Of all books extant in all kinds, Homer is the first and best. No one
before his, Josephus affirms; nor before him, saith Velleius
Paterculus, was there any whom he imitated, nor after him any that
could imitate him. And that Poesy may be no cause of detraction from
all the eminence we give him, Spondanus (preferring it to all arts and
sciences) unanswerably argues and proves; for to the glory of God, and
the singing of his glories, no man dares deny, man was chiefly made.
And what art performs this chief end of man with so much excitation and
expression as Poesy; Moses, David, Solomon, Job, Esay, Jeremy, etc.
chiefly using that to the end abovesaid? And since the excellence of it
cannot be obtained by the labour and art of man, as all easily confess
it, it must needs be acknowledged a Divine infusion. To prove which in
a word, this distich, in my estimation, serves something nearly:
Great Poesy, blind Homer, makes all see
Thee capable of all arts, none of thee.
For out of him, according to our most grave and judicial Plutarch, are
all Arts deduced, confirmed, or illustrated. It is not therefore the
world’s vilifying of it that can make it vile; for so we might argue,
and blaspheme the most incomparably sacred. It is not of the world
indeed, but, like truth, hides itself from it. Nor is there any such
reality of wisdom’s truth in all human excellence, as in Poets’
fictions. That most vulgar and foolish receipt of poetical licence
being of all knowing men to be exploded, accepting it, as if Poets had
a tale-telling privilege above others, no Artist being so strictly and
inextricably confined to all the laws of learning, wisdom, and truth,
as a Poet. For were not his fictions composed of the sinews and souls
of all those, how could they defy fire, iron, and be combined with
eternity? To all sciences therefore, I must still, with our learned and
ingenious Spondanus, refer it, as having a perpetual commerce with the
Divine Majesty, embracing and illustrating all His most holy precepts,
and enjoying continual discourse with His thrice perfect and most
comfortable Spirit. And as the contemplative life is most worthily and
divinely preferred by Plato to the active, as much as the head to the
foot, the eye to the hand, reason to sense, the soul to the body, the
end itself to all things directed to the end, quiet to motion, and
eternity to time; so much prefer I divine Poesy to all worldly wisdom.
To the only shadow of whose worth, yet, I entitle not the bold rhymes
of every apish and impudent braggart, though he dares assume anything;
such I turn over to the weaving of cobwebs, and shall but chatter on
molehills (far under the hill of the Muses) when their fortunatest
self-love and ambition hath advanced them highest. Poesy is the flower
of the Sun, and disdains to open to the eye of a candle. So kings hide
their treasures and counsels from the vulgar, _ne evilescant_ (saith
our Spond.). We have example sacred enough, that true Poesy’s humility,
poverty, and contempt, are badges of divinity, not vanity. Bray then,
and bark against it, ye wolf-faced worldlings, that nothing but
honours, riches, and magistracy, _nescio quos turgidè spiratis_ (that I
may use the words of our friend still) _qui solas leges Justinianas
crepatis; paragraphum unum aut alterum, pluris quàm vos ipsos facitis,_
etc. I (for my part) shall ever esteem it much more manly and sacred,
in this harmless and pious study, to sit till I sink into my grave,
than shine in your vainglorious bubbles and impieties; all your poor
policies, wisdoms, and their trappings, at no more valuing than a musty
nut. And much less I weigh the frontless detractions of some stupid
ignorants, that, no more knowing me than their own beastly ends, and I
ever (to my knowledge) blest from their sight, whisper behind me
vilifyings of my translation, out of the French affirming them, when
both in French, and all other languages but his own, our
with-all-skill-enriched Poet is so poor and unpleasing that no man can
discern from whence flowed his so generally given eminence and
admiration. And therefore (by any reasonable creature’s conference of
my slight comment and conversion) it will easily appear how I shun
them, and whether the original be my rule or not. In which he shall
easily see, I understand the understandings of all other interpreters
and commentors in places of his most depth, importance, and rapture. In
whose exposition and illustration, if I abhor from the sense that
others wrest and wrack out of him, let my best detractor examine how
the Greek word warrants me. For my other fresh fry, let them fry in
their foolish galls, nothing so much weighed as the barkings of the
puppies, or foisting hounds, too vile to think of our sacred Homer, or
set their profane feet within their lives’ length of his thresholds. If
I fail in something, let my full performance in other some restore me;
haste spurring me on with other necessities. For as at my conclusion I
protest, so here at my entrance, less than fifteen weeks was the time
in which all the last twelve books were entirely new translated. No
conference had with anyone living in all the novelties I presume I have
found. Only some one or two places I have showed to my worthy and most
learned friend, M. Harriots, for his censure how much mine own weighed;
whose judgment and knowledge in all kinds, I know to be incomparable
and bottomless, yea, to be admired as much, as his most blameless life,
and the right sacred expense of his time, is to be honoured and
reverenced. Which affirmation of his clear unmatchedness in all manner
of learning I make in contempt of that nasty objection often thrust
upon me,—that he that will judge must know more than he of whom he
judgeth; for so a man should know neither God nor himself. Another
right learned, honest, and entirely loved friend of mine, M. Robert
Hews, I must needs put into my confess’d conference touching Homer,
though very little more than that I had with M. Harriots. Which two, I
protest, are all, and preferred to all. Nor charge I their authorities
with, any allowance of my general labour, but only of those one or two
places, which for instances of my innovation, and how it showed to
them, I imparted. If any tax me for too much periphrasis or
circumlocution in some places, let them read Laurentius Valla, and
Eobanus Hessus, who either use such shortness as cometh nothing home to
Homer, or, where they shun that fault, are ten parts more
paraphrastical than I. As for example, one place I will trouble you (if
you please) to confer with the original, and one interpreter for all.
It is in the end of the third book, and is Helen’s speech to Venus
fetching her to Paris from seeing his cowardly combat with Menelaus;
part of which speech I will here cite:
Οὕνεκα δὴ νυ̑ν δι̑ον ᾽Αλέξανδρον Μενέλαος
Νικήσας, &c.
For avoiding the common reader’s trouble here, I must refer the more
Greekish to the rest of the speech in Homer, whose translation _ad
verbum_ by Spondanus I will here cite, and then pray you to confer it
with that which followeth of Valla.
_Quoniam verò nunc Alexandrum Menelaus
Postquam vicit, vult odiosam me domum abducere,
Propterea verò nunc dolum (seu dolos) cogitans advenisti?
Sede apud ipsum vadens, deorum abnega vias,
Neque unquam tuis pedibus revertaris in cœlum,
Sed semper circa eum ærumnas perfer, et ipsum serva
Donec te vel uxorem faciat, vel hic servam,_ etc.
Valla thus:
_Quoniam victo Paride, Menelaus me miseram est reportaturus ad lares,
ideo tu, ideo falsâ sub imagine venisti, ut me deciperes ob tuam nimiam
in Paridem benevolentiam: eò dum illi ades, dum illi studes, dum pro
illo satagis, dum illum observas atque custodis, deorum commercium
reliquisti, nec ad eos reversura es ampliùs: adeò (quantum suspicor)
aut uxor ejus efficieris, aut ancilla,_ &c.
Wherein note if there be any such thing as most of this in Homer; yet
only to express, as he thinks, Homer’s conceit, for the more pleasure
of the reader, he useth this overplus, _dum illi ades, dum illi studes,
dum pro illo satagis, dum ilium observas, atque custodis, deorum
commercium reliquisti._ Which (besides his superfluity) is utterly
false. For where he saith _reliquisti deorum commercium_, Helen saith,
_θεω̑ν δ᾽ἀπόειπε κελεύθους, deorum auten abnega_ or _abnue, vias,
ἀπείπειν (vel ἀποείπειν_ as it is used poetically) signifying
_denegare_ or _aonuere_; and Helen (in contempt of her too much
observing men) bids her renounce heaven, and come live with Paris till
he make her his wife or servant; scoptically or scornfully speaking it;
which both Valla, Eobanus, and all other interpreters (but these _ad
verbum_) have utterly missed. And this one example I thought necessary
to insert here, to show my detractors that they have no reason to
vilify my circumlocution sometimes, when their most approved Grecians,
Homer’s interpreters generally, hold him fit to be so converted. Yet
how much I differ, and with what authority, let my impartial and
judicial reader judge. Always conceiving how pedantical and absurd an
affectation it is in the interpretation of any author (much more of
Homer) to turn him word for word, when according to Horace and other
best lawgivers to translators) it is the part of every knowing and
judicial interpreter, not to follow the number and order of words, but
the material things themselves, and sentences to weigh diligently, and
to clothe and adorn them with words, and such a style and form of
oration, as are most apt for the language in which they are converted.
If I have not turned him ill any place falsely (as all other his
interpreters have in many, and most of his chief places) if I have not
left behind me any of his sentences, elegancy, height, intention, and
invention, if in some few places (especially in my first edition, being
done so long since, and following the common tract) I be something
paraphrastical and faulty, is it justice in that poor fault (if they
will needs have it so) to drown all the rest of my labour? But there is
a certain envious windsucker, that hovers up and down, laboriously
engrossing all the air with his luxurious ambition, and buzzing into
every ear my detraction, affirming I turn Homer out of the Latin only,
etc. that sets all his associates, and the whole rabble of my maligners
on their wings with him, to bear about my impair, and poison my
reputation. One that, as he thinks, whatsoever he gives to others, he
takes from himself; so whatsoever he takes from others, he adds to
himself. One that in this kind of robbery doth like Mercury, that stole
good and supplied it with counterfeit bad still. One like the two
gluttons, Philoxenus and Gnatho, that would still empty their noses in
the dishes they loved, that no man might eat but themselves. For so
this castrill, with too hot a liver, and lust after his own glory, and
to devour all himself, discourageth all appetites to the fame of
another. I have stricken, single him as you can. Nor note I this, to
cast any rubs or plashes out of the particular way of mine own
estimation with the world; for I resolve this with the wilfully
obscure:
Sine honore vivam, nulloque numero ero.
Without men’s honours I will live, and make
No number in the manless course they take.
But, to discourage (if it might be) the general detraction of
industrious and well-meaning virtue, I know I cannot too much diminish
and deject myself; yet that passing little that I am, God only knows,
to Whose ever-implored respect and comfort I only submit me. If any
further edition of these my silly endeavours shall chance, I will mend
what is amiss (God assisting me) and amplify my harsh Comment to
Homer’s far more right, and mine own earnest and ingenious love of him.
Notwithstanding, I know, the curious and envious will never sit down
satisfied. A man may go over and over, till he come over and over, and
his pains be only his recompense, every man is so loaded with his
particular head, and nothing in all respects perfect, but what is
perceived by few. Homer himself hath met with my fortune, in many
maligners; and therefore may my poor self put up without motion. And so
little I will respect malignity, and so much encourage myself with mine
own known strength, and what I find within me of comfort and
confirmance (examining myself throughout with a far more jealous and
severe eye than my greatest enemy, imitating this: