The Iliad - 03

is evidently little disposed in favour of modern theories, finely
observes:—
“It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. No poet has
ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his countrymen.
Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character of other
nations; it was reserved to a poet to form that of the Greeks. This is
a feature in their character which was not wholly erased even in the
period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and sages appeared in
Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they
paid homage to his superior genius. He held up before his nation the
mirror, in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes no
less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity
and truth. His poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature;
on the love of children, wife, and country; on that passion which
outweighs all others, the love of glory. His songs were poured forth
from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of man; and
therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every breast which
cherishes the same sympathies. If it is granted to his immortal spirit,
from another heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down
on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia to the forests
of Hercynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic
wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him to view the vast
assemblage of grand, of elevated, of glorious productions, which had
been called into being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal
spirit may reside, this alone would suffice to complete his
happiness.”[35]
Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the “Apotheosis of
Homer”[36] is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing
association, how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to
our minds, is lost by the admittance of any theory but our old
tradition? The more we read, and the more we think—think as becomes the
readers of Homer,—the more rooted becomes the conviction that the
Father of Poetry gave us this rich inheritance, whole and entire.
Whatever were the means of its preservation, let us rather be thankful
for the treasury of taste and eloquence thus laid open to our use, than
seek to make it a mere centre around which to drive a series of
theories, whose wildness is only equalled by their inconsistency with
each other.
As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not
included in Pope’s translation, I will content myself with a brief
account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer
who has done it full justice[37]:—
“This poem,” says Coleridge, “is a short mock-heroic of ancient date.
The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and
corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to have been a juvenile
essay of Homer’s genius; others have attributed it to the same Pigrees,
mentioned above, and whose reputation for humour seems to have invited
the appropriation of any piece of ancient wit, the author of which was
uncertain; so little did the Greeks, before the age of the Ptolemies,
know or care about that department of criticism employed in determining
the genuineness of ancient writings. As to this little poem being a
youthful profusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the
beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the
general spirit, but of the numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and
even, if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the
objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque
to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse
that order in the development of national taste, which the history of
every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost
ascertained to be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society
much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that
any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is
contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three
other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as
much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of
them were of the Homeric age. Knight infers from the usage of the word
deltos, “writing tablet,” instead of διφθέρα, “skin,” which, according
to Herod. 5, 58, was the material employed by the Asiatic Greeks for
that purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic ingenuity;
and generally that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a
strong argument against so ancient a date for its composition.”
Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope’s
design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation,
and on my own purpose in the present edition.
Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been irregular, and his
earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of Ogilby.
It is not too much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a
disposition to be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive
deeply into the minute and delicate features of language. Hence his
whole work is to be looked upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a
translation. There are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes,
which prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical
attainments were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it
is probable that these examinations were the result rather of the
contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make a
perfect transcript of the original. And in those days, what is called
literal translation was less cultivated than at present. If something
like the general sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of
a practised poet; if the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing
fluency could be made consistent with a fair interpretation of the
poet’s meaning, his _words_ were less jealously sought for, and those
who could read so good a poem as Pope’s Iliad had fair reason to be
satisfied.
It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope’s translation by our own
advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be content to look at
it as a most delightful work in itself,—a work which is as much a part
of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not be torn
from our kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most
cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because
Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to
ἀμφικύπελλον being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from
us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman’s
fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from us to hold up his
translation as what a translation of Homer _might_ be. But we can still
dismiss Pope’s Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the
consciousness that they must have read a very great number of books
before they have read its fellow.
As to the Notes accompanying the present volume, they are drawn up
without pretension, and mainly with the view of helping the general
reader. Having some little time since translated all the works of Homer
for another publisher, I might have brought a large amount of
accumulated matter, sometimes of a critical character, to bear upon the
text. But Pope’s version was no field for such a display; and my
purpose was to touch briefly on antiquarian or mythological allusions,
to notice occasionally _some_ departures from the original, and to give
a few parallel passages from our English Homer, Milton. In the latter
task I cannot pretend to novelty, but I trust that my other
annotations, while utterly disclaiming high scholastic views, will be
found to convey as much as is wanted; at least, as far as the necessary
limits of these volumes could be expected to admit. To write a
commentary on Homer is not my present aim; but if I have made Pope’s
translation a little more entertaining and instructive to a mass of
miscellaneous readers, I shall consider my wishes satisfactorily
accomplished.
THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.

_Christ Church_.


POPE’S PREFACE TO THE ILIAD OF HOMER

Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any
writer whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested
with him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular
excellences; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a
wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most
excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. It is the
invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great geniuses:
the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which
masters everything besides, can never attain to this. It furnishes art
with all her materials, and without it judgment itself can at best but
“steal wisely:” for art is only like a prudent steward that lives on
managing the riches of nature. Whatever praises may be given to works
of judgment, there is not even a single beauty in them to which the
invention must not contribute: as in the most regular gardens, art can
only reduce beauties of nature to more regularity, and such a figure,
which the common eye may better take in, and is, therefore, more
entertained with. And, perhaps, the reason why common critics are
inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great and
fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to pursue
their observations through a uniform and bounded walk of art, than to
comprehend the vast and various extent of nature.
Our author’s work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see all the
beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the
number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery,
which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of
which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants,
each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things
are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if
others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because
they are overrun and oppressed by those of a stronger nature.
It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribute
that unequalled fire and rapture which is so forcible in Homer, that no
man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him.
What he writes is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing
moves, every thing lives, and is put in action. If a council be called,
or a battle fought, you are not coldly informed of what was said or
done as from a third person; the reader is hurried out of himself by
the force of the poet’s imagination, and turns in one place to a
hearer, in another to a spectator. The course of his verses resembles
that of the army he describes,
Οἵδ’ ἄῤ ἴσαν, ὡσεί τε πυρὶ χθὼν πἆσα νέμοιτο.
“They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth before it.” It
is, however, remarkable, that his fancy, which is everywhere vigorous,
is not discovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its
fullest splendour: it grows in the progress both upon himself and
others, and becomes on fire, like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity.
Exact disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers,
may have been found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this “vivida
vis animi,” in a very few. Even in works where all those are imperfect
or neglected, this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even
while we disapprove. Nay, where this appears, though attended with
absurdities, it brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing
but its own splendour. This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned
as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but
everywhere equal and constant: in Lucan and Statius it bursts out in
sudden, short, and interrupted flashes: In Milton it glows like a
furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: in
Shakspeare it strikes before we are aware, like an accidental fire from
heaven: but in Homer, and in him only, it burns everywhere clearly and
everywhere irresistibly.
I shall here endeavour to show how this vast invention exerts itself in
a manner superior to that of any poet through all the main constituent
parts of his work: as it is the great and peculiar characteristic which
distinguishes him from all other authors.
This strong and ruling faculty was like a powerful star, which, in the
violence of its course, drew all things within its vortex. It seemed
not enough to have taken in the whole circle of arts, and the whole
compass of nature, to supply his maxims and reflections; all the inward
passions and affections of mankind, to furnish his characters: and all
the outward forms and images of things for his descriptions: but
wanting yet an ampler sphere to expatiate in, he opened a new and
boundless walk for his imagination, and created a world for himself in
the invention of fable. That which Aristotle calls “the soul of
poetry,” was first breathed into it by Homer. I shall begin with
considering him in his part, as it is naturally the first; and I speak
of it both as it means the design of a poem, and as it is taken for
fiction.

Fable may be divided into the probable, the allegorical, and the
marvellous. The probable fable is the recital of such actions as,
though they did not happen, yet might, in the common course of nature;
or of such as, though they did, became fables by the additional
episodes and manner of telling them. Of this sort is the main story of
an epic poem, “The return of Ulysses, the settlement of the Trojans in
Italy,” or the like. That of the Iliad is the “anger of Achilles,” the
most short and single subject that ever was chosen by any poet. Yet
this he has supplied with a vaster variety of incidents and events, and
crowded with a greater number of councils, speeches, battles, and
episodes of all kinds, than are to be found even in those poems whose
schemes are of the utmost latitude and irregularity. The action is
hurried on with the most vehement spirit, and its whole duration
employs not so much as fifty days. Virgil, for want of so warm a
genius, aided himself by taking in a more extensive subject, as well as
a greater length of time, and contracting the design of both Homer’s
poems into one, which is yet but a fourth part as large as his. The
other epic poets have used the same practice, but generally carried it
so far as to superinduce a multiplicity of fables, destroy the unity of
action, and lose their readers in an unreasonable length of time. Nor
is it only in the main design that they have been unable to add to his
invention, but they have followed him in every episode and part of
story. If he has given a regular catalogue of an army, they all draw up
their forces in the same order. If he has funeral games for Patroclus,
Virgil has the same for Anchises, and Statius (rather than omit them)
destroys the unity of his actions for those of Archemorus. If Ulysses
visit the shades, the Æneas of Virgil and Scipio of Silius are sent
after him. If he be detained from his return by the allurements of
Calypso, so is Æneas by Dido, and Rinaldo by Armida. If Achilles be
absent from the army on the score of a quarrel through half the poem,
Rinaldo must absent himself just as long on the like account. If he
gives his hero a suit of celestial armour, Virgil and Tasso make the
same present to theirs. Virgil has not only observed this close
imitation of Homer, but, where he had not led the way, supplied the
want from other Greek authors. Thus the story of Sinon, and the taking
of Troy, was copied (says Macrobius) almost word for word from
Pisander, as the loves of Dido and Æneas are taken from those of Medea
and Jason in Apollonius, and several others in the same manner.

To proceed to the allegorical fable—If we reflect upon those
innumerable knowledges, those secrets of nature and physical philosophy
which Homer is generally supposed to have wrapped up in his allegories,
what a new and ample scene of wonder may this consideration afford us!
How fertile will that imagination appear, which was able to clothe all
the properties of elements, the qualifications of the mind, the virtues
and vices, in forms and persons, and to introduce them into actions
agreeable to the nature of the things they shadowed! This is a field in
which no succeeding poets could dispute with Homer, and whatever
commendations have been allowed them on this head, are by no means for
their invention in having enlarged his circle, but for their judgment
in having contracted it. For when the mode of learning changed in the
following ages, and science was delivered in a plainer manner, it then
became as reasonable in the more modern poets to lay it aside, as it
was in Homer to make use of it. And perhaps it was no unhappy
circumstance for Virgil, that there was not in his time that demand
upon him of so great an invention as might be capable of furnishing all
those allegorical parts of a poem.

The marvellous fable includes whatever is supernatural, and especially
the machines of the gods. 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, and
such a one as makes its greatest importance and dignity: for we find
those authors who have been offended at the literal notion of the gods,
constantly laying their accusation against Homer as the chief support
of it. But whatever cause there might be to blame his machines in a
philosophical or religious view, they are so perfect in the poetic,
that mankind have been ever since contented to follow them: none have
been able to enlarge the sphere of poetry beyond the limits he has set:
every attempt of this nature has proved unsuccessful; and after all the
various changes of times and religions, his gods continue to this day
the gods of poetry.

We come now to the characters of his persons; and here we shall find no
author has ever drawn so many, with so visible and surprising a
variety, or given us such lively and affecting impressions of them.
Every one has something so singularly his own, that no painter could
have distinguished them more by their features, than the poet has by
their manners. Nothing can be more exact than the distinctions he has
observed in the different degrees of virtues and vices. The single
quality of courage is wonderfully diversified in the several characters
of the Iliad. That of Achilles is furious and intractable; that of
Diomede forward, yet listening to advice, and subject to command; that
of Ajax is heavy and self-confiding; of Hector, active and vigilant:
the courage of Agamemnon is inspirited by love of empire and ambition;
that of Menelaus mixed with softness and tenderness for his people: we
find in Idomeneus a plain direct soldier; in Sarpedon a gallant and
generous one. Nor is this judicious and astonishing diversity to be
found only in the principal quality which constitutes the main of each
character, but even in the under parts of it, to which he takes care to
give a tincture of that principal one. For example: the main characters
of Ulysses and Nestor consist in wisdom; and they are distinct in this,
that the wisdom of one is artificial and various, of the other natural,
open, and regular. But they have, besides, characters of courage; and
this quality also takes a different turn in each from the difference of
his prudence; for one in the war depends still upon caution, the other
upon experience. It would be endless to produce instances of these
kinds. The characters of Virgil are far from striking us in this open
manner; they lie, in a great degree, hidden and undistinguished; and,
where they are marked most evidently affect us not in proportion to
those of Homer. His characters of valour are much alike; even that of
Turnus seems no way peculiar, but, as it is, in a superior degree; and
we see nothing that differences the courage of Mnestheus from that of
Sergestus, Cloanthus, or the rest. In like manner it may be remarked of
Statius’s heroes, that an air of impetuosity runs through them all; the
same horrid and savage courage appears in his Capaneus, Tydeus,
Hippomedon, &c. They have a parity of character, which makes them seem
brothers of one family. I believe when the reader is led into this
tract of reflection, if he will pursue it through the epic and tragic
writers, he will be convinced how infinitely superior, in this point,
the invention of Homer was to that of all others.

The speeches are to be considered as they flow from the characters;
being perfect or defective as they agree or disagree with the manners,
of those who utter them. As there is more variety of characters in the
Iliad, so there is of speeches, than in any other poem. “Everything in
it has manner” (as Aristotle expresses it), that is, everything is
acted or spoken. It is hardly credible, in a work of such length, how
small a number of lines are employed in narration. In Virgil the
dramatic part is less in proportion to the narrative, and the speeches
often consist of general reflections or thoughts, which might be
equally just in any person’s mouth upon the same occasion. As many of
his persons have no apparent characters, so many of his speeches escape
being applied and judged by the rule of propriety. We oftener think of
the author himself when we read Virgil, than when we are engaged in
Homer, all which are the effects of a colder invention, that interests
us less in the action described. Homer makes us hearers, and Virgil
leaves us readers.

If, in the next place, we take a view of the sentiments, the same
presiding faculty is eminent in the sublimity and spirit of his
thoughts. Longinus has given his opinion, that it was in this part
Homer principally excelled. What were alone sufficient to prove the
grandeur and excellence of his sentiments in general, is, that they
have so remarkable a parity with those of the Scripture. Duport, in his
Gnomologia Homerica, has collected innumerable instances of this sort.
And it is with justice an excellent modern writer allows, that if
Virgil has not so many thoughts that are low and vulgar, he has not so
many that are sublime and noble; and that the Roman author seldom rises
into very astonishing sentiments where he is not fired by the Iliad.

If we observe his descriptions, images, and similes, we shall find the
invention still predominant. To what else can we ascribe that vast
comprehension of images of every sort, where we see each circumstance
of art, and individual of nature, summoned together by the extent and
fecundity of his imagination to which all things, in their various
views presented themselves in an instant, and had their impressions
taken off to perfection at a heat? Nay, he not only gives us the full
prospects of things, but several unexpected peculiarities and side
views, unobserved by any painter but Homer. Nothing is so surprising as
the descriptions of his battles, which take up no less than half the
Iliad, and are supplied with so vast a variety of incidents, that no
one bears a likeness to another; such different kinds of deaths, that
no two heroes are wounded in the same manner, and such a profusion of
noble ideas, that every battle rises above the last in greatness,
horror, and confusion. It is certain there is not near that number of
images and descriptions in any epic poet, though every one has assisted
himself with a great quantity out of him; and it is evident of Virgil
especially, that he has scarce any comparisons which are not drawn from
his master.

If we descend from hence to the expression, we see the bright
imagination of Homer shining out in the most enlivened forms of it. We
acknowledge him the father of poetical diction; the first who taught
that “language of the gods” to men. His expression is like the
colouring of some great masters, which discovers itself to be laid on
boldly, and executed with rapidity. It is, indeed, the strongest and
most glowing imaginable, and touched with the greatest spirit.
Aristotle had reason to say, he was the only poet who had found out
“living words;” there are in him more daring figures and metaphors than
in any good author whatever. An arrow is “impatient” to be on the wing,
a weapon “thirsts” to drink the blood of an enemy, and the like, yet
his expression is never too big for the sense, but justly great in
proportion to it. It is the sentiment that swells and fills out the
diction, which rises with it, and forms itself about it, for in the
same degree that a thought is warmer, an expression will be brighter,
as that is more strong, this will become more perspicuous; like glass
in the furnace, which grows to a greater magnitude, and refines to a
greater clearness, only as the breath within is more powerful, and the
heat more intense.

To throw his language more out of prose, Homer seems to have affected
the compound epithets. This was a sort of composition peculiarly proper
to poetry, not only as it heightened the diction, but as it assisted
and filled the numbers with greater sound and pomp, and likewise
conduced in some measure to thicken the images. On this last
consideration I cannot but attribute these also to the fruitfulness of
his invention, since (as he has managed them) they are a sort of
supernumerary pictures of the persons or things to which they were
joined. We see the motion of Hector’s plumes in the epithet
Κορυθαίολος, the landscape of Mount Neritus in that of Εἰνοσίφυλλος,
and so of others, which particular images could not have been insisted
upon so long as to express them in a description (though but of a
single line) without diverting the reader too much from the principal
action or figure. As a metaphor is a short simile, one of these
epithets is a short description.

Lastly, if we consider his versification, we shall be sensible what a
share of praise is due to his invention in that also. He was not
satisfied with his language as he found it settled in any one part of
Greece, but searched through its different dialects with this
particular view, to beautify and perfect his numbers he considered
these as they had a greater mixture of vowels or consonants, and
accordingly employed them as the verse required either a greater
smoothness or strength. What he most affected was the Ionic, which has
a peculiar sweetness, from its never using contractions, and from its
custom of resolving the diphthongs into two syllables, so as to make
the words open themselves with a more spreading and sonorous fluency.
With this he mingled the Attic contractions, the broader Doric, and the
feebler Æolic, which often rejects its aspirate, or takes off its
accent, and completed this variety by altering some letters with the
licence of poetry. Thus his measures, instead of being fetters to his
sense, were always in readiness to run along with the warmth of his
rapture, and even to give a further representation of his notions, in
the correspondence of their sounds to what they signified. Out of all
these he has derived that harmony which makes us confess he had not
only the richest head, but the finest ear in the world. This is so
great a truth, that whoever will but consult the tune of his verses,
even without understanding them (with the same sort of diligence as we
daily see practised in the case of Italian operas), will find more
sweetness, variety, and majesty of sound, than in any other language of
poetry. The beauty of his numbers is allowed by the critics to be
copied but faintly by Virgil himself, though they are so just as to
ascribe it to the nature of the Latin tongue: indeed the Greek has some
advantages both from the natural sound of its words, and the turn and
cadence of its verse, which agree with the genius of no other language.
Virgil was very sensible of this, and used the utmost diligence in