More living than in old Demodocus,
Fame glories to wax young in Homer’s verse.
And as when bright Hyperion holds to us
His golden torch, we see the stars disperse,
And ev’ry way fly heav’n, the pallid moon
Ev’n almost vanishing before his sight;
So, with the dazzling beams of Homer’s sun,
All other ancient poets lose their light.
Whom when Apollo heard, out of his star,
Singing the godlike act of honour’d men,
And equalling the actual rage of war,
With only the divine strains of his pen,
He stood amaz’d and freely did confess
Himself was equall’d in Mæonides.
Next hear the grave and learned Pliny use
His censure of our sacred poet’s muse.
Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 7. cap. 29.
Turned into verse, that no prose may come near Homer.
Whom shall we choose the glory of all wits,
Held through so many sorts of discipline
And such variety of works and spirits,
But Grecian Homer, like whom none did shine
For form of work and matter? And because
Our proud doom of him may stand justified
By noblest judgments, and receive applause
In spite of envy and illiterate pride,
Great Macedon, amongst his matchless spoils
Took from rich Persia, on his fortunes cast,
A casket finding, full of precious oils,
Form’d all of gold, with wealthy stones enchas’d,
He took the oils out, and his nearest friends
Ask’d in what better guard it might be us’d?
All giving their conceits to sev’ral ends,
He answer’d: “His affections rather choos’d
An use quite opposite to all their kinds,
And Homer’s books should with that guard be serv’d,
That the most precious work of all men’s minds
In the most precious place might be preserv’d.
The Fount of Wit was Homer, Learning’s Sire,
And gave antiquity her living fire.”
Volumes of like praise I could heap on this,
Of men more ancient and more learn’d than these,
But since true virtue enough lovely is
With her own beauties, all the suffrages
Of others I omit, and would more fain
That Homer for himself should be belov’d,
Who ev’ry sort of love-worth did contain.
Which how I have in my conversion prov’d
I must confess I hardly dare refer
To reading judgments, since, so gen’rally,
Custom hath made ev’n th’ ablest agents err[2]
In these translations; all so much apply
Their pains and cunnings word for word to render
Their patient authors, when they may as well
Make fish with fowl, camels with whales, engender,
Or their tongues’ speech in other mouths compell.
For, ev’n as diff’rent a production
Ask Greek and English, since as they in sounds
And letters shun one form and unison;
So have their sense and elegancy bounds
In their distinguish’d natures, and require
Only a judgment to make both consent
In sense and elocution; and aspire,
As well to reach the spirit that was spent
In his example, as with art to pierce
His grammar, and etymology of words.
But as great clerks can write no English verse,[3]
Because, alas, great clerks! English affords,
Say they, no height nor copy; a rude tongue,
Since ’tis their native; but in Greek or Latin
Their writs are rare, for thence true Poesy sprung;
Though them (truth knows) they have but skill to chat in,
Compar’d with that they might say in their own;
Since thither th’ other’s full soul cannot make
The ample transmigration to be shown
In nature-loving Poesy; so the brake
That those translators stick in, that affect
Their word-for-word traductions (where they lose
The free grace of their natural dialect,
And shame their authors with a forcéd gloss)
I laugh to see; and yet as much abhor[4]]
More license from the words than may express
Their full compression, and make clear the author;
From whose truth, if you think my feet digress,
Because I use needful periphrases,
Read Valla, Hessus, that in Latin prose,
And verse, convert him; read the Messines
That into Tuscan turns him; and the gloss
Grave Salel makes in French, as he translates;
Which, for th’ aforesaid reasons, all must do;
And see that my conversion much abates
The license they take, and more shows him too,
Whose right not all those great learn’d men have done,
In some main parts, that were his commentors.
But, as the illustration of the sun
Should be attempted by the erring stars,
They fail’d to search his deep and treasurous heart;
The cause was, since they wanted the fit key
Of Nature, in their downright strength of Art.[5]
With Poesy to open Poesy:
Which, in my poem of the mysteries
Reveal’d in Homer, I will clearly prove;
Till whose near birth, suspend your calumnies,
And far-wide imputations of self-love.
’Tis further from me than the worst that reads,
Professing me the worst of all that write;
Yet what, in following one that bravely leads,
The worst may show, let this proof hold the light.
But grant it clear; yet hath detraction got
My blind side in the form my verse puts on;
Much like a dung-hill mastiff, that dares not
Assault the man he barks at, but the stone
He throws at him takes in his eager jaws,
And spoils his teeth because they cannot spoil.
The long verse hath by proof receiv’d applause
Beyond each other number; and the foil,
That squint-ey’d Envy takes, is censur’d plain;
For this long poem asks this length of verse,
Which I myself ingenuously maintain
Too long our shorter authors to rehearse.
And, for our tongue that still is so impair’d[6]
By travelling linguists, I can prove it clear,
That no tongue hath the Muse’s utt’rance heir’d
For verse, and that sweet music to the ear
Strook out of rhyme, so naturally as this;
Our monosyllables so kindly fall,
And meet oppos’d in rhyme as they did kiss;
French and Italian most immetrical,
Their many syllables in harsh collision
Fall as they break their necks; their bastard rhymes
Saluting as they justled in transition,
And set our teeth on edge; nor tunes, nor times
Kept in their falls; and, methinks, their long words
Shew in short verse as in a narrow place
Two opposites should meet with two-hand swords
Unwieldily, without or use or grace.
Thus having rid the rubs, and strow’d these flow’rs
In our thrice-sacred Homer’s English way,
What rests to make him yet more worthy yours?
To cite more praise of him were mere delay
To your glad searches for what those men found
That gave his praise, past all, so high a place;
Whose virtues were so many, and so crown’d
By all consents divine, that, not to grace
Or add increase to them, the world doth need
Another Homer, but ev’n to rehearse
And number them, they did so much exceed.
Men thought him not a man; but that his verse
Some mere celestial nature did adorn;
And all may well conclude it could not be,
That for the place where any man was born,
So long and mortally could disagree
So many nations as for Homer striv’d,
Unless his spur in them had been divine.
Then end their strife and love him, thus receiv’d,
As born in England; see him over-shine
All other-country poets; and trust this,
That whosesoever Muse dares use her wing
When his Muse flies, she will be truss’d by his,
And show as if a bernacle should spring
Beneath an eagle. In none since was seen
A soul so full of heav’n as earth’s in him.
O! if our modern Poesy had been
As lovely as the lady he did limn,
What barbarous worldling, grovelling after gain,
Could use her lovely parts with such rude hate,
As now she suffers under ev’ry swain?
Since then ’tis nought but her abuse and Fate,
That thus impairs her, what is this to her
As she is real, or in natural right?
But since in true Religion men should err
As much as Poesy, should the abuse excite
The like contempt of her divinity,
And that her truth, and right saint-sacred merits,
In most lives breed but rev’rence formally,
What wonder is’t if Poesy inherits
Much less observance, being but agent for her,
And singer of her laws, that others say?
Forth then, ye moles, sons of the earth, abhor her,
Keep still on in the dirty vulgar way,
Till dirt receive your souls, to which ye vow,
And with your poison’d spirits bewitch our thrifts.
Ye cannot so despise us as we you;
Not one of you above his mole-hill lifts
His earthy mind, but, as a sort of beasts,
Kept by their guardians, never care to hear
Their manly voices, but when in their fists
They breathe wild whistles, and the beasts’ rude ear
Hears their curs barking, then by heaps they fly
Headlong together; so men, beastly giv’n,
The manly soul’s voice, sacred Poesy,
Whose hymns the angels ever sing in heav’n,
Contemn and hear not; but when brutish noises,
For gain, lust, honour, in litigious prose
Are bellow’d out, and crack the barbarous voices
Of Turkish stentors, O, ye lean to those,
Like itching horse to blocks or high may-poles;
And break nought but the wind of wealth, wealth, all
In all your documents; your asinine souls,
Proud of their burthens, feel not how they gall.
But as an ass, that in a field of weeds
Affects a thistle, and falls fiercely to it,
That pricks and galls him, yet he feeds, and bleeds,
Forbears a while, and licks, but cannot woo it
To leave the sharpness; when, to wreak his smart,
He beats it with his foot, then backward kicks,
Because the thistle gall’d his forward part;
Nor leaves till all be eat, for all the pricks,
Then falls to others with as hot a strife,
And in that honourable war doth waste
The tall heat of his stomach, and his life;
So in this world of weeds you worldlings taste
Your most-lov’d dainties, with such war buy peace,
Hunger for torment, virtue kick for vice,
Cares for your states do with your states increase,
And though ye dream ye feast in Paradise,
Yet reason’s daylight shews ye at your meat
Asses at thistles, bleeding as ye eat.