The Iliad

BOOK I. · 1/32

The Iliad

BOOK I.

¹The Iliad of Homer Translated by Alexander Pope, With Notes and Introduction by the Rev. ²Theodore Alois Buckley, M.A., F.S.A. and Flaxman’s Designs. ³1899 Contents INTRODUCTION. ⁴POPE’S PREFACE TO THE ILIAD OF HOMER THE ILIAD CONCLUDING NOTE. ⁵Illustrations HOMER INVOKING THE MUSE MARS MINERVA REPRESSING THE FURY OF ACHILLES THE DEPARTURE OF BRISEIS FROM THE TENT OF ACHILLES THETIS CALLING BRIAREUS TO THE ASSISTANCE OF JUPITER THETIS ENTREATING JUPITER TO HONOUR ACHILLES VULCAN JUPITER THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER JUPITER SENDING THE EVIL DREAM TO AGAMEMNON NEPTUNE VENUS, DISGUISED, INVITING HELEN TO THE CHAMBER OF PARIS VENUS PRESENTING HELEN TO PARIS VENUS Map, titled “GRÆCIÆ ANTIQUÆ” THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS Map of the Plain of Troy VENUS, WOUNDED IN THE HAND, CONDUCTED BY IRIS TO MARS OTUS AND EPHIALTES HOLDING MARS CAPTIVE DIOMED CASTING HIS SPEAR AT MARS JUNO HECTOR CHIDING PARIS THE MEETING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE BOWS AND BOW CASE IRIS HECTOR AND AJAX SEPARATED BY THE HERALDS GREEK AMPHORA—WINE VESSELS JUNO AND MINERVA GOING TO ASSIST THE GREEKS THE HOURS TAKING THE HORSES FROM JUNO’S CAR THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES PLUTO THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES GREEK GALLEY PROSERPINE ACHILLES DIOMED AND ULYSSES RETURNING WITH THE SPOILS OF RHESUS THE DESCENT OF DISCORD HERCULES POLYDAMAS ADVISING HECTOR GREEK ALTAR NEPTUNE RISING FROM THE SEA GREEK EARRINGS SLEEP ESCAPING FROM THE WRATH OF JUPITER GREEK SHIELD BACCHUS AJAX DEFENDING THE GREEK SHIPS CASTOR AND POLLUX Buckles DIANA SLEEP AND DEATH CONVEYING THE BODY OF SARPEDON TO LYCIA ÆSCULAPIUS FIGHT FOR THE BODY OF PATROCLUS VULCAN FROM AN ANTIQUE GEM THETIS ORDERING THE NEREIDS TO DESCEND INTO THE SEA JUNO COMMANDING THE SUN TO SET TRIPOD THETIS AND EURYNOME RECEIVING THE INFANT VULCAN VULCAN AND CHARIS RECEIVING THETIS THETIS BRINGING THE ARMOUR TO ACHILLES HERCULES THE GODS DESCENDING TO BATTLE CENTAUR ACHILLES CONTENDING WITH THE RIVERS THE BATH ANDROMACHE FAINTING ON THE WALL THE FUNERAL PILE OF PATROCLUS CERES HECTOR’S BODY AT THE CAR OF ACHILLES THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS IRIS ADVISES PRIAM TO OBTAIN THE BODY OF HECTOR FUNERAL OF HECTOR INTRODUCTION. ⁶Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. ⁷To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire. ⁸And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu of their conventional value. ⁹The same principles which have swept away traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the revenues of sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from attractive superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in society. ¹⁰The credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another, finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the healthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church. ¹¹History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively recent times, are subjected to very different handling from that which the indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. ¹²Mere statements are jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form as important an ingredient in the analysis of his history, as the facts he records. ¹³Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. ¹⁴Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its demands. ¹⁵In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere facts. ¹⁶Human nature, viewed under an induction of extended experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history. ¹⁷Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which human experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. ¹⁸To form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a great whole—we must measure them by their relation to the mass of beings by whom they are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective probability of its details. ¹⁹It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know least, and talk most. ²⁰Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere[1] have, perhaps, contributed more to the intellectual enlightenment of mankind than any other three writers who could be named, and yet the history of all three has given rise to a boundless ocean of discussion, which has left us little save the option of choosing which theory or theories we will follow. ²¹The personality of Shakespere is, perhaps, the only thing in which critics will allow us to believe without controversy; but upon everything else, even down to the authorship of plays, there is more or less of doubt and uncertainty. ²²Of Socrates we know as little as the contradictions of Plato and Xenophon will allow us to know. ²³He was one of the _dramatis personæ_ in two dramas as unlike in principles as in style. ²⁴He appears as the enunciator of opinions as different in their tone as those of the writers who have handed them down. ²⁵When we have read Plato _or_ Xenophon, we think we know something of Socrates; when we have fairly read and examined both, we feel convinced that we are something worse than ignorant. ²⁶It has been an easy, and a popular expedient, of late years, to deny the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and condition were too much for our belief. ²⁷This system—which has often comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of Strauss for those of the New Testament—has been of incalculable value to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries. ²⁸To question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable act, than to believe in that of Romulus. ²⁹To deny a fact related in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory developed from an Assyrian inscription which no two scholars read in the same way, is more pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured old king whom the elegant pen of Florian has idealized—_Numa Pompilius. ³⁰_ Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer, and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be described as a free permission to believe any theory, provided we throw overboard all written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the Iliad and Odyssey. ³¹What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily dismissed, although the arguments appear to run in a circle. ³²“This cannot be true, because it is not true; and, that is not true, because it cannot be true.” ³³Such seems to be the style, in which testimony upon testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and oblivion. ³⁴It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies of Homer are partly forgeries, partly freaks of ingenuity and imagination, in which truth is the requisite most wanting. ³⁵Before taking a brief review of the Homeric theory in its present conditions, some notice must be taken of the treatise on the Life of Homer which has been attributed to Herodotus. ³⁶According to this document, the city of Cumæ in Æolia, was, at an early period, the seat of frequent immigrations from various parts of Greece. ³⁷Among the immigrants was Menapolus, the son of Ithagenes. ³⁸Although poor, he married, and the result of the union was a girl named Critheïs. ³⁹The girl was left an orphan at an early age, under the guardianship of Cleanax, of Argos. ⁴⁰It is to the indiscretion of this maiden that we “are indebted for so much happiness.” ⁴¹Homer was the first fruit of her juvenile frailty, and received the name of Melesigenes, from having been born near the river Meles, in Bœotia, whither Critheïs had been transported in order to save her reputation. ⁴²“At this time,” continues our narrative, “there lived at Smyrna a man named Phemius, a teacher of literature and music, who, not being married, engaged Critheïs to manage his household, and spin the flax he received as the price of his scholastic labours. ⁴³So satisfactory was her performance of this task, and so modest her conduct, that he made proposals of marriage, declaring himself, as a further inducement, willing to adopt her son, who, he asserted, would become a clever man, if he were carefully brought up.” ⁴⁴They were married; careful cultivation ripened the talents which nature had bestowed, and Melesigenes soon surpassed his schoolfellows in every attainment, and, when older, rivalled his preceptor in wisdom. ⁴⁵Phemius died, leaving him sole heir to his property, and his mother soon followed. ⁴⁶Melesigenes carried on his adopted father’s school with great success, exciting the admiration not only of the inhabitants of Smyrna, but also of the strangers whom the trade carried on there, especially in the exportation of corn, attracted to that city. ⁴⁷Among these visitors, one Mentes, from Leucadia, the modern Santa Maura, who evinced a knowledge and intelligence rarely found in those times, persuaded Melesigenes to close his school, and accompany him on his travels. ⁴⁸He promised not only to pay his expenses, but to furnish him with a further stipend, urging, that, “While he was yet young, it was fitting that he should see with his own eyes the countries and cities which might hereafter be the subjects of his discourses.” ⁴⁹Melesigenes consented, and set out with his patron, “examining all the curiosities of the countries they visited, and informing himself of everything by interrogating those whom he met.” ⁵⁰We may also suppose, that he wrote memoirs of all that he deemed worthy of preservation.[ ⁵¹2] Having set sail from Tyrrhenia and Iberia, they reached Ithaca. ⁵²Here Melesigenes, who had already suffered in his eyes, became much worse, and Mentes, who was about to leave for Leucadia, left him to the medical superintendence of a friend of his, named Mentor, the son of Alcinor. ⁵³Under his hospitable and intelligent host, Melesigenes rapidly became acquainted with the legends respecting Ulysses, which afterwards formed the subject of the Odyssey. ⁵⁴The inhabitants of Ithaca assert, that it was here that Melesigenes became blind, but the Colophomans make their city the seat of that misfortune. ⁵⁵He then returned to Smyrna, where he applied himself to the study of poetry.[ ⁵⁶3] But poverty soon drove him to Cumæ. ⁵⁷Having passed over the Hermæan plain, he arrived at Neon Teichos, the New Wall, a colony of Cumæ. ⁵⁸Here his misfortunes and poetical talent gained him the friendship of one Tychias, an armourer. ⁵⁹“And up to my time,” continued the author, “the inhabitants showed the place where he used to sit when giving a recitation of his verses, and they greatly honoured the spot. ⁶⁰Here also a poplar grew, which they said had sprung up ever since Melesigenes arrived”.[ ⁶¹4] But poverty still drove him on, and he went by way of Larissa, as being the most convenient road. ⁶²Here, the Cumans say, he composed an epitaph on Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with greater probability, been attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus.[ ⁶³5] Arrived at Cumæ, he frequented the _converzationes_[6] of the old men, and delighted all by the charms of his poetry. ⁶⁴Encouraged by this favourable reception, he declared that, if they would allow him a public maintenance, he would render their city most gloriously renowned. ⁶⁵They avowed their willingness to support him in the measure he proposed, and procured him an audience in the council. ⁶⁶Having made the speech, with the purport of which our author has forgotten to acquaint us, he retired, and left them to debate respecting the answer to be given to his proposal. ⁶⁷The greater part of the assembly seemed favourable to the poet’s demand, but one man observed that “if they were to feed _Homers_, they would be encumbered with a multitude of useless people.” ⁶⁸“From this circumstance,” says the writer, “Melesigenes acquired the name of Homer, for the Cumans call blind men _Homers_.”[ ⁶⁹7] With a love of economy, which shows how similar the world has always been in its treatment of literary men, the pension was denied, and the poet vented his disappointment in a wish that Cumæa might never produce a poet capable of giving it renown and glory. ⁷⁰At Phocœa, Homer was destined to experience another literary distress. ⁷¹One Thestorides, who aimed at the reputation of poetical genius, kept Homer in his own house, and allowed him a pittance, on condition of the verses of the poet passing in his name. ⁷²Having collected sufficient poetry to be profitable, Thestorides, like some would-be-literary publishers, neglected the man whose brains he had sucked, and left him. ⁷³At his departure, Homer is said to have observed: “O Thestorides, of the many things hidden from the knowledge of man, nothing is more unintelligible than the human heart.”[ ⁷⁴8] Homer continued his career of difficulty and distress, until some Chian merchants, struck by the similarity of the verses they heard him recite, acquainted him with the fact that Thestorides was pursuing a profitable livelihood by the recital of the very same poems. ⁷⁵This at once determined him to set out for Chios. ⁷⁶No vessel happened then to be setting sail thither, but he found one ready to start for Erythræ, a town of Ionia, which faces that island, and he prevailed upon the seamen to allow him to accompany them. ⁷⁷Having embarked, he invoked a favourable wind, and prayed that he might be able to expose the imposture of Thestorides, who, by his breach of hospitality, had drawn down the wrath of Jove the Hospitable. ⁷⁸At Erythræ, Homer fortunately met with a person who had known him in Phocœa, by whose assistance he at length, after some difficulty, reached the little hamlet of Pithys. ⁷⁹Here he met with an adventure, which we will continue in the words of our author. ⁸⁰“Having set out from Pithys, Homer went on, attracted by the cries of some goats that were pasturing. ⁸¹The dogs barked on his approach, and he cried out. ⁸²Glaucus (for that was the name of the goat-herd) heard his voice, ran up quickly, called off his dogs, and drove them away from Homer. ⁸³For some time he stood wondering how a blind man should have reached such a place alone, and what could be his design in coming. ⁸⁴He then went up to him, and inquired who he was, and how he had come to desolate places and untrodden spots, and of what he stood in need. ⁸⁵Homer, by recounting to him the whole history of his misfortunes, moved him with compassion; and he took him, and led him to his cot, and having lit a fire, bade him sup.[ ⁸⁶9] “The dogs, instead of eating, kept barking at the stranger, according to their usual habit. ⁸⁷Whereupon Homer addressed Glaucus thus: O Glaucus, my friend, prythee attend to my behest. ⁸⁸First give the dogs their supper at the doors of the hut: for so it is better, since, whilst they watch, nor thief nor wild beast will approach the fold. ⁸⁹Glaucus was pleased with the advice, and marvelled at its author. ⁹⁰Having finished supper, they banqueted[10] afresh on conversation, Homer narrating his wanderings, and telling of the cities he had visited. ⁹¹At length they retired to rest; but on the following morning, Glaucus resolved to go to his master, and acquaint him with his meeting with Homer. ⁹²Having left the goats in charge of a fellow-servant, he left Homer at home, promising to return quickly. ⁹³Having arrived at Bolissus, a place near the farm, and finding his mate, he told him the whole story respecting Homer and his journey. ⁹⁴He paid little attention to what he said, and blamed Glaucus for his stupidity in taking in and feeding maimed and enfeebled persons. ⁹⁵However, he bade him bring the stranger to him. ⁹⁶Glaucus told Homer what had taken place, and bade him follow him, assuring him that good fortune would be the result. ⁹⁷Conversation soon showed that the stranger was a man of much cleverness and general knowledge, and the Chian persuaded him to remain, and to undertake the charge of his children.[ ⁹⁸11] Besides the satisfaction of driving the impostor Thestorides from the island, Homer enjoyed considerable success as a teacher. ⁹⁹In the town of Chios he established a school where he taught the precepts of poetry. ¹⁰⁰“To this day,” says Chandler,[12] “the most curious remaining is that which has been named, without reason, the School of Homer. ¹⁰¹It is on the coast, at some distance from the city, northward, and appears to have been an open temple of Cybele, formed on the top of a rock. ¹⁰²The shape is oval, and in the centre is the image of the goddess, the head and an arm wanting. ¹⁰³She is represented, as usual, sitting. ¹⁰⁴The chair has a lion carved on each side, and on the back. ¹⁰⁵The area is bounded by a low rim, or seat, and about five yards over. ¹⁰⁶The whole is hewn out of the mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of the most remote antiquity.” ¹⁰⁷So successful was this school, that Homer realised a considerable fortune. ¹⁰⁸He married, and had two daughters, one of whom died single, the other married a Chian. ¹⁰⁹The following passage betrays the same tendency to connect the personages of the poems with the history of the poet, which has already been mentioned:— “In his poetical compositions Homer displays great gratitude towards Mentor of Ithaca, in the Odyssey, whose name he has inserted in his poem as the companion of Ulysses,[13] in return for the care taken of him when afflicted with blindness. ¹¹⁰He also testifies his gratitude to Phemius, who had given him both sustenance and instruction.” ¹¹¹His celebrity continued to increase, and many persons advised him to visit Greece, whither his reputation had now extended. ¹¹²Having, it is said, made some additions to his poems calculated to please the vanity of the Athenians, of whose city he had hitherto made no mention,[14] he sent out for Samos. ¹¹³Here being recognized by a Samian, who had met with him in Chios, he was handsomely received, and invited to join in celebrating the Apaturian festival. ¹¹⁴He recited some verses, which gave great satisfaction, and by singing the Eiresione at the New Moon festivals, he earned a subsistence, visiting the houses of the rich, with whose children he was very popular. ¹¹⁵In the spring he sailed for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios, now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. ¹¹⁶It is said that his death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an enigma proposed by some fishermen’s children.[ ¹¹⁷15] Such is, in brief, the substance of the earliest life of Homer we possess, and so broad are the evidences of its historical worthlessness, that it is scarcely necessary to point them out in detail. ¹¹⁸Let us now consider some of the opinions to which a persevering, patient, and learned—but by no means consistent—series of investigations has led. ¹¹⁹In doing so, I profess to bring forward statements, not to vouch for their reasonableness or probability. ¹²⁰“Homer appeared. ¹²¹The history of this poet and his works is lost in doubtful obscurity, as is the history of many of the first minds who have done honour to humanity, because they rose amidst darkness. ¹²²The majestic stream of his song, blessing and fertilizing, flows like the Nile, through many lands and nations; and, like the sources of the Nile, its fountains will ever remain concealed.” ¹²³Such are the words in which one of the most judicious German critics has eloquently described the uncertainty in which the whole of the Homeric question is involved. ¹²⁴With no less truth and feeling he proceeds:— “It seems here of chief importance to expect no more than the nature of things makes possible. ¹²⁵If the period of tradition in history is the region of twilight, we should not expect in it perfect light. ¹²⁶The creations of genius always seem like miracles, because they are, for the most part, created far out of the reach of observation. ¹²⁷If we were in possession of all the historical testimonies, we never could wholly explain the origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey; for their origin, in all essential points, must have remained the secret of the poet.”[ ¹²⁸16] From this criticism, which shows as much insight into the depths of human nature as into the minute wire-drawings of scholastic investigation, let us pass on to the main question at issue. ¹²⁹Was Homer an individual?[ ¹³⁰17] or were the Iliad and Odyssey the result of an ingenious arrangement of fragments by earlier poets? ¹³¹Well has Landor remarked: “Some tell us there were twenty Homers; some deny that there was ever one. ¹³²It were idle and foolish to shake the contents of a vase, in order to let them settle at last. ¹³³We are perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our devotion to superior power. ¹³⁴Of all the animals on earth we least know what is good for us. ¹³⁵My opinion is, that what is best for us is our admiration of good. ¹³⁶No man living venerates Homer more than I do.”[ ¹³⁷18] But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests contented with the poetry on which its best impulses had been nurtured and fostered, without seeking to destroy the vividness of first impressions by minute analysis—our editorial office compels us to give some attention to the doubts and difficulties with which the Homeric question is beset, and to entreat our reader, for a brief period, to prefer his judgment to his imagination, and to condescend to dry details. ¹³⁸Before, however, entering into particulars respecting the question of this unity of the Homeric poems, (at least of the Iliad,) I must express my sympathy with the sentiments expressed in the following remarks:— “We cannot but think the universal admiration of its unity by the better, the poetic age of Greece, almost conclusive testimony to its original composition. ¹³⁹It was not till the age of the grammarians that its primitive integrity was called in question; nor is it injustice to assert, that the minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is not the best qualification for the profound feeling, the comprehensive conception of an harmonious whole. ¹⁴⁰The most exquisite anatomist may be no judge of the symmetry of the human frame: and we would take the opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on the proportions and general beauty of a form, rather than that of Mr. ¹⁴¹Brodie or Sir Astley Cooper. ¹⁴²“There is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in the lines of Pope.— “‘The critic eye—that microscope of wit Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit, How parts relate to parts, or they to whole, The body’s harmony, the beaming soul, Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see, When man’s whole frame is obvious to a flea.’”[ ¹⁴³19] Long was the time which elapsed before any one dreamt of questioning the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. ¹⁴⁴The grave and cautious Thucydides quoted without hesitation the Hymn to Apollo,[20] the authenticity of which has been already disclaimed by modern critics. ¹⁴⁵Longinus, in an oft quoted passage, merely expressed an opinion touching the comparative inferiority of the Odyssey to the Iliad,[21] and, among a mass of ancient authors, whose very names[22] it would be tedious to detail, no suspicion of the personal non-existence of Homer ever arose. ¹⁴⁶So far, the voice of antiquity seems to be in favour of our early ideas on the subject; let us now see what are the discoveries to which more modern investigations lay claim. ¹⁴⁷At the end of the seventeenth century, doubts had begun to awaken on the subject, and we find Bentley remarking that “Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself, for small comings and good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment. ¹⁴⁸These loose songs were not collected together, in the form of an epic poem, till about Peisistratus’ time, about five hundred years after.”[ ¹⁴⁹23] Two French writers—Hedelin and Perrault—avowed a similar scepticism on the subject; but it is in the “Scienza Nuova” of Battista Vico, that we first meet with the germ of the theory, subsequently defended by Wolf with so much learning and acuteness. ¹⁵⁰Indeed, it is with the Wolfian theory that we have chiefly to deal, and with the following bold hypothesis, which we will detail in the words of Grote:—[24] “Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. ¹⁵¹Wolf, turning to account the Venetian Scholia, which had then been recently published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the history of the Homeric text. ¹⁵²A considerable part of that dissertation (though by no means the whole) is employed in vindicating the position, previously announced by Bentley, amongst others, that the separate constituent portions of the Iliad and Odyssey had not been cemented together into any compact body and unchangeable order, until the days of Peisistratus, in the sixth century before Christ. ¹⁵³As a step towards that conclusion, Wolf maintained that no written copies of either poem could be shown to have existed during the earlier times, to which their composition is referred; and that without writing, neither the perfect symmetry of so complicated a work could have been originally conceived by any poet, nor, if realized by him, transmitted with assurance to posterity. ¹⁵⁴The absence of easy and convenient writing, such as must be indispensably supposed for long manuscripts, among the early Greeks, was thus one of the points in Wolf’s case against the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey. ¹⁵⁵By Nitzsch, and other leading opponents of Wolf, the connection of the one with the other seems to have been accepted as he originally put it; and it has been considered incumbent on those who defended the ancient aggregate character of the Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain that they were written poems from the beginning. ¹⁵⁶“To me it appears, that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf to Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric poems, are nowise admissible. ¹⁵⁷But much would undoubtedly be gained towards that view of the question, if it could be shown, that, in order to controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting long written poems, in the ninth century before the Christian æra. ¹⁵⁸Few things, in my opinion, can be more improbable; and Mr. ¹⁵⁹Payne Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than Wolf himself. ¹⁶⁰The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh century before the Christian æra, are exceedingly trifling. ¹⁶¹We have no remaining inscription earlier than the fortieth Olympiad, and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed; nor can we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonidês of Amorgus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric poets, committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the practice of doing so became familiar. ¹⁶²The first positive ground which authorizes us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is in the famous ordinance of Solôn, with regard to the rhapsodies at the Panathenæa: but for what length of time previously manuscripts had existed, we are unable to say. ¹⁶³“Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written from the beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs, nor yet upon the existing habits of society with regard to poetry—for they admit generally that the Iliad and Odyssey were not read, but recited and heard,—but upon the supposed necessity that there must have been manuscripts to ensure the preservation of the poems—the unassisted memory of reciters being neither sufficient nor trustworthy. ¹⁶⁴But here we only escape a smaller difficulty by running into a greater; for the existence of trained bards, gifted with extraordinary memory,[25] is far less astonishing than that of long manuscripts, in an age essentially non-reading and non-writing, and when even suitable instruments and materials for the process are not obvious. ¹⁶⁵Moreover, there is a strong positive reason for believing that the bard was under no necessity of refreshing his memory by consulting a manuscript; for if such had been the fact, blindness would have been a disqualification for the profession, which we know that it was not, as well from the example of Demodokus, in the Odyssey, as from that of the blind bard of Chios, in the Hymn to the Delian Apollo, whom Thucydides, as well as the general tenor of Grecian legend, identifies with Homer himself. ¹⁶⁶The author of that hymn, be he who he may, could never have described a blind man as attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had been conscious that the memory of the bard was only maintained by constant reference to the manuscript in his chest.” ¹⁶⁷The loss of the digamma, that _crux_ of critics, that quicksand upon which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove beyond a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek language had undergone a considerable change. ¹⁶⁸Now it is certainly difficult to suppose that the Homeric poems could have suffered by this change, had written copies been preserved. ¹⁶⁹If Chaucer’s poetry, for instance, had not been written, it could only have come down to us in a softened form, more like the effeminate version of Dryden, than the rough, quaint, noble original. ¹⁷⁰“At what period,” continues Grote, “these poems, or indeed any other Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture, though there is ground for assurance that it was before the time of Solôn. ¹⁷¹If, in the absence of evidence, we may venture upon naming any more determinate period, the question at once suggests itself, What were the purposes which, in that state of society, a manuscript at its first commencement must have been intended to answer? ¹⁷²For whom was a written Iliad necessary? ¹⁷³Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was not only planted in the memory, but also interwoven with the feelings, and conceived in conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of voice, pauses, and other oral artifices which were required for emphatic delivery, and which the naked manuscript could never reproduce. ¹⁷⁴Not for the general public—they were accustomed to receive it with its rhapsodic delivery, and with its accompaniments of a solemn and crowded festival. ¹⁷⁵The only persons for whom the written Iliad would be suitable would be a select few; studious and curious men; a class of readers capable of analyzing the complicated emotions which they had experienced as hearers in the crowd, and who would, on perusing the written words, realize in their imaginations a sensible portion of the impression communicated by the reciter. ¹⁷⁶Incredible as the statement may seem in an age like the present, there is in all early societies, and there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading class existed. ¹⁷⁷If we could discover at what time such a class first began to be formed, we should be able to make a guess at the time when the old epic poems were first committed to writing. ¹⁷⁸Now the period which may with the greatest probability be fixed upon as having first witnessed the formation even of the narrowest reading class in Greece, is the middle of the seventh century before the Christian æra (B.C. 660 to B.C. 630), the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus, Simonidês of Amorgus, &c. ¹⁷⁹I ground this supposition on the change then operated in the character and tendencies of Grecian poetry and music—the elegiac and the iambic measures having been introduced as rivals to the primitive hexameter, and poetical compositions having been transferred from the epical past to the affairs of present and real life. ¹⁸⁰Such a change was important at a time when poetry was the only known mode of publication (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the nearest approaching to the sense). ¹⁸¹It argued a new way of looking at the old epical treasures of the people as well as a thirst for new poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it, may well be considered as desirous to study, and competent to criticize, from their own individual point of view, the written words of the Homeric rhapsodies, just as we are told that Kallinus both noticed and eulogized the Thebaïs as the production of Homer. ¹⁸²There seems, therefore, ground for conjecturing that (for the use of this newly-formed and important, but very narrow class), manuscripts of the Homeric poems and other old epics,—the Thebaïs and the Cypria, as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey,—began to be compiled towards the middle of the seventh century (B.C. 1); and the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, which took place about the same period, would furnish increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon. ¹⁸³A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, and the number of manuscripts along with it; so that before the time of Solôn, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manuscripts, though still comparatively few, might have attained a certain recognized authority, and formed a tribunal of reference against the carelessness of individual rhapsodes.”[ ¹⁸⁴26] But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in possession of the credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of the following observations— “There are several incidental circumstances which, in our opinion, throw some suspicion over the whole history of the Peisistratid compilation, at least over the theory, that the Iliad was cast into its present stately and harmonious form by the directions of the Athenian ruler. ¹⁸⁵If the great poets, who flourished at the bright period of Grecian song, of which, alas! ¹⁸⁶we have inherited little more than the fame, and the faint echo, if Stesichorus, Anacreon, and Simonidês were employed in the noble task of compiling the Iliad and Odyssey, so much must have been done to arrange, to connect, to harmonize, that it is almost incredible, that stronger marks of Athenian manufacture should not remain. ¹⁸⁷Whatever occasional anomalies may be detected, anomalies which no doubt arise out of our own ignorance of the language of the Homeric age, however the irregular use of the digamma may have perplexed our Bentleys, to whom the name of Helen is said to have caused as much disquiet and distress as the fair one herself among the heroes of her age, however Mr. ¹⁸⁸Knight may have failed in reducing the Homeric language to its primitive form; however, finally, the Attic dialect may not have assumed all its more marked and distinguishing characteristics—still it is difficult to suppose that the language, particularly in the joinings and transitions, and connecting parts, should not more clearly betray the incongruity between the more ancient and modern forms of expression. ¹⁸⁹It is not quite in character with such a period to imitate an antique style, in order to piece out an imperfect poem in the character of the original, as Sir Walter Scott has done in his continuation of Sir Tristram. ¹⁹⁰“If, however, not even such faint and indistinct traces of Athenian compilation are discoverable in the language of the poems, the total absence of Athenian national feeling is perhaps no less worthy of observation. ¹⁹¹In later, and it may fairly be suspected in earlier times, the Athenians were more than ordinarily jealous of the fame of their ancestors. ¹⁹²But, amid all the traditions of the glories of early Greece embodied in the Iliad, the Athenians play a most subordinate and insignificant part. ¹⁹³Even the few passages which relate to their ancestors, Mr. ¹⁹⁴Knight suspects to be interpolations. ¹⁹⁵It is possible, indeed, that in its leading outline, the Iliad may be true to historic fact, that in the great maritime expedition of western Greece against the rival and half-kindred empire of the Laomedontiadæ, the chieftain of Thessaly, from his valour and the number of his forces, may have been the most important ally of the Peloponnesian sovereign; the preeminent value of the ancient poetry on the Trojan war may thus have forced the national feeling of the Athenians to yield to their taste. ¹⁹⁶The songs which spoke of their own great ancestor were, no doubt, of far inferior sublimity and popularity, or, at first sight, a Theseid would have been much more likely to have emanated from an Athenian synod of compilers of ancient song, than an Achilleid or an Olysseid. ¹⁹⁷Could France have given birth to a Tasso, Tancred would have been the hero of the Jerusalem. ¹⁹⁸If, however, the Homeric ballads, as they are sometimes called, which related the wrath of Achilles, with all its direful consequences, were so far superior to the rest of the poetic cycle, as to admit no rivalry,—it is still surprising, that throughout the whole poem the callida junctura should never betray the workmanship of an Athenian hand, and that the national spirit of a race, who have at a later period not inaptly been compared to our self admiring neighbours, the French, should submit with lofty self denial to the almost total exclusion of their own ancestors—or, at least, to the questionable dignity of only having produced a leader tolerably skilled in the military tactics of his age.”[ ¹⁹⁹27] To return to the Wolfian theory. ²⁰⁰While it is to be confessed, that Wolf’s objections to the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey have never been wholly got over, we cannot help discovering that they have failed to enlighten us as to any substantial point, and that the difficulties with which the whole subject is beset, are rather augmented than otherwise, if we admit his hypothesis. ²⁰¹Nor is Lachmann’s[28] modification of his theory any better. ²⁰²He divides the first twenty-two books of the Iliad into sixteen different songs, and treats as ridiculous the belief that their amalgamation into one regular poem belongs to a period earlier than the age of Peisistratus. ²⁰³This, as Grote observes, “explains the gaps and contradictions in the narrative, but it explains nothing else.” ²⁰⁴Moreover, we find no contradictions warranting this belief, and the so-called sixteen poets concur in getting rid of the following leading men in the first battle after the secession of Achilles: Elphenor, chief of the Eubœans; Tlepolemus, of the Rhodians; Pandarus, of the Lycians; Odius, of the Halizonians; Pirous and Acamas, of the Thracians. ²⁰⁵None of these heroes again make their appearance, and we can but agree with Colonel Mure, that “it seems strange that any number of independent poets should have so harmoniously dispensed with the services of all six in the sequel.” ²⁰⁶The discrepancy, by which Pylæmenes, who is represented as dead in the fifth book, weeps at his son’s funeral in the thirteenth, can only be regarded as the result of an interpolation. ²⁰⁷Grote, although not very distinct in stating his own opinions on the subject, has done much to clearly show the incongruity of the Wolfian theory, and of Lachmann’s modifications with the character of Peisistratus. ²⁰⁸But he has also shown, and we think with equal success, that the two questions relative to the primitive unity of these poems, or, supposing that impossible, the unison of these parts by Peisistratus, and not before his time, are essentially distinct. ²⁰⁹In short, “a man may believe the Iliad to have been put together out of pre-existing songs, without recognising the age of Peisistratus as the period of its first compilation.” ²¹⁰The friends or literary _employês_ of Peisistratus must have found an Iliad that was already ancient, and the silence of the Alexandrine critics respecting the Peisistratic “recension,” goes far to prove, that, among the numerous manuscripts they examined, this was either wanting, or thought unworthy of attention. ²¹¹“Moreover,” he continues, “the whole tenor of the poems themselves confirms what is here remarked. ²¹²There is nothing, either in the Iliad or Odyssey, which savours of modernism, applying that term to the age of Peisistratus—nothing which brings to our view the alterations brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and republican governments, the close military array, the improved construction of ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual frequentation of religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins of religion, &c., familiar to the latter epoch. ²¹³These alterations Onomakritus, and the other literary friends of Peisistratus, could hardly have failed to notice, even without design, had they then, for the first time, undertaken the task of piecing together many self existent epics into one large aggregate. ²¹⁴Everything in the two great Homeric poems, both in substance and in language, belongs to an age two or three centuries earlier than Peisistratus. ²¹⁵Indeed, even the interpolations (or those passages which, on the best grounds, are pronounced to be such) betray no trace of the sixth century before Christ, and may well have been heard by Archilochus and Kallinus—in some cases even by Arktinus and Hesiod—as genuine Homeric matter.[ ²¹⁶29] As far as the evidences on the case, as well internal as external, enable us to judge, we seem warranted in believing that the Iliad and Odyssey were recited substantially as they now stand (always allowing for partial divergences of text and interpolations) in 776 B.C., our first trustworthy mark of Grecian time; and this ancient date, let it be added, as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the most important attribute of the Homeric poems, considered in reference to Grecian history; for they thus afford us an insight into the anti-historical character of the Greeks, enabling us to trace the subsequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive contrasts between their former and their later condition.”[ ²¹⁷30] On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the labours of Peisistratus were wholly of an editorial character, although, I must confess, that I can lay down nothing respecting the extent of his labours. ²¹⁸At the same time, so far from believing that the composition or primary arrangement of these poems, in their present form, was the work of Peisistratus, I am rather persuaded that the fine taste and elegant mind of that Athenian[31] would lead him to preserve an ancient and traditional order of the poems, rather than to patch and re-construct them according to a fanciful hypothesis. ²¹⁹I will not repeat the many discussions respecting whether the poems were written or not, or whether the art of writing was known in the time of their reputed author. ²²⁰Suffice it to say, that the more we read, the less satisfied we are upon either subject. ²²¹I cannot, however, help thinking, that the story which attributes the preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than a version of the same story as that of Peisistratus, while its historical probability must be measured by that of many others relating to the Spartan Confucius. ²²²I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories, with an attempt, made by an ingenious friend, to unite them into something like consistency. ²²³It is as follows:— “No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common sailors of some fifty years ago, some one qualified to ‘discourse in excellent music’ among them. ²²⁴Many of these, like those of the negroes in the United States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to events passing around them. ²²⁵But what was passing around them? ²²⁶The grand events of a spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress themselves, as the mystical legends of former times had done, upon their memory; besides which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly in those ancient times. ²²⁷Ballads at first, and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were merely recitations, with an intonation. ²²⁸Then followed a species of recitative, probably with an intoned burden. ²²⁹Tune next followed, as it aided the memory considerably. ²³⁰“It was at this period, about four hundred years after the war, that a poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or Mœonides, but most probably the former. ²³¹He saw that these ballads might be made of great utility to his purpose of writing a poem on the social position of Hellas, and, as a collection, he published these lays, connecting them by a tale of his own. ²³²This poem now exists, under the title of the ‘Odyssea.’ ²³³The author, however, did not affix his own name to the poem, which, in fact, was, great part of it, remodelled from the archaic dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads were found by him. ²³⁴He therefore called it the poem of Homeros, or the Collector; but this is rather a proof of his modesty and talent, than of his mere drudging arrangement of other people’s ideas; for, as Grote has finely observed, arguing for the unity of authorship, ‘a great poet might have re-cast pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive whole; but no mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so.’ ²³⁵“While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a ballad, recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon. ²³⁶His noble mind seized the hint that there presented itself, and the Achilleïs[32] grew under his hand. ²³⁷Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the poem under the same pseudonyme as his former work: and the disjointed lays of the ancient bards were joined together, like those relating to the Cid, into a chronicle history, named the Iliad. ²³⁸Melesigenes knew that the poem was destined to be a lasting one, and so it has proved; but, first, the poems were destined to undergo many vicissitudes and corruptions, by the people who took to singing them in the streets, assemblies, and agoras. ²³⁹However, Solôn first, and then Peisistratus, and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the poems, and restored the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their original integrity in a great measure.”[ ²⁴⁰33] Having thus given some general notion of the strange theories which have developed themselves respecting this most interesting subject, I must still express my conviction as to the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. ²⁴¹To deny that many corruptions and interpolations disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may here and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the negligence of the copyist, would be an absurd and captious assumption, but it is to a higher criticism that we must appeal, if we would either understand or enjoy these poems. ²⁴²In maintaining the authenticity and personality of their one author, be he Homer or Melesigenes, _quocunque nomine vocari eum jus fasque sit_, I feel conscious that, while the whole weight of historical evidence is against the hypothesis which would assign these great works to a plurality of authors, the most powerful internal evidence, and that which springs from the deepest and most immediate impulse of the soul, also speaks eloquently to the contrary. ²⁴³The minutiæ of verbal criticism I am far from seeking to despise. ²⁴⁴Indeed, considering the character of some of my own books, such an attempt would be gross inconsistency. ²⁴⁵But, while I appreciate its importance in a philological view, I am inclined to set little store on its æsthetic value, especially in poetry. ²⁴⁶Three parts of the emendations made upon poets are mere alterations, some of which, had they been suggested to the author by his Mæcenas or Africanus, he would probably have adopted. ²⁴⁷Moreover, those who are most exact in laying down rules of verbal criticism and interpretation, are often least competent to carry out their own precepts. ²⁴⁸Grammarians are not poets by profession, but may be so _per accidens_. ²⁴⁹I do not at this moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated to substantially improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass of remarks, from Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the history of a thousand minute points, without which our Greek knowledge would be gloomy and jejune. ²⁵⁰But it is not on words only that grammarians, mere grammarians, will exercise their elaborate and often tiresome ingenuity. ²⁵¹Binding down an heroic or dramatic poet to the block upon which they have previously dissected his words and sentences, they proceed to use the axe and the pruning knife by wholesale, and inconsistent in everything but their wish to make out a case of unlawful affiliation, they cut out book after book, passage after passage, till the author is reduced to a collection of fragments, or till those, who fancied they possessed the works of some great man, find that they have been put off with a vile counterfeit got up at second hand. ²⁵²If we compare the theories of Knight, Wolf, Lachmann, and others, we shall feel better satisfied of the utter uncertainty of criticism than of the apocryphal position of Homer. ²⁵³One rejects what another considers the turning-point of his theory. ²⁵⁴One cuts a supposed knot by expunging what another would explain by omitting something else. ²⁵⁵Nor is this morbid species of sagacity by any means to be looked upon as a literary novelty. ²⁵⁶Justus Lipsius, a scholar of no ordinary skill, seems to revel in the imaginary discovery, that the tragedies attributed to Seneca are by _four_ different authors.[ ²⁵⁷34] Now, I will venture to assert, that these tragedies are so uniform, not only in their borrowed phraseology—a phraseology with which writers like Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were more charmed than ourselves—in their freedom from real poetry, and last, but not least, in an ultra-refined and consistent abandonment of good taste, that few writers of the present day would question the capabilities of the same gentleman, be he Seneca or not, to produce not only these, but a great many more equally bad. ²⁵⁸With equal sagacity, Father Hardouin astonished the world with the startling announcement that the Æneid of Virgil, and the satires of Horace, were literary deceptions. ²⁵⁹Now, without wishing to say one word of disrespect against the industry and learning—nay, the refined acuteness—which scholars, like Wolf, have bestowed upon this subject, I must express my fears, that many of our modern Homeric theories will become matter for the surprise and entertainment, rather than the instruction, of posterity. ²⁶⁰Nor can I help thinking, that the literary history of more recent times will account for many points of difficulty in the transmission of the Iliad and Odyssey to a period so remote from that of their first creation. ²⁶¹I have already expressed my belief that the labours of Peisistratus were of a purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason why corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad in his day, than that the poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus should have given so much trouble to Poggio, Scaliger, and others. ²⁶²But, after all, the main fault in all the Homeric theories is, that they demand too great a sacrifice of those feelings to which poetry most powerfully appeals, and which are its most fitting judges. ²⁶³The ingenuity which has sought to rob us of the name and existence of Homer, does too much violence to that inward emotion, which makes our whole soul yearn with love and admiration for the blind bard of Chios. ²⁶⁴To believe the author of the Iliad a mere compiler, is to degrade the powers of human invention; to elevate analytical judgment at the expense of the most ennobling impulses of the soul; and to forget the ocean in the contemplation of a polypus. ²⁶⁵There is a catholicity, so to speak, in the very name of Homer. ²⁶⁶Our faith in the author of the Iliad may be a mistaken one, but as yet nobody has taught us a better. ²⁶⁷While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that has nature herself for its mainspring; while I can join with old Ennius in believing in Homer as the ghost, who, like some patron saint, hovers round the bed of the poet, and even bestows rare gifts from that wealth of imagination which a host of imitators could not exhaust,—still I am far from wishing to deny that the author of these great poems found a rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked mythical storehouse from whence he might derive both subject and embellishment. ²⁶⁸But it is one thing to _use_ existing romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to patch up the poem itself from such materials. ²⁶⁹What consistency of style and execution can be hoped for from such an attempt? ²⁷⁰or, rather, what bad taste and tedium will not be the infallible result? ²⁷¹A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other bards, are features perfectly consistent with poetical originality. ²⁷²In fact, the most original writer is still drawing upon outward impressions—nay, even his own thoughts are a kind of secondary agents which support and feed the impulses of imagination. ²⁷³But unless there be some grand pervading principle—some invisible, yet most distinctly stamped archetypus of the great whole, a poem like the Iliad can never come to the birth. ²⁷⁴Traditions the most picturesque, episodes the most pathetic, local associations teeming with the thoughts of gods and great men, may crowd in one mighty vision, or reveal themselves in more substantial forms to the mind of the poet; but, except the power to create a grand whole, to which these shall be but as details and embellishments, be present, we shall have nought but a scrap-book, a parterre filled with flowers and weeds strangling each other in their wild redundancy: we shall have a cento of rags and tatters, which will require little acuteness to detect. ²⁷⁵Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief, it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. ²⁷⁶We are not by nature intended to know all things; still less, to compass the powers by which the greatest blessings of life have been placed at our disposal. ²⁷⁷Were faith no virtue, then we might indeed wonder why God willed our ignorance on any matter. ²⁷⁸But we are too well taught the contrary lesson; and it seems as though our faith should be especially tried touching the men and the events which have wrought most influence upon the condition of humanity. ²⁷⁹And there is a kind of sacredness attached to the memory of the great and the good, which seems to bid us repulse the scepticism which would allegorize their existence into a pleasing apologue, and measure the giants of intellect by an homeopathic dynameter. ²⁸⁰Long and habitual reading of Homer appears to familiarize our thoughts even to his incongruities; or rather, if we read in a right spirit and with a heartfelt appreciation, we are too much dazzled, too deeply wrapped in admiration of the whole, to dwell upon the minute spots which mere analysis can discover. ²⁸¹In reading an heroic poem we must transform ourselves into heroes of the time being, we in imagination must fight over the same battles, woo the same loves, burn with the same sense of injury, as an Achilles or a Hector. ²⁸²And if we can but attain this degree of enthusiasm (and less enthusiasm will scarcely suffice for the reading of Homer), we shall feel that the poems of Homer are not only the work of one writer, but of the greatest writer that ever touched the hearts of men by the power of song. ²⁸³And it was this supposed unity of authorship which gave these poems their powerful influence over the minds of the men of old. ²⁸⁴Heeren, who is evidently little disposed in favour of modern theories, finely observes:— “It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. ²⁸⁵No poet has ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his countrymen. ²⁸⁶Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character of other nations; it was reserved to a poet to form that of the Greeks. ²⁸⁷This is a feature in their character which was not wholly erased even in the period of their degeneracy. ²⁸⁸When lawgivers and sages appeared in Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they paid homage to his superior genius. ²⁸⁹He held up before his nation the mirror, in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes no less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity and truth. ²⁹⁰His poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature; on the love of children, wife, and country; on that passion which outweighs all others, the love of glory. ²⁹¹His songs were poured forth from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of man; and therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every breast which cherishes the same sympathies. ²⁹²If it is granted to his immortal spirit, from another heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia to the forests of Hercynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him to view the vast assemblage of grand, of elevated, of glorious productions, which had been called into being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal spirit may reside, this alone would suffice to complete his happiness.”[ ²⁹³35] Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the “Apotheosis of Homer”[36] is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing association, how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to our minds, is lost by the admittance of any theory but our old tradition? ²⁹⁴The more we read, and the more we think—think as becomes the readers of Homer,—the more rooted becomes the conviction that the Father of Poetry gave us this rich inheritance, whole and entire. ²⁹⁵Whatever were the means of its preservation, let us rather be thankful for the treasury of taste and eloquence thus laid open to our use, than seek to make it a mere centre around which to drive a series of theories, whose wildness is only equalled by their inconsistency with each other. ²⁹⁶As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not included in Pope’s translation, I will content myself with a brief account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer who has done it full justice[37]:— “This poem,” says Coleridge, “is a short mock-heroic of ancient date. ²⁹⁷The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to have been a juvenile essay of Homer’s genius; others have attributed it to the same Pigrees, mentioned above, and whose reputation for humour seems to have invited the appropriation of any piece of ancient wit, the author of which was uncertain; so little did the Greeks, before the age of the Ptolemies, know or care about that department of criticism employed in determining the genuineness of ancient writings. ²⁹⁸As to this little poem being a youthful profusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the general spirit, but of the numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and even, if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse that order in the development of national taste, which the history of every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost ascertained to be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of them were of the Homeric age. ²⁹⁹Knight infers from the usage of the word deltos, “writing tablet,” instead of διφθέρα, “skin,” which, according to Herod. 5, 58, was the material employed by the Asiatic Greeks for that purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic ingenuity; and generally that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a strong argument against so ancient a date for its composition.” ³⁰⁰Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope’s design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation, and on my own purpose in the present edition. ³⁰¹Pope was not a Grecian. ³⁰²His whole education had been irregular, and his earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of Ogilby. ³⁰³It is not too much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a disposition to be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive deeply into the minute and delicate features of language. ³⁰⁴Hence his whole work is to be looked upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a translation. ³⁰⁵There are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes, which prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical attainments were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it is probable that these examinations were the result rather of the contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make a perfect transcript of the original. ³⁰⁶And in those days, what is called literal translation was less cultivated than at present. ³⁰⁷If something like the general sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of a practised poet; if the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing fluency could be made consistent with a fair interpretation of the poet’s meaning, his _words_ were less jealously sought for, and those who could read so good a poem as Pope’s Iliad had fair reason to be satisfied. ³⁰⁸It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope’s translation by our own advancing knowledge of the original text. ³⁰⁹We must be content to look at it as a most delightful work in itself,—a work which is as much a part of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek. ³¹⁰We must not be torn from our kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to ἀμφικύπελλον being an adjective, and not a substantive. ³¹¹Far be it from us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman’s fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from us to hold up his translation as what a translation of Homer _might_ be. ³¹²But we can still dismiss Pope’s Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the consciousness that they must have read a very great number of books before they have read its fellow. ³¹³As to the Notes accompanying the present volume, they are drawn up without pretension, and mainly with the view of helping the general reader. ³¹⁴Having some little time since translated all the works of Homer for another publisher, I might have brought a large amount of accumulated matter, sometimes of a critical character, to bear upon the text. ³¹⁵But Pope’s version was no field for such a display; and my purpose was to touch briefly on antiquarian or mythological allusions, to notice occasionally _some_ departures from the original, and to give a few parallel passages from our English Homer, Milton. ³¹⁶In the latter task I cannot pretend to novelty, but I trust that my other annotations, while utterly disclaiming high scholastic views, will be found to convey as much as is wanted; at least, as far as the necessary limits of these volumes could be expected to admit. ³¹⁷To write a commentary on Homer is not my present aim; but if I have made Pope’s translation a little more entertaining and instructive to a mass of miscellaneous readers, I shall consider my wishes satisfactorily accomplished. ³¹⁸THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY. ³¹⁹_Christ Church_. ³²⁰POPE’S PREFACE TO THE ILIAD OF HOMER Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any writer whatever. ³²¹The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested with him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular excellences; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. ³²²Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. ³²³It is the invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great geniuses: the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which masters everything besides, can never attain to this. ³²⁴It furnishes art with all her materials, and without it judgment itself can at best but “steal wisely:” for art is only like a prudent steward that lives on managing the riches of nature. ³²⁵Whatever praises may be given to works of judgment, there is not even a single beauty in them to which the invention must not contribute: as in the most regular gardens, art can only reduce beauties of nature to more regularity, and such a figure, which the common eye may better take in, and is, therefore, more entertained with. ³²⁶And, perhaps, the reason why common critics are inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great and fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to pursue their observations through a uniform and bounded walk of art, than to comprehend the vast and various extent of nature. ³²⁷Our author’s work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see all the beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the number of them is infinitely greater. ³²⁸It is like a copious nursery, which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants, each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. ³²⁹If some things are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppressed by those of a stronger nature. ³³⁰It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribute that unequalled fire and rapture which is so forcible in Homer, that no man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him. ³³¹What he writes is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing moves, every thing lives, and is put in action. ³³²If a council be called, or a battle fought, you are not coldly informed of what was said or done as from a third person; the reader is hurried out of himself by the force of the poet’s imagination, and turns in one place to a hearer, in another to a spectator. ³³³The course of his verses resembles that of the army he describes, Οἵδ’ ἄῤ ἴσαν, ὡσεί τε πυρὶ χθὼν πἆσα νέμοιτο. ³³⁴“They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth before it.” ³³⁵It is, however, remarkable, that his fancy, which is everywhere vigorous, is not discovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its fullest splendour: it grows in the progress both upon himself and others, and becomes on fire, like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity. ³³⁶Exact disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers, may have been found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this “vivida vis animi,” in a very few. ³³⁷Even in works where all those are imperfect or neglected, this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even while we disapprove. ³³⁸Nay, where this appears, though attended with absurdities, it brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing but its own splendour. ³³⁹This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but everywhere equal and constant: in Lucan and Statius it bursts out in sudden, short, and interrupted flashes: In Milton it glows like a furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: in Shakspeare it strikes before we are aware, like an accidental fire from heaven: but in Homer, and in him only, it burns everywhere clearly and everywhere irresistibly. ³⁴⁰I shall here endeavour to show how this vast invention exerts itself in a manner superior to that of any poet through all the main constituent parts of his work: as it is the great and peculiar characteristic which distinguishes him from all other authors. ³⁴¹This strong and ruling faculty was like a powerful star, which, in the violence of its course, drew all things within its vortex. ³⁴²It seemed not enough to have taken in the whole circle of arts, and the whole compass of nature, to supply his maxims and reflections; all the inward passions and affections of mankind, to furnish his characters: and all the outward forms and images of things for his descriptions: but wanting yet an ampler sphere to expatiate in, he opened a new and boundless walk for his imagination, and created a world for himself in the invention of fable. ³⁴³That which Aristotle calls “the soul of poetry,” was first breathed into it by Homer. ³⁴⁴I shall begin with considering him in his part, as it is naturally the first; and I speak of it both as it means the design of a poem, and as it is taken for fiction. ³⁴⁵Fable may be divided into the probable, the allegorical, and the marvellous. ³⁴⁶The probable fable is the recital of such actions as, though they did not happen, yet might, in the common course of nature; or of such as, though they did, became fables by the additional episodes and manner of telling them. ³⁴⁷Of this sort is the main story of an epic poem, “The return of Ulysses, the settlement of the Trojans in Italy,” or the like. ³⁴⁸That of the Iliad is the “anger of Achilles,” the most short and single subject that ever was chosen by any poet. ³⁴⁹Yet this he has supplied with a vaster variety of incidents and events, and crowded with a greater number of councils, speeches, battles, and episodes of all kinds, than are to be found even in those poems whose schemes are of the utmost latitude and irregularity. ³⁵⁰The action is hurried on with the most vehement spirit, and its whole duration employs not so much as fifty days. ³⁵¹Virgil, for want of so warm a genius, aided himself by taking in a more extensive subject, as well as a greater length of time, and contracting the design of both Homer’s poems into one, which is yet but a fourth part as large as his. ³⁵²The other epic poets have used the same practice, but generally carried it so far as to superinduce a multiplicity of fables, destroy the unity of action, and lose their readers in an unreasonable length of time. ³⁵³Nor is it only in the main design that they have been unable to add to his invention, but they have followed him in every episode and part of story. ³⁵⁴If he has given a regular catalogue of an army, they all draw up their forces in the same order. ³⁵⁵If he has funeral games for Patroclus, Virgil has the same for Anchises, and Statius (rather than omit them) destroys the unity of his actions for those of Archemorus. ³⁵⁶If Ulysses visit the shades, the Æneas of Virgil and Scipio of Silius are sent after him. ³⁵⁷If he be detained from his return by the allurements of Calypso, so is Æneas by Dido, and Rinaldo by Armida. ³⁵⁸If Achilles be absent from the army on the score of a quarrel through half the poem, Rinaldo must absent himself just as long on the like account. ³⁵⁹If he gives his hero a suit of celestial armour, Virgil and Tasso make the same present to theirs. ³⁶⁰Virgil has not only observed this close imitation of Homer, but, where he had not led the way, supplied the want from other Greek authors. ³⁶¹Thus the story of Sinon, and the taking of Troy, was copied (says Macrobius) almost word for word from Pisander, as the loves of Dido and Æneas are taken from those of Medea and Jason in Apollonius, and several others in the same manner. ³⁶²To proceed to the allegorical fable—If we reflect upon those innumerable knowledges, those secrets of nature and physical philosophy which Homer is generally supposed to have wrapped up in his allegories, what a new and ample scene of wonder may this consideration afford us! ³⁶³How fertile will that imagination appear, which was able to clothe all the properties of elements, the qualifications of the mind, the virtues and vices, in forms and persons, and to introduce them into actions agreeable to the nature of the things they shadowed! ³⁶⁴This is a field in which no succeeding poets could dispute with Homer, and whatever commendations have been allowed them on this head, are by no means for their invention in having enlarged his circle, but for their judgment in having contracted it. ³⁶⁵For when the mode of learning changed in the following ages, and science was delivered in a plainer manner, it then became as reasonable in the more modern poets to lay it aside, as it was in Homer to make use of it. ³⁶⁶And perhaps it was no unhappy circumstance for Virgil, that there was not in his time that demand upon him of so great an invention as might be capable of furnishing all those allegorical parts of a poem. ³⁶⁷The marvellous fable includes whatever is supernatural, and especially the machines of the gods. ³⁶⁸If Homer was not the first who introduced the deities (as Herodotus imagines) into the religion of Greece, he seems the first who brought them into a system of machinery for poetry, and such a one as makes its greatest importance and dignity: for we find those authors who have been offended at the literal notion of the gods, constantly laying their accusation against Homer as the chief support of it. ³⁶⁹But whatever cause there might be to blame his machines in a philosophical or religious view, they are so perfect in the poetic, that mankind have been ever since contented to follow them: none have been able to enlarge the sphere of poetry beyond the limits he has set: every attempt of this nature has proved unsuccessful; and after all the various changes of times and religions, his gods continue to this day the gods of poetry. ³⁷⁰We come now to the characters of his persons; and here we shall find no author has ever drawn so many, with so visible and surprising a variety, or given us such lively and affecting impressions of them. ³⁷¹Every one has something so singularly his own, that no painter could have distinguished them more by their features, than the poet has by their manners. ³⁷²Nothing can be more exact than the distinctions he has observed in the different degrees of virtues and vices. ³⁷³The single quality of courage is wonderfully diversified in the several characters of the Iliad. ³⁷⁴That of Achilles is furious and intractable; that of Diomede forward, yet listening to advice, and subject to command; that of Ajax is heavy and self-confiding; of Hector, active and vigilant: the courage of Agamemnon is inspirited by love of empire and ambition; that of Menelaus mixed with softness and tenderness for his people: we find in Idomeneus a plain direct soldier; in Sarpedon a gallant and generous one. ³⁷⁵Nor is this judicious and astonishing diversity to be found only in the principal quality which constitutes the main of each character, but even in the under parts of it, to which he takes care to give a tincture of that principal one. ³⁷⁶For example: the main characters of Ulysses and Nestor consist in wisdom; and they are distinct in this, that the wisdom of one is artificial and various, of the other natural, open, and regular. ³⁷⁷But they have, besides, characters of courage; and this quality also takes a different turn in each from the difference of his prudence; for one in the war depends still upon caution, the other upon experience. ³⁷⁸It would be endless to produce instances of these kinds. ³⁷⁹The characters of Virgil are far from striking us in this open manner; they lie, in a great degree, hidden and undistinguished; and, where they are marked most evidently affect us not in proportion to those of Homer. ³⁸⁰His characters of valour are much alike; even that of Turnus seems no way peculiar, but, as it is, in a superior degree; and we see nothing that differences the courage of Mnestheus from that of Sergestus, Cloanthus, or the rest. ³⁸¹In like manner it may be remarked of Statius’s heroes, that an air of impetuosity runs through them all; the same horrid and savage courage appears in his Capaneus, Tydeus, Hippomedon, &c. ³⁸²They have a parity of character, which makes them seem brothers of one family. ³⁸³I believe when the reader is led into this tract of reflection, if he will pursue it through the epic and tragic writers, he will be convinced how infinitely superior, in this point, the invention of Homer was to that of all others. ³⁸⁴The speeches are to be considered as they flow from the characters; being perfect or defective as they agree or disagree with the manners, of those who utter them. ³⁸⁵As there is more variety of characters in the Iliad, so there is of speeches, than in any other poem. ³⁸⁶“Everything in it has manner” (as Aristotle expresses it), that is, everything is acted or spoken. ³⁸⁷It is hardly credible, in a work of such length, how small a number of lines are employed in narration. ³⁸⁸In Virgil the dramatic part is less in proportion to the narrative, and the speeches often consist of general reflections or thoughts, which might be equally just in any person’s mouth upon the same occasion. ³⁸⁹As many of his persons have no apparent characters, so many of his speeches escape being applied and judged by the rule of propriety. ³⁹⁰We oftener think of the author himself when we read Virgil, than when we are engaged in Homer, all which are the effects of a colder invention, that interests us less in the action described. ³⁹¹Homer makes us hearers, and Virgil leaves us readers. ³⁹²If, in the next place, we take a view of the sentiments, the same presiding faculty is eminent in the sublimity and spirit of his thoughts. ³⁹³Longinus has given his opinion, that it was in this part Homer principally excelled. ³⁹⁴What were alone sufficient to prove the grandeur and excellence of his sentiments in general, is, that they have so remarkable a parity with those of the Scripture. ³⁹⁵Duport, in his Gnomologia Homerica, has collected innumerable instances of this sort. ³⁹⁶And it is with justice an excellent modern writer allows, that if Virgil has not so many thoughts that are low and vulgar, he has not so many that are sublime and noble; and that the Roman author seldom rises into very astonishing sentiments where he is not fired by the Iliad. ³⁹⁷If we observe his descriptions, images, and similes, we shall find the invention still predominant. ³⁹⁸To what else can we ascribe that vast comprehension of images of every sort, where we see each circumstance of art, and individual of nature, summoned together by the extent and fecundity of his imagination to which all things, in their various views presented themselves in an instant, and had their impressions taken off to perfection at a heat? ³⁹⁹Nay, he not only gives us the full prospects of things, but several unexpected peculiarities and side views, unobserved by any painter but Homer. ⁴⁰⁰Nothing is so surprising as the descriptions of his battles, which take up no less than half the Iliad, and are supplied with so vast a variety of incidents, that no one bears a likeness to another; such different kinds of deaths, that no two heroes are wounded in the same manner, and such a profusion of noble ideas, that every battle rises above the last in greatness, horror, and confusion. ⁴⁰¹It is certain there is not near that number of images and descriptions in any epic poet, though every one has assisted himself with a great quantity out of him; and it is evident of Virgil especially, that he has scarce any comparisons which are not drawn from his master. ⁴⁰²If we descend from hence to the expression, we see the bright imagination of Homer shining out in the most enlivened forms of it. ⁴⁰³We acknowledge him the father of poetical diction; the first who taught that “language of the gods” to men. ⁴⁰⁴His expression is like the colouring of some great masters, which discovers itself to be laid on boldly, and executed with rapidity. ⁴⁰⁵It is, indeed, the strongest and most glowing imaginable, and touched with the greatest spirit. ⁴⁰⁶Aristotle had reason to say, he was the only poet who had found out “living words;” there are in him more daring figures and metaphors than in any good author whatever. ⁴⁰⁷An arrow is “impatient” to be on the wing, a weapon “thirsts” to drink the blood of an enemy, and the like, yet his expression is never too big for the sense, but justly great in proportion to it. ⁴⁰⁸It is the sentiment that swells and fills out the diction, which rises with it, and forms itself about it, for in the same degree that a thought is warmer, an expression will be brighter, as that is more strong, this will become more perspicuous; like glass in the furnace, which grows to a greater magnitude, and refines to a greater clearness, only as the breath within is more powerful, and the heat more intense. ⁴⁰⁹To throw his language more out of prose, Homer seems to have affected the compound epithets. ⁴¹⁰This was a sort of composition peculiarly proper to poetry, not only as it heightened the diction, but as it assisted and filled the numbers with greater sound and pomp, and likewise conduced in some measure to thicken the images. ⁴¹¹On this last consideration I cannot but attribute these also to the fruitfulness of his invention, since (as he has managed them) they are a sort of supernumerary pictures of the persons or things to which they were joined. ⁴¹²We see the motion of Hector’s plumes in the epithet Κορυθαίολος, the landscape of Mount Neritus in that of Εἰνοσίφυλλος, and so of others, which particular images could not have been insisted upon so long as to express them in a description (though but of a single line) without diverting the reader too much from the principal action or figure. ⁴¹³As a metaphor is a short simile, one of these epithets is a short description. ⁴¹⁴Lastly, if we consider his versification, we shall be sensible what a share of praise is due to his invention in that also. ⁴¹⁵He was not satisfied with his language as he found it settled in any one part of Greece, but searched through its different dialects with this particular view, to beautify and perfect his numbers he considered these as they had a greater mixture of vowels or consonants, and accordingly employed them as the verse required either a greater smoothness or strength. ⁴¹⁶What he most affected was the Ionic, which has a peculiar sweetness, from its never using contractions, and from its custom of resolving the diphthongs into two syllables, so as to make the words open themselves with a more spreading and sonorous fluency. ⁴¹⁷With this he mingled the Attic contractions, the broader Doric, and the feebler Æolic, which often rejects its aspirate, or takes off its accent, and completed this variety by altering some letters with the licence of poetry. ⁴¹⁸Thus his measures, instead of being fetters to his sense, were always in readiness to run along with the warmth of his rapture, and even to give a further representation of his notions, in the correspondence of their sounds to what they signified. ⁴¹⁹Out of all these he has derived that harmony which makes us confess he had not only the richest head, but the finest ear in the world. ⁴²⁰This is so great a truth, that whoever will but consult the tune of his verses, even without understanding them (with the same sort of diligence as we daily see practised in the case of Italian operas), will find more sweetness, variety, and majesty of sound, than in any other language of poetry. ⁴²¹The beauty of his numbers is allowed by the critics to be copied but faintly by Virgil himself, though they are so just as to ascribe it to the nature of the Latin tongue: indeed the Greek has some advantages both from the natural sound of its words, and the turn and cadence of its verse, which agree with the genius of no other language. ⁴²²Virgil was very sensible of this, and used the utmost diligence in working up a more intractable language to whatsoever graces it was capable of, and, in particular, never failed to bring the sound of his line to a beautiful agreement with its sense. ⁴²³If the Grecian poet has not been so frequently celebrated on this account as the Roman, the only reason is, that fewer critics have understood one language than the other. ⁴²⁴Dionysius of Halicarnassus has pointed out many of our author’s beauties in this kind, in his treatise of the Composition of Words. ⁴²⁵It suffices at present to observe of his numbers, that they flow with so much ease, as to make one imagine Homer had no other care than to transcribe as fast as the Muses dictated, and, at the same time, with so much force and inspiriting vigour, that they awaken and raise us like the sound of a trumpet. ⁴²⁶They roll along as a plentiful river, always in motion, and always full; while we are borne away by a tide of verse, the most rapid, and yet the most smooth imaginable. ⁴²⁷Thus on whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us is his invention. ⁴²⁸It is that which forms the character of each part of his work; and accordingly we find it to have made his fable more extensive and copious than any other, his manners more lively and strongly marked, his speeches more affecting and transported, his sentiments more warm and sublime, his images and descriptions more full and animated, his expression more raised and daring, and his numbers more rapid and various. ⁴²⁹I hope, in what has been said of Virgil, with regard to any of these heads, I have no way derogated from his character. ⁴³⁰Nothing is more absurd or endless, than the common method of comparing eminent writers by an opposition of particular passages in them, and forming a judgment from thence of their merit upon the whole. ⁴³¹We ought to have a certain knowledge of the principal character and distinguishing excellence of each: it is in that we are to consider him, and in proportion to his degree in that we are to admire him. ⁴³²No author or man ever excelled all the world in more than one faculty; and as Homer has done this in invention, Virgil has in judgment. ⁴³³Not that we are to think that Homer wanted judgment, because Virgil had it in a more eminent degree; or that Virgil wanted invention, because Homer possessed a larger share of it; each of these great authors had more of both than perhaps any man besides, and are only said to have less in comparison with one another. ⁴³⁴Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the better artist. ⁴³⁵In one we most admire the man, in the other the work. ⁴³⁶Homer hurries and transports us with a commanding impetuosity; Virgil leads us with an attractive majesty; Homer scatters with a generous profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence; Homer, like the Nile, pours out his riches with a boundless overflow; Virgil, like a river in its banks, with a gentle and constant stream. ⁴³⁷When we behold their battles, methinks the two poets resemble the heroes they celebrate. ⁴³⁸Homer, boundless and resistless as Achilles, bears all before him, and shines more and more as the tumult increases; Virgil, calmly daring, like Æneas, appears undisturbed in the midst of the action; disposes all about him, and conquers with tranquillity. ⁴³⁹And when we look upon their machines, Homer seems like his own Jupiter in his terrors, shaking Olympus, scattering the lightnings, and firing the heavens: Virgil, like the same power in his benevolence, counselling with the gods, laying plans for empires, and regularly ordering his whole creation. ⁴⁴⁰But after all, it is with great parts, as with great virtues, they naturally border on some imperfection; and it is often hard to distinguish exactly where the virtue ends, or the fault begins. ⁴⁴¹As prudence may sometimes sink to suspicion, so may a great judgment decline to coldness; and as magnanimity may run up to profusion or extravagance, so may a great invention to redundancy or wildness. ⁴⁴²If we look upon Homer in this view, we shall perceive the chief objections against him to proceed from so noble a cause as the excess of this faculty. ⁴⁴³Among these we may reckon some of his marvellous fictions, upon which so much criticism has been spent, as surpassing all the bounds of probability. ⁴⁴⁴Perhaps it may be with great and superior souls, as with gigantic bodies, which, exerting themselves with unusual strength, exceed what is commonly thought the due proportion of parts, to become miracles in the whole; and, like the old heroes of that make, commit something near extravagance, amidst a series of glorious and inimitable performances. ⁴⁴⁵Thus Homer has his “speaking horses;” and Virgil his “myrtles distilling blood;” where the latter has not so much as contrived the easy intervention of a deity to save the probability. ⁴⁴⁶It is owing to the same vast invention, that his similes have been thought too exuberant and full of circumstances. ⁴⁴⁷The force of this faculty is seen in nothing more, than in its inability to confine itself to that single circumstance upon which the comparison is grounded: it runs out into embellishments of additional images, which, however, are so managed as not to overpower the main one. ⁴⁴⁸His similes are like pictures, where the principal figure has not only its proportion given agreeable to the original, but is also set off with occasional ornaments and prospects. ⁴⁴⁹The same will account for his manner of heaping a number of comparisons together in one breath, when his fancy suggested to him at once so many various and correspondent images. ⁴⁵⁰The reader will easily extend this observation to more objections of the same kind. ⁴⁵¹If there are others which seem rather to charge him with a defect or narrowness of genius, than an excess of it, those seeming defects will be found upon examination to proceed wholly from the nature of the times he lived in. ⁴⁵²Such are his grosser representations of the gods; and the vicious and imperfect manners of his heroes; but I must here speak a word of the latter, as it is a point generally carried into extremes, both by the censurers and defenders of Homer. ⁴⁵³It must be a strange partiality to antiquity, to think with Madame Dacier,[38] “that those times and manners are so much the more excellent, as they are more contrary to ours.” ⁴⁵⁴Who can be so prejudiced in their favour as to magnify the felicity of those ages, when a spirit of revenge and cruelty, joined with the practice of rapine and robbery, reigned through the world: when no mercy was shown but for the sake of lucre; when the greatest princes were put to the sword, and their wives and daughters made slaves and concubines? ⁴⁵⁵On the other side, I would not be so delicate as those modern critics, who are shocked at the servile offices and mean employments in which we sometimes see the heroes of Homer engaged. ⁴⁵⁶There is a pleasure in taking a view of that simplicity, in opposition to the luxury of succeeding ages: in beholding monarchs without their guards; princes tending their flocks, and princesses drawing water from the springs. ⁴⁵⁷When we read Homer, we ought to reflect that we are reading the most ancient author in the heathen world; and those who consider him in this light, will double their pleasure in the perusal of him. ⁴⁵⁸Let them think they are growing acquainted with nations and people that are now no more; that they are stepping almost three thousand years back into the remotest antiquity, and entertaining themselves with a clear and surprising vision of things nowhere else to be found, the only true mirror of that ancient world. ⁴⁵⁹By this means alone their greatest obstacles will vanish; and what usually creates their dislike, will become a satisfaction. ⁴⁶⁰This consideration may further serve to answer for the constant use of the same epithets to his gods and heroes; such as the “far-darting Phœbus,” the “blue-eyed Pallas,” the “swift-footed Achilles,” &c., which some have censured as impertinent, and tediously repeated. ⁴⁶¹Those of the gods depended upon the powers and offices then believed to belong to them; and had contracted a weight and veneration from the rites and solemn devotions in which they were used: they were a sort of attributes with which it was a matter of religion to salute them on all occasions, and which it was an irreverence to omit. ⁴⁶²As for the epithets of great men, Mons. ⁴⁶³Boileau is of opinion, that they were in the nature of surnames, and repeated as such; for the Greeks having no names derived from their fathers, were obliged to add some other distinction of each person; either naming his parents expressly, or his place of birth, profession, or the like: as Alexander the son of Philip, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Diogenes the Cynic, &c. ⁴⁶⁴Homer, therefore, complying with the custom of his country, used such distinctive additions as better agreed with poetry. ⁴⁶⁵And, indeed, we have something parallel to these in modern times, such as the names of Harold Harefoot, Edmund Ironside, Edward Longshanks, Edward the Black Prince, &c. ⁴⁶⁶If yet this be thought to account better for the propriety than for the repetition, I shall add a further conjecture. ⁴⁶⁷Hesiod, dividing the world into its different ages, has placed a fourth age, between the brazen and the iron one, of “heroes distinct from other men; a divine race who fought at Thebes and Troy, are called demi-gods, and live by the care of Jupiter in the islands of the blessed.”[ ⁴⁶⁸39] Now among the divine honours which were paid them, they might have this also in common with the gods, not to be mentioned without the solemnity of an epithet, and such as might be acceptable to them by celebrating their families, actions or qualities. ⁴⁶⁹What other cavils have been raised against Homer, are such as hardly deserve a reply, but will yet be taken notice of as they occur in the course of the work. ⁴⁷⁰Many have been occasioned by an injudicious endeavour to exalt Virgil; which is much the same, as if one should think to raise the superstructure by undermining the foundation: one would imagine, by the whole course of their parallels, that these critics never so much as heard of Homer’s having written first; a consideration which whoever compares these two poets ought to have always in his eye. ⁴⁷¹Some accuse him for the same things which they overlook or praise in the other; as when they prefer the fable and moral of the Æneis to those of the Iliad, for the same reasons which might set the Odyssey above the Æneis; as that the hero is a wiser man, and the action of the one more beneficial to his country than that of the other; or else they blame him for not doing what he never designed; as because Achilles is not as good and perfect a prince as Æneas, when the very moral of his poem required a contrary character: it is thus that Rapin judges in his comparison of Homer and Virgil. ⁴⁷²Others select those particular passages of Homer which are not so laboured as some that Virgil drew out of them: this is the whole management of Scaliger in his Poetics. ⁴⁷³Others quarrel with what they take for low and mean expressions, sometimes through a false delicacy and refinement, oftener from an ignorance of the graces of the original, and then triumph in the awkwardness of their own translations: this is the conduct of Perrault in his Parallels. ⁴⁷⁴Lastly, there are others, who, pretending to a fairer proceeding, distinguish between the personal merit of Homer, and that of his work; but when they come to assign the causes of the great reputation of the Iliad, they found it upon the ignorance of his times, and the prejudice of those that followed; and in pursuance of this principle, they make those accidents (such as the contention of the cities, &c.) to be the causes of his fame, which were in reality the consequences of his merit. ⁴⁷⁵The same might as well be said of Virgil, or any great author whose general character will infallibly raise many casual additions to their reputation. ⁴⁷⁶This is the method of Mons. de la Mott; who yet confesses upon the whole that in whatever age Homer had lived, he must have been the greatest poet of his nation, and that he may be said in his sense to be the master even of those who surpassed him. ⁴⁷⁷In all these objections we see nothing that contradicts his title to the honour of the chief invention: and as long as this (which is indeed the characteristic of poetry itself) remains unequalled by his followers, he still continues superior to them. ⁴⁷⁸A cooler judgment may commit fewer faults, and be more approved in the eyes of one sort of critics: but that warmth of fancy will carry the loudest and most universal applauses which holds the heart of a reader under the strongest enchantment. ⁴⁷⁹Homer not only appears the inventor of poetry, but excels all the inventors of other arts, in this, that he has swallowed up the honour of those who succeeded him. ⁴⁸⁰What he has done admitted no increase, it only left room for contraction or regulation. ⁴⁸¹He showed all the stretch of fancy at once; and if he has failed in some of his flights, it was but because he attempted everything. ⁴⁸²A work of this kind seems like a mighty tree, which rises from the most vigorous seed, is improved with industry, flourishes, and produces the finest fruit: nature and art conspire to raise it; pleasure and profit join to make it valuable: and they who find the justest faults, have only said that a few branches which run luxuriant through a richness of nature, might be lopped into form to give it a more regular appearance. ⁴⁸³Having now spoken of the beauties and defects of the original, it remains to treat of the translation, with the same view to the chief characteristic. ⁴⁸⁴As far as that is seen in the main parts of the poem, such as the fable, manners, and sentiments, no translator can prejudice it but by wilful omissions or contractions. ⁴⁸⁵As it also breaks out in every particular image, description, and simile, whoever lessens or too much softens those, takes off from this chief character. ⁴⁸⁶It is the first grand duty of an interpreter to give his author entire and unmaimed; and for the rest, the diction and versification only are his proper province, since these must be his own, but the others he is to take as he finds them. ⁴⁸⁷It should then be considered what methods may afford some equivalent in our language for the graces of these in the Greek. ⁴⁸⁸It is certain no literal translation can be just to an excellent original in a superior language: but it is a great mistake to imagine (as many have done) that a rash paraphrase can make amends for this general defect; which is no less in danger to lose the spirit of an ancient, by deviating into the modern manners of expression. ⁴⁸⁹If there be sometimes a darkness, there is often a light in antiquity, which nothing better preserves than a version almost literal. ⁴⁹⁰I know no liberties one ought to take, but those which are necessary to transfusing the spirit of the original, and supporting the poetical style of the translation: and I will venture to say, there have not been more men misled in former times by a servile, dull adherence to the letter, than have been deluded in ours by a chimerical, insolent hope of raising and improving their author. ⁴⁹¹It is not to be doubted, that the fire of the poem is what a translator should principally regard, as it is most likely to expire in his managing: however, it is his safest way to be content with preserving this to his utmost in the whole, without endeavouring to be more than he finds his author is, in any particular place. ⁴⁹²It is a great secret in writing, to know when to be plain, and when poetical and figurative; and it is what Homer will teach us, if we will but follow modestly in his footsteps. ⁴⁹³Where his diction is bold and lofty, let us raise ours as high as we can; but where his is plain and humble, we ought not to be deterred from imitating him by the fear of incurring the censure of a mere English critic. ⁴⁹⁴Nothing that belongs to Homer seems to have been more commonly mistaken than the just pitch of his style: some of his translators having swelled into fustian in a proud confidence of the sublime; others sunk into flatness, in a cold and timorous notion of simplicity. ⁴⁹⁵Methinks I see these different followers of Homer, some sweating and straining after him by violent leaps and bounds (the certain signs of false mettle), others slowly and servilely creeping in his train, while the poet himself is all the time proceeding with an unaffected and equal majesty before them. ⁴⁹⁶However, of the two extremes one could sooner pardon frenzy than frigidity; no author is to be envied for such commendations, as he may gain by that character of style, which his friends must agree together to call simplicity, and the rest of the world will call dulness. ⁴⁹⁷There is a graceful and dignified simplicity, as well as a bold and sordid one; which differ as much from each other as the air of a plain man from that of a sloven: it is one thing to be tricked up, and another not to be dressed at all. ⁴⁹⁸Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity. ⁴⁹⁹This pure and noble simplicity is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scripture and our author. ⁵⁰⁰One may affirm, with all respect to the inspired writings, that the Divine Spirit made use of no other words but what were intelligible and common to men at that time, and in that part of the world; and, as Homer is the author nearest to those, his style must of course bear a greater resemblance to the sacred books than that of any other writer. ⁵⁰¹This consideration (together with what has been observed of the parity of some of his thoughts) may, methinks, induce a translator, on the one hand, to give in to several of those general phrases and manners of expression, which have attained a veneration even in our language from being used in the Old Testament; as, on the other, to avoid those which have been appropriated to the Divinity, and in a manner consigned to mystery and religion. ⁵⁰²For a further preservation of this air of simplicity, a particular care should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. ⁵⁰³They have something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned gravity and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which would be utterly lost by endeavouring to give them what we call a more ingenious (that is, a more modern) turn in the paraphrase. ⁵⁰⁴Perhaps the mixture of some Græcisms and old words after the manner of Milton, if done without too much affectation, might not have an ill effect in a version of this particular work, which most of any other seems to require a venerable, antique cast. ⁵⁰⁵But certainly the use of modern terms of war and government, such as “platoon, campaign, junto,” or the like, (into which some of his translators have fallen) cannot be allowable; those only excepted without which it is impossible to treat the subjects in any living language. ⁵⁰⁶There are two peculiarities in Homer’s diction, which are a sort of marks or moles by which every common eye distinguishes him at first sight; those who are not his greatest admirers look upon them as defects, and those who are, seemed pleased with them as beauties. ⁵⁰⁷I speak of his compound epithets, and of his repetitions. ⁵⁰⁸Many of the former cannot be done literally into English without destroying the purity of our language. ⁵⁰⁹I believe such should be retained as slide easily of themselves into an English compound, without violence to the ear or to the received rules of composition, as well as those which have received a sanction from the authority of our best poets, and are become familiar through their use of them; such as “the cloud-compelling Jove,” &c. ⁵¹⁰As for the rest, whenever any can be as fully and significantly expressed in a single word as in a compounded one, the course to be taken is obvious. ⁵¹¹Some that cannot be so turned, as to preserve their full image by one or two words, may have justice done them by circumlocution; as the epithet εἰνοσίφυλλος to a mountain, would appear little or ridiculous translated literally “leaf-shaking,” but affords a majestic idea in the periphrasis: “the lofty mountain shakes his waving woods.” ⁵¹²Others that admit of different significations, may receive an advantage from a judicious variation, according to the occasions on which they are introduced. ⁵¹³For example, the epithet of Apollo, ἑκηβόλος or “far-shooting,” is capable of two explications; one literal, in respect of the darts and bow, the ensigns of that god; the other allegorical, with regard to the rays of the sun; therefore, in such places where Apollo is represented as a god in person, I would use the former interpretation; and where the effects of the sun are described, I would make choice of the latter. ⁵¹⁴Upon the whole, it will be necessary to avoid that perpetual repetition of the same epithets which we find in Homer, and which, though it might be accommodated (as has been already shown) to the ear of those times, is by no means so to ours: but one may wait for opportunities of placing them, where they derive an additional beauty from the occasions on which they are employed; and in doing this properly, a translator may at once show his fancy and his judgment. ⁵¹⁵As for Homer’s repetitions, we may divide them into three sorts: of whole narrations and speeches, of single sentences, and of one verse or hemistitch. ⁵¹⁶I hope it is not impossible to have such a regard to these, as neither to lose so known a mark of the author on the one hand, nor to offend the reader too much on the other. ⁵¹⁷The repetition is not ungraceful in those speeches, where the dignity of the speaker renders it a sort of insolence to alter his words; as in the messages from gods to men, or from higher powers to inferiors in concerns of state, or where the ceremonial of religion seems to require it, in the solemn forms of prayers, oaths, or the like. ⁵¹⁸In other cases, I believe the best rule is, to be guided by the nearness, or distance, at which the repetitions are placed in the original: when they follow too close, one may vary the expression; but it is a question, whether a professed translator be authorized to omit any: if they be tedious, the author is to answer for it. ⁵¹⁹It only remains to speak of the versification. ⁵²⁰Homer (as has been said) is perpetually applying the sound to the sense, and varying it on every new subject. ⁵²¹This is indeed one of the most exquisite beauties of poetry, and attainable by very few: I only know of Homer eminent for it in the Greek, and Virgil in the Latin. ⁵²²I am sensible it is what may sometimes happen by chance, when a writer is warm, and fully possessed of his image: however, it may reasonably be believed they designed this, in whose verse it so manifestly appears in a superior degree to all others. ⁵²³Few readers have the ear to be judges of it: but those who have, will see I have endeavoured at this beauty. ⁵²⁴Upon the whole, I must confess myself utterly incapable of doing justice to Homer. ⁵²⁵I attempt him in no other hope but that which one may entertain without much vanity, of giving a more tolerable copy of him than any entire translation in verse has yet done. ⁵²⁶We have only those of Chapman, Hobbes, and Ogilby. ⁵²⁷Chapman has taken the advantage of an immeasurable length of verse, notwithstanding which, there is scarce any paraphrase more loose and rambling than his. ⁵²⁸He has frequent interpolations of four or six lines; and I remember one in the thirteenth book of the Odyssey, ver. 312, where he has spun twenty verses out of two. ⁵²⁹He is often mistaken in so bold a manner, that one might think he deviated on purpose, if he did not in other places of his notes insist so much upon verbal trifles. ⁵³⁰He appears to have had a strong affectation of extracting new meanings out of his author; insomuch as to promise, in his rhyming preface, a poem of the mysteries he had revealed in Homer; and perhaps he endeavoured to strain the obvious sense to this end. ⁵³¹His expression is involved in fustian; a fault for which he was remarkable in his original writings, as in the tragedy of Bussy d’Amboise, &c. ⁵³²In a word, the nature of the man may account for his whole performance; for he appears, from his preface and remarks, to have been of an arrogant turn, and an enthusiast in poetry. ⁵³³His own boast, of having finished half the Iliad in less than fifteen weeks, shows with what negligence his version was performed. ⁵³⁴But that which is to be allowed him, and which very much contributed to cover his defects, is a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation, which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have writ before he arrived at years of discretion. ⁵³⁵Hobbes has given us a correct explanation of the sense in general; but for particulars and circumstances he continually lops them, and often omits the most beautiful. ⁵³⁶As for its being esteemed a close translation, I doubt not many have been led into that error by the shortness of it, which proceeds not from his following the original line by line, but from the contractions above mentioned. ⁵³⁷He sometimes omits whole similes and sentences; and is now and then guilty of mistakes, into which no writer of his learning could have fallen, but through carelessness. ⁵³⁸His poetry, as well as Ogilby’s, is too mean for criticism. ⁵³⁹It is a great loss to the poetical world that Mr. ⁵⁴⁰Dryden did not live to translate the Iliad. ⁵⁴¹He has left us only the first book, and a small part of the sixth; in which if he has in some places not truly interpreted the sense, or preserved the antiquities, it ought to be excused on account of the haste he was obliged to write in. ⁵⁴²He seems to have had too much regard to Chapman, whose words he sometimes copies, and has unhappily followed him in passages where he wanders from the original. ⁵⁴³However, had he translated the whole work, I would no more have attempted Homer after him than Virgil: his version of whom (notwithstanding some human errors) is the most noble and spirited translation I know in any language. ⁵⁴⁴But the fate of great geniuses is like that of great ministers: though they are confessedly the first in the commonwealth of letters, they must be envied and calumniated only for being at the head of it. ⁵⁴⁵That which, in my opinion, ought to be the endeavour of any one who translates Homer, is above all things to keep alive that spirit and fire which makes his chief character: in particular places, where the sense can bear any doubt, to follow the strongest and most poetical, as most agreeing with that character; to copy him in all the variations of his style, and the different modulations of his numbers; to preserve, in the more active or descriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the more sedate or narrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches, a fulness and perspicuity; in the sentences, a shortness and gravity; not to neglect even the little figures and turns on the words, nor sometimes the very cast of the periods; neither to omit nor confound any rites or customs of antiquity: perhaps too he ought to include the whole in a shorter compass than has hitherto been done by any translator who has tolerably preserved either the sense or poetry. ⁵⁴⁶What I would further recommend to him is, to study his author rather from his own text, than from any commentaries, how learned soever, or whatever figure they may make in the estimation of the world; to consider him attentively in comparison with Virgil above all the ancients, and with Milton above all the moderns. ⁵⁴⁷Next these, the Archbishop of Cambray’s Telemachus may give him the truest idea of the spirit and turn of our author; and Bossu’s admirable Treatise of the Epic Poem the justest notion of his design and conduct. ⁵⁴⁸But after all, with whatever judgment and study a man may proceed, or with whatever happiness he may perform such a work, he must hope to please but a few; those only who have at once a taste of poetry, and competent learning. ⁵⁴⁹For to satisfy such a want either, is not in the nature of this undertaking; since a mere modern wit can like nothing that is not modern, and a pedant nothing that is not Greek. ⁵⁵⁰What I have done is submitted to the public; from whose opinions I am prepared to learn; though I fear no judges so little as our best poets, who are most sensible of the weight of this task. ⁵⁵¹As for the worst, whatever they shall please to say, they may give me some concern as they are unhappy men, but none as they are malignant writers. ⁵⁵²I was guided in this translation by judgments very different from theirs, and by persons for whom they can have no kindness, if an old observation be true, that the strongest antipathy in the world is that of fools to men of wit. ⁵⁵³Mr. ⁵⁵⁴Addison was the first whose advice determined me to undertake this task; who was pleased to write to me upon that occasion in such terms as I cannot repeat without vanity. ⁵⁵⁵I was obliged to Sir Richard Steele for a very early recommendation of my undertaking to the public. ⁵⁵⁶Dr. ⁵⁵⁷Swift promoted my interest with that warmth with which he always serves his friend. ⁵⁵⁸The humanity and frankness of Sir Samuel Garth are what I never knew wanting on any occasion. ⁵⁵⁹I must also acknowledge, with infinite pleasure, the many friendly offices, as well as sincere criticisms, of Mr. ⁵⁶⁰Congreve, who had led me the way in translating some parts of Homer. ⁵⁶¹I must add the names of Mr. ⁵⁶²Rowe, and Dr. ⁵⁶³Parnell, though I shall take a further opportunity of doing justice to the last, whose good nature (to give it a great panegyric), is no less extensive than his learning. ⁵⁶⁴The favour of these gentlemen is not entirely undeserved by one who bears them so true an affection. ⁵⁶⁵But what can I say of the honour so many of the great have done me; while the first names of the age appear as my subscribers, and the most distinguished patrons and ornaments of learning as my chief encouragers? ⁵⁶⁶Among these it is a particular pleasure to me to find, that my highest obligations are to such who have done most honour to the name of poet: that his grace the Duke of Buckingham was not displeased I should undertake the author to whom he has given (in his excellent Essay), so complete a praise: “Read Homer once, and you can read no more; For all books else appear so mean, so poor, Verse will seem prose: but still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need.” ⁵⁶⁷That the Earl of Halifax was one of the first to favour me; of whom it is hard to say whether the advancement of the polite arts is more owing to his generosity or his example: that such a genius as my Lord Bolingbroke, not more distinguished in the great scenes of business, than in all the useful and entertaining parts of learning, has not refused to be the critic of these sheets, and the patron of their writer: and that the noble author of the tragedy of “Heroic Love” has continued his partiality to me, from my writing pastorals to my attempting the Iliad. ⁵⁶⁸I cannot deny myself the pride of confessing, that I have had the advantage not only of their advice for the conduct in general, but their correction of several particulars of this translation. ⁵⁶⁹I could say a great deal of the pleasure of being distinguished by the Earl of Carnarvon; but it is almost absurd to particularize any one generous action in a person whose whole life is a continued series of them. ⁵⁷⁰Mr. ⁵⁷¹Stanhope, the present secretary of state, will pardon my desire of having it known that he was pleased to promote this affair. ⁵⁷²The particular zeal of Mr. ⁵⁷³Harcourt (the son of the late Lord Chancellor) gave me a proof how much I am honoured in a share of his friendship. ⁵⁷⁴I must attribute to the same motive that of several others of my friends: to whom all acknowledgments are rendered unnecessary by the privileges of a familiar correspondence; and I am satisfied I can no way better oblige men of their turn than by my silence. ⁵⁷⁵In short, I have found more patrons than ever Homer wanted. ⁵⁷⁶He would have thought himself happy to have met the same favour at Athens that has been shown me by its learned rival, the University of Oxford. ⁵⁷⁷And I can hardly envy him those pompous honours he received after death, when I reflect on the enjoyment of so many agreeable obligations, and easy friendships, which make the satisfaction of life. ⁵⁷⁸This distinction is the more to be acknowledged, as it is shown to one whose pen has never gratified the prejudices of particular parties, or the vanities of particular men. ⁵⁷⁹Whatever the success may prove, I shall never repent of an undertaking in which I have experienced the candour and friendship of so many persons of merit; and in which I hope to pass some of those years of youth that are generally lost in a circle of follies, after a manner neither wholly unuseful to others, nor disagreeable to myself. ⁵⁸⁰THE ILIAD.

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