The Iliad of Homer, Homer [e books free to read .TXT] 📗

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 xiv 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, xv 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.

xvii 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]

xviii 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:—