Whether a translation of Homer may be best executed in blank
verse or in rhyme, is a question in the decision of which no man
can find difficulty, who has ever duly considered what translation
ought to be, or who is in any degree practically acquainted with
those very different kinds of versification. I will venture to
assert that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme, is
impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing
every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time
the full sense, and only the full sense of his original. The
translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomes itself a
snare, and the readier he is at invention and expedient, the more
likely he is to be betrayed into the widest departures from the
guide whom he professes to follow. Hence it has happened, that
although the public have long been in possession of an English
Homer by a poet whose writings have done immortal honor to his
country, the demand of a new one, and especially in blank verse,
has been repeatedly and loudly made by some of the best judges and
ablest writers of the present day.
I have no contest with my predecessor. None is supposable
between performers on different instruments. Mr. Pope has
surmounted all difficulties in his version of Homer that it was
possible to surmount in rhyme. But he was fettered, and his fetters
were his choice. Accustomed always to rhyme, he had formed to
himself an ear which probably could not be much gratified by verse
that wanted it, and determined to encounter even impossibilities,
rather than abandon a mode of writing in which he had excelled
every body, for the sake of another to which, unexercised in it as
he was, he must have felt strong objections.
I number myself among the warmest admirers of Mr. Pope as an
original writer, and I allow him all the merit he can justly claim
as the translator of this chief of poets. He has given us the
Tale of Troy divine in smooth verse, generally in correct
and elegant language, and in diction often highly poetical. But his
deviations are so many, occasioned chiefly by the cause already
mentioned, that, much as he has done, and valuable as his work is
on some accounts, it was yet in the humble province of a translator
that I thought it possible even for me to fellow him with some
advantage.
That he has sometimes altogether suppressed the sense of his
author, and has not seldom intermingled his own ideas with it, is a
remark which, on viii this occasion, nothing
but necessity should have extorted from me. But we differ sometimes
so widely in our matter, that unless this remark, invidious as it
seems, be premised, I know not how to obviate a suspicion, on the
one hand, of careless oversight, or of factitious embellishment on
the other. On this head, therefore, the English reader is to be
admonished, that the matter found in me, whether he like it or not,
is found also in Homer, and that the matter not found in me, how
much soever he may admire it, is found only in Mr. Pope. I have
omitted nothing; I have invented nothing.
There is indisputably a wide difference between the case of an
original writer in rhyme and a translator. In an original work the
author is free; if the rhyme be of difficult attainment, and he
cannot find it in one direction, he is at liberty to seek it in
another; the matter that will not accommodate itself to his
occasions he may discard, adopting such as will. But in a
translation no such option is allowable; the sense of the author is
required, and we do not surrender it willingly even to the plea of
necessity. Fidelity is indeed of the very essence of translation,
and the term itself implies it. For which reason, if we suppress
the sense of our original, and force into its place our own, we may
call our work an imitation, if we please, or perhaps a
paraphrase, but it is no longer the same author only in a
different dress, and therefore it is not translation. Should a
painter, professing to draw the likeness of a beautiful woman, give
her more or fewer features than belong to her, and a general cast
of countenance of his own invention, he might be said to have
produced a jeu d'esprit, a curiosity perhaps in its way,
but by no means the lady in question.
It will however be necessary to speak a little more largely to
this subject, on which discordant opinions prevail even among good
judges.
The free and the close translation have, each, their advocates.
But inconveniences belong to both. The former can hardly be true to
the original author's style and manner, and the latter is apt to be
servile. The one loses his peculiarities, and the other his spirit.
Were it possible, therefore, to find an exact medium, a manner so
close that it should let slip nothing of the text, nor mingle any
thing extraneous with it, and at the same time so free as to have
an air of originality, this seems precisely the mode in which an
author might be best rendered. I can assure my readers from my own
experience, that to discover this very delicate line is difficult,
and to proceed by it when found, through the whole length of a poet
voluminous as Homer, nearly impossible. I can only pretend to have
endeavored it.
It is an opinion commonly received, but, like many others,
indebted for its prevalence to mere want of examination, that a
translator should imagine to himself the style which his author
would probably have used, had the language into which he is
rendered been his own. A direction which wants nothing but
practicability to recommend it. For suppose six persons, equally
qualified for the task, employed to translate the same Ancient into
their own language, with this rule to guide them. In the event it
would be found, that each had fallen on a manner different from
that of all the rest, and by probable inference it would follow
that none had fallen on the right. On the whole, therefore, as has
been said, the translation which partakes equally of fidelity and
liberality, that is close, but not so close as to ix be servile, free, but not so free as to be
licentious, promises fairest; and my ambition will be sufficiently
gratified, if such of my readers as are able, and will take the
pains to compare me in this respect with Homer, shall judge that I
have in any measure attained a point so difficult.
As to energy and harmony, two grand requisites in a translation
of this most energetic and most harmonious of all poets, it is
neither my purpose nor my wish, should I be found deficient in
either, or in both, to shelter myself under an unfilial imputation
of blame to my mother-tongue. Our language is indeed less musical
than the Greek, and there is no language with which I am at all
acquainted that is not. But it is musical enough for the purposes
of melodious verse, and if it seem to fail, on whatsoever occasion,
in energy, the blame is due, not to itself, but to the unskilful
manager of it. For so long as Milton's works, whether his prose or
his verse, shall exist, so long there will be abundant proof that
no subject, however important, however sublime, can demand greater
force of expression than is within the compass of the English
language.
I have no fear of judges familiar with original Homer. They need
not be told that a translation of him is an arduous enterprise, and
as such, entitled to some favor. From these, therefore, I shall
expect, and shall not be disappointed, considerable candor and
allowance. Especially they will be candid, and I believe
that there are many such, who have occasionally tried their own
strength in this bow of Ulysses. They have not found it
supple and pliable, and with me are perhaps ready to acknowledge
that they could not always even approach with it the mark of their
ambition. But I would willingly, were it possible, obviate uncandid
criticism, because to answer it is lost labor, and to receive it in
silence has the appearance of stately reserve, and
self-importance.
To those, therefore, who shall be inclined to tell me hereafter
that my diction is often plain and unelevated, I reply beforehand
that I know it,—that it would be absurd were it otherwise, and that
Homer himself stands in the same predicament. In fact, it is one of
his numberless excellences, and a point in which his judgment never
fails him, that he is grand and lofty always in the right place,
and knows infallibly how to rise and fall with his subject. Big
words on small matters may serve as a pretty exact definition
of the burlesque; an instance of which they will find in the Battle
of the Frogs and Mice, but none in the Iliad.
By others I expect to be told that my numbers, though here and
there tolerably smooth, are not always such, but have, now and
then, an ugly hitch in their gait, ungraceful in itself, and
inconvenient to the reader. To this charge also I plead guilty, but
beg leave in alleviation of judgment to add, that my limping lines
are not numerous, compared with those that limp not. The truth is,
that not one of them all escaped me, but, such as they are, they
were all made such with a wilful intention. In poems of great
length there is no blemish more to be feared than sameness of
numbers, and every art is useful by which it may be avoided. A
line, rough in itself, has yet its recommendations; it saves the
ear the pain of an irksome monotony, and seems even to add greater
smoothness to others. Milton, whose ear and taste were exquisite,
has exemplified in his Paradise Lost the effect of this practice
frequently.
x Having mentioned Milton, I cannot but add
an observation on the similitude of his manner to that of Homer. It
is such, that no person familiar with both, can read either without
being reminded of the other; and it is in those breaks and pauses,
to which the numbers of the English poet are so much indebted both
for their dignity and variety, that he chiefly copies the Grecian.
But these are graces to which rhyme is not competent; so broken, it
loses all its music; of which any person may convince himself by
reading a page only of any of our poets anterior to Denham, Waller,
and Dryden. A translator of Homer, therefore, seems directed by
Homer himself to the use of blank verse, as to that alone in which
he can be rendered with any tolerable representation of his manner
in this particular. A remark which I am naturally led to make by a
desire to conciliate, if possible, some, who, rather unreasonably
partial to rhyme, demand it on all occasions, and seem persuaded
that poetry in our language is a vain attempt without it. Verse,
that claims to be verse in right of its metre only, they judge to
be such rather by courtesy than by kind, on an apprehension that it
costs the writer little trouble, that he has only to give his lines
their prescribed number of syllables, and so far as the mechanical
part is concerned, all is well. Were this true, they would have
reason on their side; for the author is certainly best entitled to
applause who succeeds against the greatest difficulty, and in verse
that calls for the most artificial management in its construction.
But the case is not as they suppose. To rhyme, in our language,
demands no great exertion of ingenuity, but is always easy to a
person exercised in the practice. Witness the multitudes who rhyme,
but have no other poetical pretensions. Let it be considered too,
how merciful we are apt to be to unclassical and indifferent
language for the sake of rhyme, and we shall soon see that the
labor lies principally on the other side. Many ornaments of no easy
purchase are required to atone for the absence of this single
recommendation. It is not sufficient that the lines of blank verse
be smooth in themselves, they must also be harmonious in the
combination. Whereas the chief concern of the rhymist is to beware
that his couplets and his sense be commensurate, lest the
regularity of his numbers should be (too frequently at least)
interrupted. A trivial difficulty this, compared with those which
attend the poet unaccompanied by his bells. He, in order that he
may be musical, must exhibit all the variations, as he proceeds, of
which ten syllables are susceptible; between the first syllable and
the last there is no place at which he must not occasionally pause,
and the place of the pause must be perpetually shifted. To effect
this variety, his attention must be given, at one and the same
time, to the pauses he has already made in the period before him,
as well as to that which he is about to make, and to those which
shall succeed it. On no lighter terms than these is it possible
that blank verse can be written which will not, in the course of a
long work, fatigue the ear past all endurance. If it be easier,
therefore, to throw five balls into the air and to catch them in
succession, than to sport in that manner with one only, then may
blank verse be more easily fabricated than rhyme. And if to these
labors we add others equally requisite, a style in general more
elaborate than rhyme requires, farther removed from the vernacular
idiom both in the language xi itself and in the
arrangement of it, we shall not long doubt which of these two very
different species of verse threatens the composer with most expense
of study and contrivance. I feel it unpleasant to appeal to my own
experience, but, having no other voucher at hand, am constrained to
it. As I affirm, so I have found. I have dealt pretty largely in
both kinds, and have frequently written more verses in a day, with
tags, than I could ever write without them. To what has been here
said (which whether it have been said by others or not, I cannot
tell, having never read any modern book on the subject) I shall
only add, that to be poetical without rhyme, is an argument of a
sound and classical constitution in any language.
A word or two on the subject of the following translation, and I
have done.
My chief boast is that I have adhered closely to my original,
convinced that every departure from him would be punished with the
forfeiture of some grace or beauty for which I could substitute no
equivalent. The epithets that would consent to an English form I
have preserved as epithets; others that would not, I have melted
into the context. There are none, I believe, which I have not
translated in one way or other, though the reader will not find
them repeated so often as most of them are in Homer, for a reason
that need not be mentioned.
Few persons of any consideration are introduced either in the
Iliad or Odyssey by their own name only, but their patronymic is
given also. To this ceremonial I have generally attended, because
it is a circumstance of my author's manner.
Homer never allots less than a whole line to the introduction of
a speaker. No, not even when the speech itself is no longer than
the line that leads it. A practice to which, since he never departs
from it, he must have been determined by some cogent reason. He
probably deemed it a formality necessary to the majesty of his
narration. In this article, therefore, I have scrupulously adhered
to my pattern, considering these introductory lines as heralds in a
procession; important persons, because employed to usher in persons
more important than themselves.
It has been my point every where to be as little verbose as
possible, though; at the same time, my constant determination not
to sacrifice my author's full meaning to an affected brevity.
In the affair of style, I have endeavored neither to creep nor
to bluster, for no author is so likely to betray his translator
into both these faults, as Homer, though himself never guilty of
either. I have cautiously avoided all terms of new invention, with
an abundance of which, persons of more ingenuity than judgment have
not enriched our language, but incumbered it. I have also every
where used an unabbreviated fullness of phrase as most suited to
the nature of the work, and, above all, have studied perspicuity,
not only because verse is good for little that wants it, but
because Homer is the most perspicuous of all poets.
In all difficult places I have consulted the best commentators,
and where they have differed, or have given, as is often the case,
a variety of solutions, I have ever exercised my best judgment, and
selected that which appears, at least to myself, the most probable
interpretation. On this ground, xii and on
account of the fidelity which I have already boasted, I may
venture, I believe, to recommend my work as promising some
usefulness to young students of the original.
The passages which will be least noticed, and possibly not at
all, except by those who shall wish to find me at a fault, are
those which have cost me abundantly the most labor. It is difficult
to kill a sheep with dignity in a modern language, to flay and to
prepare it for the table, detailing every circumstance of the
process. Difficult also, without sinking below the level of poetry,
to harness mules to a wagon, particularizing every article of their
furniture, straps, rings, staples, and even the tying of the knots
that kept all together. Homer, who writes always to the eye, with
all his sublimity and grandeur, has the minuteness of a Flemish
painter.
But in what degree I have succeeded in my version either of
these passages, and such as these, or of others more buoyant and
above-ground, and especially of the most sublime, is now submitted
to the decision of the reader, to whom I am ready enough to confess
that I have not at all consulted their approbation, who account
nothing grand that is not turgid, or elegant that is not bedizened
with metaphor.
I purposely decline all declamation on the merits of Homer,
because a translator's praises of his author are liable to a
suspicion of dotage, and because it were impossible to improve on
those which this author has received already. He has been the
wonder of all countries that his works have ever reached, even
deified by the greatest names of antiquity, and in some places
actually worshipped. And to say truth, were it possible that mere
man could entitle himself by pre-eminence of any kind to divine
honors, Homer's astonishing powers seem to have given him the best
pretensions.
I cannot conclude without due acknowledgments to the best critic
in Homer I have ever met with, the learned and ingenious Mr.
Fuseli. Unknown as he was to me when I entered on this arduous
undertaking (indeed to this moment I have never seen him) he yet
voluntarily and generously offered himself as my revisor. To his
classical taste and just discernment I have been indebted for the
discovery of many blemishes in my own work, and of beauties, which
would otherwise have escaped me, in the original. But his necessary
avocations would not suffer him to accompany me farther than to the
latter books of the Iliad, a circumstance which I fear my readers,
as well as myself, will regret with too much reason.
I have obligations likewise to many friends, whose names, were
it proper to mention them here, would do me great honor. They have
encouraged me by their approbation, have assisted me with valuable
books, and have eased me of almost the whole labor of
transcribing.
And now I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended. To
the illustrious Greek I owe the smooth and easy flight of many
thousand hours. He has been my companion at home and abroad, in the
study, in the garden, and in the field; and no measure of success,
let my labors succeed as they may, will ever compensate to me the
loss of the innocent luxury that I have enjoyed, as a translator of
Homer.
PREFACE
PREPARED BY MR. COWPER,
FOR A
SECOND EDITION.
Soon after my publication of this work, I began to prepare it
for a second edition, by an accurate revisal of the first. It
seemed to me, that here and there, perhaps a slight alteration
might satisfy the demands of some, whom I was desirous to please;
and I comforted myself with the reflection, that if I still failed
to conciliate all, I should yet have no cause to account myself in
a singular degree unfortunate. To please an unqualified judge, an
author must sacrifice too much; and the attempt to please an
uncandid one were altogether hopeless. In one or other of these
classes may be ranged all such objectors, as would deprive blank
verse of one of its principal advantages, the variety of its
pauses; together with all such as deny the good effect, on the
whole, of a line, now and then, less harmonious than its
fellows.
With respect to the pauses, it has been affirmed with an
unaccountable rashness, that Homer himself has given me an example
of verse without them. Had this been true, it would by no means
have concluded against the use of them in an English version of
Homer; because, in one language, and in one species of metre, that
may be musical, 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.