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THE
ILIAD OF HOMER,
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE
BY WILLIAM COWPER.
Zeus (Jupiter), seated upon an eagle
EDITED BY ROBERT SOUTHEY. LL.D.
WITH NOTES,
BY M.A. DWIGHT,
AUTHOR OF “GRECIAN AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY.”
NEW-YORK:
D. APPLETON & CO., 346 & 348 BROADWAY.
M.DCCC.LX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849,
By M.A. DWIGHT,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District
of New York.
TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE
EARL COWPER,
THIS
TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD,
THE INSCRIPTION OF WHICH TO HIMSELF,
THE LATE LAMENTED EARL,
BENEVOLENT TO ALL,
AND ESPECIALLY KIND TO THE AUTHOR,
HAD NOT DISDAINED TO ACCEPT
IS HUMBLY OFFERED,
AS A SMALL BUT GRATEFUL TRIBUTE,
TO THE MEMORY OF HIS FATHER,
BY HIS LORDSHIP’S
AFFECTIONATE KINSMAN AND SERVANT
WILLIAM COWPER.
_June 4, 1791._
PREFACE.
Whether a translation of Homer may be best executed in blank verse or
in rhyme, is a question in the decision of which no man can find
difficulty, who has ever duly considered what translation ought to be,
or who is in any degree practically acquainted with those very
different kinds of versification. I will venture to assert that a just
translation of any ancient poet in rhyme, is impossible. No human
ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds
homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the
full sense of his original. The translator’s ingenuity, indeed, in this
case becomes itself a snare, and the readier he is at invention and
expedient, the more likely he is to be betrayed into the widest
departures from the guide whom he professes to follow. Hence it has
happened, that although the public have long been in possession of an
English Homer by a poet whose writings have done immortal honor to his
country, the demand of a new one, and especially in blank verse, has
been repeatedly and loudly made by some of the best judges and ablest
writers of the present day.
I have no contest with my predecessor. None is supposable between
performers on different instruments. Mr. Pope has surmounted all
difficulties in his version of Homer that it was possible to surmount
in rhyme. But he was fettered, and his fetters were his choice.
Accustomed always to rhyme, he had formed to himself an ear which
probably could not be much gratified by verse that wanted it, and
determined to encounter even impossibilities, rather than abandon a
mode of writing in which he had excelled every body, for the sake of
another to which, unexercised in it as he was, he must have felt strong
objections.
I number myself among the warmest admirers of Mr. Pope as an original
writer, and I allow him all the merit he can justly claim as the
translator of this chief of poets. He has given us the _Tale of Troy
divine_ in smooth verse, generally in correct and elegant language, and
in diction often highly poetical. But his deviations are so many,
occasioned chiefly by the cause already mentioned, that, much as he has
done, and valuable as his work is on some accounts, it was yet in the
humble province of a translator that I thought it possible even for me
to fellow him with some advantage.
That he has sometimes altogether suppressed the sense of his author,
and has not seldom intermingled his own ideas with it, is a remark
which, on this occasion, nothing but necessity should have extorted
from me. But we differ sometimes so widely in our matter, that unless
this remark, invidious as it seems, be premised, I know not how to
obviate a suspicion, on the one hand, of careless oversight, or of
factitious embellishment on the other. On this head, therefore, the
English reader is to be admonished, that the matter found in me,
whether he like it or not, is found also in Homer, and that the matter
not found in me, how much soever he may admire it, is found only in Mr.
Pope. I have omitted nothing; I have invented nothing.
There is indisputably a wide difference between the case of an original
writer in rhyme and a translator. In an original work the author is
free; if the rhyme be of difficult attainment, and he cannot find it in
one direction, he is at liberty to seek it in another; the matter that
will not accommodate itself to his occasions he may discard, adopting
such as will. But in a translation no such option is allowable; the
sense of the author is required, and we do not surrender it willingly
even to the plea of necessity. Fidelity is indeed of the very essence
of translation, and the term itself implies it. For which reason, if we
suppress the sense of our original, and force into its place our own,
we may call our work an _imitation_, if we please, or perhaps a
_paraphrase_, but it is no longer the same author only in a different
dress, and therefore it is not translation. Should a painter,
professing to draw the likeness of a beautiful woman, give her more or
fewer features than belong to her, and a general cast of countenance of
his own invention, he might be said to have produced a _jeu d’esprit_,
a curiosity perhaps in its way, but by no means the lady in question.
It will however be necessary to speak a little more largely to this
subject, on which discordant opinions prevail even among good judges.
The free and the close translation have, each, their advocates. But
inconveniences belong to both. The former can hardly be true to the
original author’s style and manner, and the latter is apt to be
servile. The one loses his peculiarities, and the other his spirit.
Were it possible, therefore, to find an exact medium, a manner so close
that it should let slip nothing of the text, nor mingle any thing
extraneous with it, and at the same time so free as to have an air of
originality, this seems precisely the mode in which an author might be
best rendered. I can assure my readers from my own experience, that to
discover this very delicate line is difficult, and to proceed by it
when found, through the whole length of a poet voluminous as Homer,
nearly impossible. I can only pretend to have endeavored it.
It is an opinion commonly received, but, like many others, indebted for
its prevalence to mere want of examination, that a translator should
imagine to himself the style which his author would probably have used,
had the language into which he is rendered been his own. A direction
which wants nothing but practicability to recommend it. For suppose six
persons, equally qualified for the task, employed to translate the same
Ancient into their own language, with this rule to guide them. In the
event it would be found, that each had fallen on a manner different
from that of all the rest, and by probable inference it would follow
that none had fallen on the right. On the whole, therefore, as has been
said, the translation which partakes equally of fidelity and
liberality, that is close, but not so close as to be servile, free, but
not so free as to be licentious, promises fairest; and my ambition will
be sufficiently gratified, if such of my readers as are able, and will
take the pains to compare me in this respect with Homer, shall judge
that I have in any measure attained a point so difficult.
As to energy and harmony, two grand requisites in a translation of this
most energetic and most harmonious of all poets, it is neither my
purpose nor my wish, should I be found deficient in either, or in both,
to shelter myself under an unfilial imputation of blame to my
mother-tongue. Our language is indeed less musical than the Greek, and
there is no language with which I am at all acquainted that is not. But
it is musical enough for the purposes of melodious verse, and if it
seem to fail, on whatsoever occasion, in energy, the blame is due, not
to itself, but to the unskilful manager of it. For so long as Milton’s
works, whether his prose or his verse, shall exist, so long there will
be abundant proof that no subject, however important, however sublime,
can demand greater force of expression than is within the compass of
the English language.
I have no fear of judges familiar with original Homer. They need not be
told that a translation of him is an arduous enterprise, and as such,
entitled to some favor. From these, therefore, I shall expect, and
shall not be disappointed, considerable candor and allowance.
Especially _they_ will be candid, and I believe that there are many
such, who have occasionally tried their own strength in this _bow of
Ulysses_. They have not found it supple and pliable, and with me are
perhaps ready to acknowledge that they could not always even approach
with it the mark of their ambition. But I would willingly, were it
possible, obviate uncandid criticism, because to answer it is lost
labor, and to receive it in silence has the appearance of stately
reserve, and self-importance.
To those, therefore, who shall be inclined to tell me hereafter that my
diction is often plain and unelevated, I reply beforehand that I know
it,—that it would be absurd were it otherwise, and that Homer himself
stands in the same predicament. In fact, it is one of his numberless
excellences, and a point in which his judgment never fails him, that he
is grand and lofty always in the right place, and knows infallibly how
to rise and fall with his subject. _Big words on small matters_ may
serve as a pretty exact definition of the burlesque; an instance of
which they will find in the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, but none in
the Iliad.
By others I expect to be told that my numbers, though here and there
tolerably smooth, are not always such, but have, now and then, an ugly
hitch in their gait, ungraceful in itself, and inconvenient to the
reader. To this charge also I plead guilty, but beg leave in
alleviation of judgment to add, that my limping lines are not numerous,
compared with those that limp not. The truth is, that not one of them
all escaped me, but, such as they are, they were all made such with a
wilful intention. In poems of great length there is no blemish more to
be feared than sameness of numbers, and every art is useful by which it
may be avoided. A line, rough in itself, has yet its recommendations;
it saves the ear the pain of an irksome monotony, and seems even to add
greater smoothness to others. Milton, whose ear and taste were
exquisite, has exemplified in his Paradise Lost the effect of this
practice frequently.
Having mentioned Milton, I cannot but add an observation on the
similitude of his manner to that of Homer. It is such, that no person
familiar with both, can read either without being reminded of the
other; and it is in those breaks and pauses, to which the numbers of
the English poet are so much indebted both for their dignity and
variety, that he chiefly copies the Grecian. But these are graces to
which rhyme is not competent; so broken, it loses all its music; of
which any person may convince himself by reading a page only of any of
our poets anterior to Denham, Waller, and Dryden. A translator of
Homer, therefore, seems directed by Homer himself to the use of blank
verse, as to that alone in which he can be rendered with any tolerable
representation of his manner in this particular. A remark which I am
naturally led to make by a desire to conciliate, if possible, some,
who, rather unreasonably partial to rhyme, demand it on all occasions,
and seem persuaded that poetry in our language is a vain attempt
without it. Verse, that claims to be verse in right of its metre only,
they judge to be such rather by courtesy than by kind, on an
apprehension that it costs the writer little trouble, that he has only
to give his lines their prescribed number of syllables, and so far as
the mechanical part is concerned, all is well. Were this true, they
would have reason on their side; for the author is certainly best
entitled to applause who succeeds against the greatest difficulty, and
in verse that calls for the most artificial management in its
construction. But the case is not as they suppose. To rhyme, in our
language, demands no great exertion of ingenuity, but is always easy to
a person exercised in the practice. Witness the multitudes who rhyme,
but have no other poetical pretensions. Let it be considered too, how
merciful we are apt to be to unclassical and indifferent language for
the sake of rhyme, and we shall soon see that the labor lies
principally on the other side. Many ornaments of no easy purchase are
required to atone for the absence of this single recommendation. It is
not sufficient that the lines of blank verse be smooth in themselves,
they must also be harmonious in the combination. Whereas the chief
concern of the rhymist is to beware that his couplets and his sense be
commensurate, lest the regularity of his numbers should be (too
frequently at least) interrupted. A trivial difficulty this, compared
with those which attend the poet unaccompanied by his bells. He, in
order that he may be musical, must exhibit all the variations, as he
proceeds, of which ten syllables are susceptible; between the first
syllable and the last there is no place at which he must not
occasionally pause, and the place of the pause must be perpetually
shifted. To effect this variety, his attention must be given, at one
and the same time, to the pauses he has already made in the period
before him, as well as to that which he is about to make, and to those
which shall succeed it. On no lighter terms than these is it possible
that blank verse can be written which will not, in the course of a long
work, fatigue the ear past all endurance. If it be easier, therefore,
to throw five balls into the air and to catch them in succession, than
to sport in that manner with one only, then may blank verse be more
easily fabricated than rhyme. And if to these labors we add others
equally requisite, a style in general more elaborate than rhyme
requires, farther removed from the vernacular idiom both in the
language itself and in the arrangement of it, we shall not long doubt
which of these two very different species of verse threatens the
composer with most expense of study and contrivance. I feel it
unpleasant to appeal to my own experience, but, having no other voucher
at hand, am constrained to it. As I affirm, so I have found. I have
dealt pretty largely in both kinds, and have frequently written more
verses in a day, with tags, than I could ever write without them. To
what has been here said (which whether it have been said by others or
not, I cannot tell, having never read any modern book on the subject) I
shall only add, that to be poetical without rhyme, is an argument of a
sound and classical constitution in any language.
A word or two on the subject of the following translation, and I have
done.
My chief boast is that I have adhered closely to my original, convinced
that every departure from him would be punished with the forfeiture of
some grace or beauty for which I could substitute no equivalent. The
epithets that would consent to an English form I have preserved as
epithets; others that would not, I have melted into the context. There
are none, I believe, which I have not translated in one way or other,
though the reader will not find them repeated so often as most of them
are in Homer, for a reason that need not be mentioned.
Few persons of any consideration are introduced either in the Iliad or
Odyssey by their own name only, but their patronymic is given also. To
this ceremonial I have generally attended, because it is a circumstance
of my author’s manner.
Homer never allots less than a whole line to the introduction of a
speaker. No, not even when the speech itself is no longer than the line
that leads it. A practice to which, since he never departs from it, he
must have been determined by some cogent reason. He probably deemed it
a formality necessary to the majesty of his narration. In this article,
therefore, I have scrupulously adhered to my pattern, considering these
introductory lines as heralds in a procession; important persons,
because employed to usher in persons more important than themselves.
It has been my point every where to be as little verbose as possible,
though; at the same time, my constant determination not to sacrifice my
author’s full meaning to an affected brevity.
In the affair of style, I have endeavored neither to creep nor to
bluster, for no author is so likely to betray his translator into both
these faults, as Homer, though himself never guilty of either. I have
cautiously avoided all terms of new invention, with an abundance of
which, persons of more ingenuity than judgment have not enriched our
language, but incumbered it. I have also every where used an
unabbreviated fullness of phrase as most suited to the nature of the
work, and, above all, have studied perspicuity, not only because verse
is good for little that wants it, but because Homer is the most
perspicuous of all poets.
In all difficult places I have consulted the best commentators, and
where they have differed, or have given, as is often the case, a
variety of solutions, I have ever exercised my best judgment, and
selected that which appears, at least to myself, the most probable
interpretation. On this ground, and on account of the fidelity which I
have already boasted, I may venture, I believe, to recommend my work as
promising some usefulness to young students of the original.
The passages which will be least noticed, and possibly not at all,
except by those who shall wish to find me at a fault, are those which
have cost me abundantly the most labor. It is difficult to kill a sheep
with dignity in a modern language, to flay and to prepare it for the
table, detailing every circumstance of the process. Difficult also,
without sinking below the level of poetry, to harness mules to a wagon,
particularizing every article of their furniture, straps, rings,
staples, and even the tying of the knots that kept all together. Homer,
who writes always to the eye, with all his sublimity and grandeur, has
the minuteness of a Flemish painter.
But in what degree I have succeeded in my version either of these
passages, and such as these, or of others more buoyant and
above-ground, and especially of the most sublime, is now submitted to
the decision of the reader, to whom I am ready enough to confess that I
have not at all consulted their approbation, who account nothing grand
that is not turgid, or elegant that is not bedizened with metaphor.
I purposely decline all declamation on the merits of Homer, because a
translator’s praises of his author are liable to a suspicion of dotage,
and because it were impossible to improve on those which this author
has received already. He has been the wonder of all countries that his
works have ever reached, even deified by the greatest names of
antiquity, and in some places actually worshipped. And to say truth,
were it possible that mere man could entitle himself by pre-eminence of
any kind to divine honors, Homer’s astonishing powers seem to have
given him the best pretensions.
I cannot conclude without due acknowledgments to the best critic in
Homer I have ever met with, the learned and ingenious Mr. Fuseli.
Unknown as he was to me when I entered on this arduous undertaking
(indeed to this moment I have never seen him) he yet voluntarily and
generously offered himself as my revisor. To his classical taste and
just discernment I have been indebted for the discovery of many
blemishes in my own work, and of beauties, which would otherwise have
escaped me, in the original. But his necessary avocations would not
suffer him to accompany me farther than to the latter books of the
Iliad, a circumstance which I fear my readers, as well as myself, will
regret with too much reason.[1]
I have obligations likewise to many friends, whose names, were it
proper to mention them here, would do me great honor. They have
encouraged me by their approbation, have assisted me with valuable
books, and have eased me of almost the whole labor of transcribing.
And now I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended. To the
illustrious Greek I owe the smooth and easy flight of many thousand
hours. He has been my companion at home and abroad, in the study, in
the garden, and in the field; and no measure of success, let my labors
succeed as they may, will ever compensate to me the loss of the
innocent luxury that I have enjoyed, as a translator of Homer.
Footnote:
Some of the few notes subjoined to my translation of the Odyssey are by
Mr. Fuseli, who had a short opportunity to peruse the MSS. while the
Iliad was printing. They are marked with his initial.
PREFACE
PREPARED BY MR. COWPER,
FOR A
SECOND EDITION.
Soon after my publication of this work, I began to prepare it for a
second edition, by an accurate revisal of the first. It seemed to me,
that here and there, perhaps a slight alteration might satisfy the
demands of some, whom I was desirous to please; and I comforted myself
with the reflection, that if I still failed to conciliate all, I should
yet have no cause to account myself in a singular degree unfortunate.
To please an unqualified judge, an author must sacrifice too much; and
the attempt to please an uncandid one were altogether hopeless. In one
or other of these classes may be ranged all such objectors, as would
deprive blank verse of one of its principal advantages, the variety of
its pauses; together with all such as deny the good effect, on the
whole, of a line, now and then, less harmonious than its fellows.
With respect to the pauses, it has been affirmed with an unaccountable
rashness, that Homer himself has given me an example of verse without
them. Had this been true, it would by no means have concluded against
the use of them in an English version of Homer; because, in one
language, and in one species of metre, that may be musical, which in
another would be found disgusting. But the assertion is totally
unfounded. The pauses in Homer’s verse are so frequent and various,
that to name another poet, if pauses are a fault, more faulty than he,
were, perhaps, impossible. It may even be questioned, if a single
passage of ten lines flowing with uninterrupted smoothness could be
singled out from all the thousands that he has left us. He frequently
pauses at the first word of the line, when it consists of three or more
syllables; not seldom when of two; and sometimes even when of one only.
In this practice he was followed, as was observed in my Preface to the
first edition, by the Author of the Paradise Lost. An example
inimitable indeed, but which no writer of English heroic verse without
rhyme can neglect with impunity.
Similar to this is the objection which proscribes absolutely the
occasional use of a line irregularly constructed. When Horace censured
Lucilius for his lines _incomposite pede currentes_, he did not mean to
say, that he was chargeable with such in some instances, or even in
many, for then the censure would have been equally applicable to
himself; but he designed by that expression to characterize all his
writings. The censure therefore was just; Lucilius wrote at a time when
the Roman verse had not yet received its polish, and instead of
introducing artfully his rugged lines, and to serve a particular
purpose, had probably seldom, and never but by accident, composed a
smooth one. Such has been the versification of the earliest poets in
every country. Children lisp, at first, and stammer; but, in time,
their speech becomes fluent, and, if they are well taught, harmonious.
Homer himself is not invariably regular in the construction of his
verse. Had he been so, Eustathius, an excellent critic and warm admirer
of Homer, had never affirmed, that some of his lines want a head, some
a tail, and others a middle. Some begin with a word that is neither
dactyl nor spondee, some conclude with a dactyl, and in the
intermediate part he sometimes deviates equally from the established
custom. I confess that instances of this sort are rare; but they are
surely, though few, sufficient to warrant a sparing use of similar
license in the present day.
Unwilling, however, to seem obstinate in both these particulars, I
conformed myself in some measure to these objections, though
unconvinced myself of their propriety. Several of the rudest and most
unshapely lines I composed anew; and several of the pauses least in use
I displaced for the sake of an easier enunciation.—And this was the
state of the work after the revisal given it about seven years since.
Between that revisal and the present a considerable time intervened,
and the effect of long discontinuance was, that I became more
dissatisfied with it myself, than the most difficult to be pleased of
all my judges. Not for the sake of a few uneven lines or unwonted
pauses, but for reasons far more substantial. The diction seemed to me
in many passages either not sufficiently elevated, or deficient in the
grace of ease, and in others I found the sense of the original either
not adequately expressed or misapprehended. Many elisions still
remained unsoftened; the compound epithets I found not always happily
combined, and the same sometimes too frequently repeated.
There is no end of passages in Homer, which must creep unless they are
lifted; yet in such, all embellishment is out of the question. The hero
puts on his clothes, or refreshes himself with food and wine, or he
yokes his steed, takes a journey, and in the evening preparation is
made for his repose. To give relief to subjects prosaic as these
without seeming unreasonably tumid is extremely difficult. Mr. Pope
much abridges some of them, and others he omits; but neither of these
liberties was compatible with the nature of my undertaking. These,
therefore, and many similar to these, have been new-modeled; somewhat
to their advantage I hope, but not even now entirely to my
satisfaction. The lines have a more natural movement, the pauses are
fewer and less stately, the expression as easy as I could make it
without meanness, and these were all the improvements that I could give
them.
The elisions, I believe, are all cured, with only one exception. An
alternative proposes itself to a modern versifier, from which there is
no escape, which occurs perpetually, and which, choose as he may,
presents him always with an evil. I mean in the instance of the
particle (_the_). When this particle precedes a vowel, shall he melt it
into the substantive, or leave the _hiatus_ open? Both practices are
offensive to a delicate ear. The particle absorbed occasions harshness,
and the open vowel a vacuity equally inconvenient. Sometimes,
therefore, to leave it open, and sometimes to ingraft it into its
adjunct seems most advisable; this course Mr. Pope has taken, whose
authority recommended it to me; though of the two evils I have most
frequently chosen the elision as the least.
Compound epithets have obtained so long in the poetical language of our
country, that I employed them without fear or scruple. To have
abstained from them in a blank verse translation of Homer, who abounds
with them, and from whom our poets probably first adopted them, would
have been strange indeed. But though the genius of our language favors
the formation of such words almost as much as that of the Greek, it
happens sometimes, that a Grecian compound either cannot be rendered in
English at all, or, at best, but awkwardly. For this reason, and
because I found that some readers much disliked them, I have expunged
many; retaining, according to my best judgment, the most eligible only,
and making less frequent the repetitions even of these.
I know not that I can add any thing material on the subject of this
last revisal, unless it be proper to give the reason why the Iliad,
though greatly altered, has undergone much fewer alterations than the
Odyssey. The true reason I believe is this. The Iliad demanded my
utmost possible exertions; it seemed to meet me like an ascent almost
perpendicular, which could not be surmounted at less cost than of all
the labor that I could bestow on it. The Odyssey on the contrary seemed
to resemble an open and level country, through which I might travel at
my ease. The latter, therefore, betrayed me into some negligence,
which, though little conscious of it at the time, on an accurate
search, I found had left many disagreeable effects behind it.
I now leave the work to its fate. Another may labor hereafter in an
attempt of the same kind with more success; but more industriously, I
believe, none ever will.
PREFACE
BY
J. JOHNSON, LL.B.
CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH.
I have no other pretensions to the honorable name of Editor on this
occasion, than as a faithful transcriber of the Manuscript, and a
diligent corrector of the Press, which are, doubtless, two of the very
humblest employments in that most extensive province. I have wanted the
ability to attempt any thing higher; and, fortunately for the reader, I
have also wanted the presumption. What, however, I can do, I will.
Instead of critical remark, I will furnish him with anecdote. He shall
trace from beginning to end the progress of the following work; and in
proportion as I have the happiness to engage his attention, I shall
merit the name of a fortunate editor.
It was in the darkest season of a most calamitous depression of his
spirits, that I was summoned to the house of my inestimable friend the
Translator, in the month of January, 1794. He had happily completed a
revisal of his Homer, and was thinking of the preface to his new
edition, when all his satisfaction in the one, and whatever he had
projected for the other, in a moment vanished from his mind. He had
fallen into a deplorable illness; and though the foremost wish of my
heart was to lessen the intenseness of his misery, I was utterly unable
to afford him any aid.
I had, however, a pleasing though a melancholy opportunity of tracing
his recent footsteps in the Field of Troy, and in the Palace of Ithaca.
He had materially altered both the Iliad and Odyssey; and, so far as my
ability allowed me to judge, they were each of them greatly improved.
He had also, at the request of his bookseller, interspersed the two
poems with copious notes; for the most part translations of the ancient
Scholia, and gleaned, at the cost of many valuable hours, from the
pages of Barnes, Clarke, and Villoisson. It has been a constant subject
of regret to the admirers of “The Task,” that the exercise of such
marvelous original powers, should have been so long suspended by the
drudgery of translation; and in this view, their quarrel with the
illustrious Greek will be, doubtless, extended to his commentators.[1]
During two long years from this most anxious period, the translation
continued as it was; and though, in the hope of its being able to
divert his melancholy, I had attempted more than once to introduce it
to its Author, I was every time painfully obliged to desist. But in the
summer of ninety-six, when he had resided with me in Norfolk twelve
miserable months, the introduction long wished for took place. To my
inexpressible astonishment and joy, I surprised him, one morning, with
the Iliad in his hand; and with an excess of delight, which I am still
more unable to describe, I the next day discovered that he had been
writing.—Were I to mention one of the happiest moments of my life, it
might be that which introduced me to the following lines:—
Mistaken meanings corrected,
admonente G. Wakefield. B. XXIII. L. 429. that the nave
Of thy neat wheel seem e’en to grind upon it. L. 865. As when (the
north wind freshening) near the bank
Up springs a fish in air, then falls again
And disappears beneath the sable flood,
So at the stroke, he bounded. L. 1018. Thenceforth Tydides o’er his
ample shield
Aim’d and still aim’d to pierce him in the neck. Or better thus—
Tydides, in return, with spear high-poised
O’er the broad shield, aim’d ever at his neck, Or best of all— Then
Tydeus’ son, with spear high-poised above
The ample shield, stood aiming at his neck.
He had written these lines with a pencil, on a leaf at the end of his
Iliad; and when I reflected on the cause which had given them birth, I
could not but admire its disproportion to the effect. What the voice of
persuasion had failed in for a year, accident had silently accomplished
in a single day. The circumstance I allude to was this: I received a
copy of the Iliad and Odyssey of Pope, then recently published by the
Editor above mentioned, with illustrative and critical notes of his
own. As it commended Mr. Cowper’s Translation in the Preface, and
occasionally pointed out its merits in the Notes, I was careful to
place it in his way; though it was more from a habit of experiment
which I had contracted, than from well-grounded hopes of success. But
what a fortunate circumstance was the arrival of this Work! and by what
name worthy of its influence shall I call it? In the mouth of an
indifferent person it might be Chance; but in mine; whom it rendered so
peculiarly happy, common gratitude requires that it should be
Providence.
As I watched him with an indescribable interest in his progress, I had
the satisfaction to find, that, after a few mornings given to
promiscuous correction, and to frequent perusal of the above-mentioned
Notes, he was evidently settling on the sixteenth Book. This he went
regularly through, and the fruits of an application so happily resumed
were, one day with another, about sixty new lines. But with the end of
the sixteenth Book he had closed the corrections of the year. An
excursion to the coast, which immediately followed, though it promised
an accession of strength to the body, could not fail to interfere with
the pursuits of the mind. It was therefore with much less surprise than
regret, that I saw him relinquish the “_Tale of Troy Divine_.”
Such was the prelude to the last revisal, which, in the month of
January, ninety-seven, Mr. Cowper was persuaded to undertake; and to a
faithful copy, as I trust, of which, I have at this time the honor to
conduct the reader. But it may not be amiss to observe, that with
regard to the earlier books of the Iliad, it was less a revisal of the
altered text, than of the text as it stands in the first edition. For
though the interleaved copy was always at hand, and in the multitude of
its altered places could hardly fail to offer some things worthy to be
preserved, but which the ravages of illness and the lapse of time might
have utterly effaced from his mind, I could not often persuade the
Translator to consult it. I was therefore induced, in the course of
transcribing, to compare the two revisals as I went along, and to plead
for the continuance of the first correction, when it forcibly struck me
as better than the last. This, however, but seldom occurred; and the
practice, at length, was completely left off, by his consenting to
receive into the number of the books which were daily laid open before
him, the interleaved copy to which I allude.
At the end of the first six books of the Iliad, the arrival of spring
brought the usual interruptions of exercise and air, which increased as
the summer advanced to a degree so unfavorable to the progress of
Homer, that in the requisite attention to their salutary claims, the
revisal was, at one time, altogether at a stand. Only four books were
added in the course of nine months; but opportunity returning as the
winter set in, there were added, in less than seven weeks, four more:
and thus ended the year ninety-seven.
As the spring that succeeded was a happier spring, so it led to a
happier summer. We had no longer air and exercise alone, but exercise
and Homer hand in hand. He even followed us thrice to the sea: and
whether our walks were
“on the margin of the land,
O’er the green summit of the” cliffs, “whose base
Beats back the roaring surge,”
“or on the shore
Of the untillable and barren deep,”
they were always within hearing of his magic song. About the middle of
this busy summer, the revisal of the Iliad was brought to a close; and
on the very next day, the 24th of July, the correction of the Odyssey
commenced,—a morning rendered memorable by a kind and unexpected visit
from the patroness of that work, the Dowager Lady Spencer!
It is not my intention to detain the reader with a progressive account
of the Odyssey revised, as circumstantial as that of the Iliad, because
it went on smoothly from beginning to end, and was finished in less
than eight months.
I cannot deliver these volumes to the public without feeling emotions
of gratitude toward Heaven, in recollecting how often this corrected
Work has appeared to me an instrument of Divine mercy, to mitigate the
sufferings of my excellent relation. Its progress in our private hours
was singularly medicinal to his mind: may its presentment to the Public
prove not less conducive to the honor of the departed Author, who has
every claim to my veneration! As a copious life of the Poet is already
in the press, from the pen of his intimate friend Mr. Hayley, it is
unnecessary for me to enter on such extensive commendation of his
character, as my own intimacy with him might suggest; but I hope the
reader will kindly allow me the privilege of indulging, in some degree,
the feelings of my heart, by applying to him, in the close of this
Preface, an expressive verse (borrowed from Homer) which he inscribed
himself, with some little variation, on a bust of his Grecian Favorite.
Ως τε πατηρ ω παιδι, και ουποτε λησομαι αυτε.
Loved as his Son, in him I early found
A Father, such as I will ne’er forget.
Footnote:
Very few signatures had at this time been affixed to the notes; but I
afterward compared them with the Greek, note by note, and endeavored to
supply the defect; more especially in the last three Volumes, where the
reader will be pleased to observe that all the notes without signatures
are Mr. Cowper’s, and that those marked B.C.V. are respectively found
in the editions of Homer by Barnes, Clarke, and Villoisson. But the
employment was so little to the taste and inclination of the poet, that
he never afterward revised them, or added to their number more than
these which follow;—In the Odyssey, Vol. I. Book xi., the note 32.—Vol.
II. Book xv., the note 13.—The note10 Book xvi., of that volume, and
the note 14, Book xix., of the same.
ADVERTISEMENT TO SOUTHEY’S EDITION
It is incumbent upon the present Editor to state the reasons which have
induced him, between two editions of Cowper’s Homer, differing so
materially from each other that they might almost be deemed different
versions, to prefer the first.
Whoever has perused the Translator’s letters, must have perceived that
he had considered with no ordinary care the scheme of his
versification, and that when he resolved upon altering it in a second
edition, it was in deference to the opinion of others.
It seems to the Editor that Cowper’s own judgment is entitled to more
respect, than that of any, or all his critics; and that the version
which he composed when his faculties were most active and his spirits
least subject to depression,—indeed in the happiest part of his
life,—ought not to be superseded by a revisal, or rather
reconstruction, which was undertaken three years before his death,—not
like the first translation as “a pleasant work, an innocent luxury,”
the cheerful and delightful occupation of hope and ardor and
ambition,—but as a “hopeless employment,” a task to which he gave “all
his miserable days, and often many hours of the night,” seeking to
beguile the sense of utter wretchedness, by altering as if for the sake
of alteration.
The Editor has been confirmed in this opinion by the concurrence of
every person with whom he has communicated on the subject. Among others
he takes the liberty of mentioning Mr. Cary, whose authority upon such
a question is of especial weight, the Translator of Dante being the
only one of our countrymen who has ever executed a translation of equal
magnitude and not less difficulty, with the same perfect fidelity and
admirable skill.
In support of this determination, the case of Tasso may be cited as
curiously in point. The great Italian poet altered his Jerusalem like
Cowper, against his own judgment, in submission to his critics: he made
the alteration in the latter years of his life, and in a diseased state
of mind; and he proceeded upon the same prescribed rule of smoothing
down his versification, and removing all the elisions. The consequence
has been that the reconstructed poem is utterly neglected, and has
rarely, if ever, been reprinted, except in the two great editions of
his collected works; while the original poem has been and continues to
be in such demand, that the most diligent bibliographer might vainly
attempt to enumerate all the editions through which it has passed.
EDITOR’S NOTE.
It will be seen by the Advertisement to Southey’s edition of Cowper’s
Translation of the Iliad, that he has the highest opinion of its
merits, and that he also gives the preference to Cowper’s unrevised
edition. The Editor of the present edition is happy to offer it to the
public under the sanction of such high authority.
In the addition of notes I have availed myself of the learning of
various commentators (Pope, Coleridge, Müller, etc.) and covet no
higher praise than the approval of my judgment in the selection.
Those bearing the signature E.P.P., were furnished by my friend Miss
Peabody, of Boston. I would also acknowledge my obligations to C.C.
Felton, Eliot Professor of Greek in Harvard University. It should be
observed, that the remarks upon the language of the poem refer to it in
the original.
For a definite treatment of the character of each deity introduced in
the Iliad, and for the fable of the Judgment of Paris, which was the
primary cause of the Trojan war, the reader is referred to “Grecian and
Roman Mythology.”
It is intended that this edition of the Iliad shall be followed by a
similar one of the Odyssey, provided sufficient encouragement is given
by the demand for the present volume.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.