Thus far the Ilian ruins I have laid
Open to English eyes. In which, repaid
With thine own value, go, unvalued book,
Live, and be lov’d. If any envious look
Hurt thy clear fame, learn that no state more high
Attends on virtue than pin’d envy’s eye.
Would thou wert worth it that the best doth wound.
Which this age feeds, and which the last shall bound!
Thus, with labour enough, though with more comfort in the merits of my
divine author, I have brought my translation of his Iliads to an end.
If, either therein, or in the harsh utterance or matter of my Comment
before, I have, for haste, scattered with my burthen (less than fifteen
weeks being the whole time that the last Twelve Books’ translation
stood me in) I desire my present will (and I doubt not hability, if God
give life, to reform and perfect all hereafter) may be ingenuously
accepted for the absolute work. The rather, considering the most
learned, with all their helps and time, have been so often, and
unanswerably, miserably taken halting. In the mean time, that most
assistful and unspeakable Spirit, by Whose thrice sacred conduct and
inspiration I have finished this labour, diffuse the fruitful horn of
His blessings through these goodness-thirsting watchings; without
which, utterly dry and bloodless is whatsoever mortality soweth.
But where our most diligent Spondanus ends his work with a prayer to be
taken out of these Mæanders and Euripian rivers (as he terms them) of
Ethnic and Profane Writers (being quite contrary to himself at the
beginning) I thrice humbly beseech the Most Dear and Divine Mercy (ever
most incomparably preferring the great light of His Truth in His direct
and infallible Scriptures) I may ever be enabled, by resting wondering
in His right comfortable shadows in these, to magnify the clearness of
His Almighty apparance in the other.
And with this salutation of Poesy given by our Spondanus in his Preface
to these Iliads (_“All hail saint-sacred Poesy that, under so much gall
of fiction, such abundance of honey doctrine hast hidden, not revealing
them to the unworthy worldly! Wouldst thou but so much make me, that
amongst thy novices I might be numbered, no time should ever come near
my life that could make me forsake thee.”_) I will conclude with this
my daily and nightly prayer, learned of the most learned Simplicius;—
_“Supplico tibi, Domine, Pater, et Dux rationis nostræ, ut nostræ
nobilitatis recordemur quâ Tu nos ornasti; et ut Tu nobis præstò sis ut
iis qui per sese moventur; ut et à corporis contagio brutorumque
affectuum repurgemur, eosque superemus et regamus, et, sicut decet, pro
instrumentis iis utamur. Deinde ut nobis adjumento sis, ad accuratam
rationis nostræ correctionem, et conjunctionem cum iis qui verè sunt
per lucem veritatis. Et tertium, Salvatori supplex oro, ut ab oculis
animorum nostrorum caliginem prorsus abstergas, ut (quod apud Homerum
est) norimus bene qui Deus, aut mortalis, habendus. Amen._”