rous or musical in themselves, they would still appear less poetical and uncommon than those of a dead one, from this only circumstance, of being in every man's mouth. I may add to this another disadvantage to a translator, from a different cause: Homer seems to have taken upon him the character of an historian, antiquary, divine, and professor of arts and sciences, as well as poet. In one or other of these characters, he descends into many peculiarities, which as a poet only perhaps he would have avoided. All these ought to be preserved by a faithful translator, who in some measure takes the place of Homer; and all that can be expected from him is to make them as poetical as the subject will bear. Many arts therefore are requisite to supply these disadvantages, in order to dignify and solemnize these plainer parts, which hardly admit of any poetical orna ments. Some use has been made to this end of the style of Milton. A just and moderate mixture of old words may have an effect like the working old abbey stones into a building, which I have sometimes seen to give a kind of venerable air, and yet not destroy the neatness, elegance, and equality, requisite to a new work; I mean, without rendering it too unfamiliar, or remote from the present purity of writing, or from that ease and smoothness, which ought always to accompany narration or dialogue. In reading a style judiciously antiquated, one finds a pleasure not unlike that of travelling on an old Roman way: but then the road must be as good as the way is ancient: the style must be such in which we may evenly proceed, without being put to short stops by sudden abruptness, or puzzled by frequent turnings and transpositions. No man delights in furrows and stumblingblocks: and let our love to antiquity be ever so great, a fine ruin is one thing, and a heap of rubbish another. The imitators of Milton, like most other imitators, are not copies but caricatures of their original; they are a hundred times more obsolete and cramp than he, and equally so in all places: whereas it should have been observed of Milton, that he is not lavish of his exotic words and phrases every where alike, but employs them much more where the subject is marvellous, vast, and strange, as in the scenes of heaven, hell, chaos, &c. than where it is turned to the natural and agreeable, as in the pictures of paradise, the loves of our first parents, entertainments of angels, and the like. In general, this unusual style better serves to awaken our ideas in the descriptions and in the imaging and picturesque parts, than it agrees with the lower sort of narrations, the character of which is simplicity and purity. Milton has several of the latter, where we find not an antiquated, affected, or uncouth word, for some hundred lines together; as in his fifth book, the latter part of the tenth and eleventh books, and in the narration of Michael in the twelfth. I wonder indeed that he, who ventured (contrary to the practice of all other epic poets) to imitate Homer's lowness in the narrative, should not also have copied his plainness and perspicuity in the dramatic parts: since in his speeches (where clearness above all is necessary) there is frequently such transposition and forced construction, that the very sense is not to be discovered without a second or third reading, and in this certainly ought to be no example. To preserve the true character of Homer's style in the présent translation, great pains have been taken to be easy and natural. The chief merit I can pretend to, is, not to have been carried into a more plausible and figurative manner of writing, which would better have pleased all readers, but the judicious ones. My errors had been fewer, had each of those gentlemen who joined with me shown as much of the severity of a friend to me, as I did to them, in a strict animadversion and correction. What assistance I received from them, was made known in general to the public in the original proposals for this work, and the particulars are specified at the conclusion of it; to which I must add (to be punctually just) some part of the tenth and fifteenth books. The reader will be too good a judge, how much the greater part of it, and consequently of its faults, is chargeable upon me alone. But this I can with integrity affirm, that I have bestowed as much time and pains upon the whole, as were consistent with the indispensable duties and cares of life, and with that wretched state of health which God has been pleased to make my portion. At the least, it is a pleasure to me to reflect, that I have introduced into our language this other work of the greatest and most ancient of poets, with some dignity; and, I hope, with as little disadvantage as the Iliad. And if, after the unmerited success of that translation, any one will wonder why I would enterprise the Odyssey; I think it sufficient to say, that Homer himself did the same, or the world would never have seen it. I designed to have ended this postscript here: but since I am now taking my leave of Homer, and of all controversy relating to him, I beg leave to be indulged, if I make use of this last opportunity, to say a very few words about some reflections which the late Madam Dacier bestowed on the first part of my preface to the | Iliad, and which she published at the end of her translation of that poem. To write gravely an answer to them, would be too much for the reflections; and to say nothing concerning them, would be too little for the author. It is owing to the industry of that learned lady, that our polite neighbours are become acquainted with many of Homer's beauties, which were hidden from them before in Greek and in Eustathius. She challenges on this account a particular regard from all the admirers of that great poet; and I hope that I shall be thought, as I mean, to pay some part of this debt to her memory, in what I am now writing. Had these reflections fallen from the pen of an ordinary critic, I should not have apprehended their effect, and should therefore have been silent concerning them: but since they are Madam Dacier's, I imagine that they must be of weight; and in a case where I think her reasoning very bad, I respect her authority. I have fought under Madam Dacier's banner, and have waged war in defence of the divine Homer against all the heretics of the age. And yet it is Madam Dacier who accuses me, and who accuses me of nothing less than betraying our common cause. She affirms that the most declared enemies of this author have never said any thing against him more injurious or more unjust than I. What must the world think of me, after such a judgment passed by so great a critic; the world, who decides so often, and who examines so seldom; the world, who even in matters of literature is almost always the slave of authority? Who will suspect that so much learning should mistake, that so much accuracy should be misled, or that so much candour should be biassed? All this however has happened, and Madam Dacier's Criticisms on my Preface flow from the very same error, from which so many false criticisms of her countrymen upon Homer have flowed, and which she has so justly and so severely reproved; I mean the error of depending on injurious and unskilful translations. An indifferent translation may be of some use, and a good one will be of a great deal. But I think that no translation ought to be the ground of criticism, because no man ought to be condemned upon another man's explanation of his meaning: could Homer have had the honour of explaining his, before that august tribunal where Monsieur de la Motte presides, 1 make no doubt but he had escaped many of those severe animadversions with which some French authors have loaded him, and from which even Madam Dacier's translation of the Iliad could not preserve him. How unhappy was it for me, that the knowledge of our island-tongue was as necessary to Madam Dacier in my case, as the knowledge of Greek was to Monsieur de la Motte in that of our great author; or to any of those whom she styles blind censurers, and blames for condemning what they did not understand. I may say with modesty, that she knew less of my true sense from that faulty translation of part of my Preface, than those blind censurers might have known of Homer's even from the translation of la Valterie, which preceded her own. It pleased me however to find, that her objections were not levelled at the general doctrine, or at any essentials of my Preface, but only at a few particular expressions, She proposed little more than (to use her own phrase) to combat two or three similes; and I hope that to combat a simile is no more than to fight with a shadow, since a simile is no better than the shadow of an argument. She lays much weight where I laid but little, and examines with more scrupulosity than I writ, or than perhaps the matter requires. These unlucky similes, taken by themselves, may perhaps render my meaning equivocal to an ignorant translator; or there may have fallen from my pen some expressions, which, taken by themselves, likewise, may to the same person have the same effect. But if the translator had been master of our tongue, the general tenor of my argument, that which precedes and that which follows the passages objected to, would have sufficiently determined him as to the precise meaning of them: and if Madam Dacier had taken up her pen a little more leisurely, or had employed it with more temper, she would not have answered paraphrases of her own, which even the translation will not justify, and Second edition, at Paris, 1719. which say, more than once, the ery contrary to what I have said in the passages themselves. because it is acted or spoken.' Agreed: but I would ask the question, whether any thing can have manners which is neither acted or spoken? If not, then the whole Iliad being almost spent in speech and action, almost every thing in it has manners; since Homer has been proved before, in a long paragraph of the Preface, to have ex indeed his whole poem is one continued occasion of shewing this bright part of his talent. If any person has curiosity enough to read the whole paragraphs in my Preface, on some mangled parts of which these reflections are made, he will easily discern that I am as orthodox as Madame Dacier herself in those very articles on which she treats me like an heretic; hecelled in drawing characters and painting manners; and will easily see that all the difference between us consists inthis, that I offer opinions, and she delivers doctrines; that my imagination represents Homer as the greatest of human poets, whereas in hers he was exalted above humanity; infallibility and impeccability were two of his attributes. There was therefore no need of defending Homer against me, who (if I mistake not) had carried my admiration of him as far as it can be carried, without giving a real occasion of writing in his defence. After answering my harmless similes, she proceeds to a matter which does not regard so much the honour of Homer, as that of the times he lived in; and here I must confess she does not wholly mistake my meaning, but I think she mistakes the state of the question. She had said, the manners of those times were so much the better, the less they were like ours. I thought this required a little qualification. I confest that in my opinion the world was mended in some points, such as the custom of putting whole nations to the sword, condemning kings and their families to perpetual slavery, and a few others. Madam Dacier judges otherwise in this; but as to the rest, particularly in preferring the simplicity of the ancient world to the luxury of ours, which is the main point contended for, she owns we agree. This I thought was well, but I am so unfortunate that this too is taken amiss, and called adopting or (if you will) stealing her sentiment. The truth is, she might have said her words, for I used them on purpose, being then professedly citing from her: though I might have done the same without intending that compliment, for they are also to be found in Eustathius, and the sentiment I believe is that of all mankind. I cannot really tell what to say to this whole remark, only that in the first part of it, Madam Dacier is displeased that I do not agree with her, and in the last that I do: but this is a temper which every polite man should overlook in a lady. To punish my ingratitude, she resolves to expose my blunders, and selects two which I suppose are the most flagrant, out of the many for which she could have chastised me. It happens that the first of these is, in part the translator's, and in part her own, without any share of mine: she quotes the end of a sentence, and he puts in French what I never wrote in English: Homer (I said) opened a new and boundless walk for his imagination, and created a world for himself in the invention of fable;' which he translates, Homer crea pour son usage un monde mouvaut, en inventant la fable.' Madam Dacier justly wonders at this nonsense in me, and I in the translator. As to what I meant by Homer's invention of fable, it is afterwards particularly distinguished from that extensive sense in which she took it, by these words: If 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.' The other blunder she accuses me of is, the mistaking a passage in Aristotle, and she is pleased to send me back to this philosopher's treatise of Poetry, and to her Preface on the Odyssey for my better instruction. Now though I am saucy enough to think that one may sometimes differ from Aristotle without blundering, and though I am sure one may sometimes fall into an error by following him servilely; yet I own, that to quote any author for what he never said, is a blunder; (but, by the way, to correct an author for what he never said, is somewhat worse than a blunder). My words were these: As there is a greater variety of characters in the Iliad, than in any other poem, so there is of speeches. Every thing in it has manners, as Aristotle expresses it; that is, every thing is acted or spoken; very little passes in narration. She justly says, that' Every thing which is acted or spoken, has not necessarily manners, merely To speak fairly, it is impossible she could read even the translation and take my sense so wrong as she represents it: but I was first translated ignorantly, and then read partially. My expression indeed was not quite exact; it should have been, Every thing has manners, as Aristotle calls them.' But such a fault, methinks, might have been spared: since if one was to look with that disposition she discovers towards me, even on her own excellent writings, one might find some mistakes which no context can redress; as where she makes Eustathius call Cratisthenes the Phliasian, Callisthenes the Physician. What a triumph might some slips of this sort have afforded to Homer's, hers, and my enemies, from which she was only screened by their happy igno rance! How unlucky had it been, when she insulted Mr. de la Motte for omitting a material passage in the speech of Helen to Hector, Iliad vit if some champion for the moderns had by chance understood so much Greek, as to whisper him, that there was no such passage in Homer! Our concern, zeal, and even jealousy for our great author's honour were mutual; our endeavours to advance it were equal: and I have as often trembled for it in her hands, as she could in mine. It was one of the many reasons I had to wish the longer life of this lady, that I must certainly have regained her good opinion, in spite of all misrepresenting translators whatever. I could not have expected it on any other terms than being approved as great, if not as passionate, an admirer of Homer as herself. For that was the first condition of her favour and friendship: otherwise not one's taste alone, but one's morality had been corrupted, nor would any man's religion have been unsuspected, who did not implicitly believe in an author whose doctrine is so conformable to Holy Scripture. However, as different people have different ways of expressing their belief, some purely by public and general acts of worship, others by a reverend sort of reasoning and inquiry about the grounds of it; it is the same in admiration, some prove it by exclamations, others by respect. I have observed that the loudest huzzas given to a great man in a triumph, proceed not from his friends, but the rabble; and as I have fancied it the same with the rabble of critics, a desire to be distinguished from them has turned me to the more moderate, and I hope, more rational method. Though I am a poet, I would not be an enthusiast; and though I am an Englishman I would not be furiously of a party. I am far from thinking myself that genius, upon whom, at the end of these remarks, Madam Dacier congratulates my country; one capable of correcting Homer, and conseqnently of reforming mankind, and amending this constitution.' It was not to Great Britain this ought to have been applied, since our nation has one happiness for which she might have preferred it to her own, that as much as we abound in other miserable misguided sects, we have at least none of the blasphemers of Homer. We steadfastly and unanimously believe, both his poem, and our constitution, to be the best that ever human wit invented: that the one is not more incapable of amendment than the other; and (old as they both are) we despise any French or Englishman whatever, who shall presume to retrench, to innovate, or to make the least alteration in either. Far therefore from the genius for which Madam Dacier mistook me, my whole desire is but to preserve the humble character of a faithful translator, and a quiet subject. Dacier Remarques surde 4me livre de l'Odyss. p. 467. To BOOK I. O fill my rising song with sacred fire, Ye tuneful Nine, ye sweet celestial quire! From Helicon's imbowering height repair, Attend my labours, and reward my prayer. The dreadful toils of raging Mars I write, The springs of contest, and the fields of fight; How threatening mice advanced with warlike grace, And waged dire combats with the croaking race. Not louder tumults shook Olympus' towers, When earth-born giants dared immortal powers. These equal acts an equal glory claim, And thus the muse records the tale of fame. Once on a time, fatigued and out of breath, And just escaped the stretching claws of death, A gentle mouse, whom cats pursued in vain, Flies swift of foot across the neighbouring plain, Hangs o'er a brink his eager thirst to cool, And dips his whiskers in the standing pool; When near a courteous frog advanced his head, And from the waters, hoarse resounding said: What art thou, stranger? what the line you boast? What chance hath cast thee panting on our coast? With strictest truth let all thy words agree, Nor let me find a faithless mouse in thee. If worthy friendship, proffer'd friendship take, Where by the nuptial bank that paints his side The swift Eridanus delights to glide. 5 Thee too, thy form, thy strength, and port declaim, A scepter'd king; a son of martial fame; Then trace thy line, and aid my guessing eyes. Thus ceased the frog, and thus the mouse replies: Known to the gods, the men, the birds that fly 10 Through wild expanses of the midway sky, My name resounds; and if unknown to thee, The soul of great Psycarpax lives in me. Of brave Troxartes' line, whose sleeky down In love compress'd Lychomyle the brown. 15 My mother she, and princess of the plains Where'er her father Pternotroctas reigns: Born where a cabin lifts its airy shed, With figs, with nuts, with varied dainties fed. But since our natures nought in common know, From what foundation can a friendship grow? These curling waters o'er thy palace roll; But man's high food supports my princely soul. In vain the circled loaves attempt to lie Conceal d in flaskets from my curious eye; 20 -M 25 30 35 40 45 50 In vain the tripe that boasts the whitest hue, And fix indented wounds with dexterous skill; As thus the downy prince his mind express'd He said, and lent his back; with nimble bound WHEN rosy-finger'd morn had tinged the clouds, Around their monarch-mouse the nation crowds, 65 Slow rose the monarch, heaved his anxious breast, And thus the council fill'd with rage address'd: For lost Psycarpax much my soul endures; As near my court the prince unheedful sate. His words in every breast inspired alarms, 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 100 105 Ye frogs! the mice, with vengeance fired advance, 40 As thus he sorrows, death ambiguous grows: 120 O friends! I never forced the mouse to death, 125 But heaven has gods, and gods have searching eyes: 130 This said, he sighing gasp'd, and gasping died. His death the young Lychopinax espied, As on the flowery brink he pass'd the day, Bask'd in the beam, and loiter'd life away: Loud shrieks the mouse, his shrieks the shores repeat: 136 Grief, dismal grief ensues; deep murmurs sound, And shriller fury fills the deafen'd ground; From lodge to lodge the sacred heralds run, To fix their counsel with the rising sun; 140 Where great Troxartes crown'd in glory reigns, For poor Psycarpax lies remote from shore: And no kind billow wafts the dead to land! 145 (A solemn council call'd) the brazen gates 45 50 55 60 05 70 75 80 BATTLE OF THE FROGS AND MICE. The sire superior leans, and points to show Thus spake the ruler of the spacious skies; 85 91 The strong Lymnocharis, who view'd with ire A victor triumph, and a friend expire; With heaving arms a rocky fragment caught, And fiercely flung where Troglodytes fought, A warrior versed in arts of sure retreat, Yet arts in vain elude impending fate; Full on his sinewy neck the fragment fell, And o'er his eye-lids clouds eternal dwell. Lychenor (second of the glorious name) Striding advanced, and took no wandering alm; 95 Through all the frog the shining javelin flies, 30 35 90 100 And near the vanquish'd mouse the victor dies. 105 Through the wide wound the rushing entrails throng, Lymnisius good Tyroglyphus assails, Prince of the mice that haunt the flowery vales; 110 He came to perish on the bank of fate. The dread Pternoglyphus demands the fight, 40 45 50 115 The dire Pternophagus divides his way "Till fallen in death he lies; a shattering stone A blameless frog, whom humbler life delights; 65 70 Who, wildly rushing, meet the wondrous odds, 135 So moved the blue-eyed queen, her words pursuade; Great Jove assented, and the rest obey'd. 140 BOOK III. Now OW front to front the marching armies shine, Transfix and quiver in his panting heart! Troxartes wounds, and Physignathus flies, Halts to the pool, a safe retreat to find. And trails a dangling length of leg behind. The mouse still urges, still the frog retires, 20 And half in anguish of the flight expires: Then pious ardour young Prassæus brings, Betwixt the fortunes of contending kings: Lank, harmless frog! with forces hardly grown, He darts the reed in combats not his own, 25 Which faintly tinkling on Troxartes' shield, Hangs at the point, and drops upon the field. Now nobly towering o'er the rest appears A gallant prince that far transcends his years, Then drags him o'er the lake, deprived of breath: And downward plunging, sinks his soul to death. But now the great Psycarpax shines afar (Scarce he so great whose loss provoked the war), Swift to revenge his fatal javelin fled. And through the liver struck Pelusius dead; His freckled corse before the victor fell, His soul indignant sought the shades of hell. This saw Pelobates, and from the flood Lifts with both hands a monstrous mass of mud; The cloud obscene o'er all the warrior flies, Dishonours his brown face, and blots his eyes. Enraged, and wildly sputtering from the shore, A stone immense of size the warrior bore; A load for labouring earth, whose bulk to raise, Ask ten degenerate mice of modern days: Full to the leg arrives the crushing wound; The frog supportless writhes upon the ground. Thus flush'd the victor wars with matchless force, "Till loud Craugasides arrests his course: Hoarse croaking threats precede; with fatal speed Deep through the belly runs the pointed reed, 5 Then, strongly tugg'd, return'd imbrued with gore, And on the pile his reeking entrails bore. The lame Sitophagus, oppress'd with pain, Creeps from the desperate dangers of the plain: And where the ditches rising weeds supply, 10 To spread the lowly shades beneath the sky; There lurks the silent mouse relieved of heat, And, safe imbower'd, avoids the chance of fate. But here Troxartes, Physignathus there, Whirl the dire furies of the pointed spear: 15 Then where the foot around its ankle plies, 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 |