ever executed a translation of equal magnitude and not less difficulty, with the same perfect fidelity and admirable skill.

In support of this determination, the case of Tasso may be cited as curiously in point. The great Italian poet altered his Jerusalem like Cowper, against his own judgement, in submission to his critics: he made the alteration in the latter years of his life, and in a diseased state of mind; and he proceeded upon the same prescribed rule of smoothing down his versifica- tion, and removing all the elisions. The consequence has been that the reconstructed poem is utterly neg- lected, and has rarely, if ever, been reprinted, except in the two great editions of his collected works; while the original poem has been and continues to be in such demand, that the most diligent bibliographer might vainly attempt to enumerate all the editions through which it has passed.