The Iliad - 04

working up a more intractable language to whatsoever graces it was
capable of, and, in particular, never failed to bring the sound of his
line to a beautiful agreement with its sense. If the Grecian poet has
not been so frequently celebrated on this account as the Roman, the
only reason is, that fewer critics have understood one language than
the other. Dionysius of Halicarnassus has pointed out many of our
author’s beauties in this kind, in his treatise of the Composition of
Words. It suffices at present to observe of his numbers, that they flow
with so much ease, as to make one imagine Homer had no other care than
to transcribe as fast as the Muses dictated, and, at the same time,
with so much force and inspiriting vigour, that they awaken and raise
us like the sound of a trumpet. They roll along as a plentiful river,
always in motion, and always full; while we are borne away by a tide of
verse, the most rapid, and yet the most smooth imaginable.

Thus on whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us
is his invention. It is that which forms the character of each part of
his work; and accordingly we find it to have made his fable more
extensive and copious than any other, his manners more lively and
strongly marked, his speeches more affecting and transported, his
sentiments more warm and sublime, his images and descriptions more full
and animated, his expression more raised and daring, and his numbers
more rapid and various. I hope, in what has been said of Virgil, with
regard to any of these heads, I have no way derogated from his
character. Nothing is more absurd or endless, than the common method of
comparing eminent writers by an opposition of particular passages in
them, and forming a judgment from thence of their merit upon the whole.
We ought to have a certain knowledge of the principal character and
distinguishing excellence of each: it is in that we are to consider
him, and in proportion to his degree in that we are to admire him. No
author or man ever excelled all the world in more than one faculty; and
as Homer has done this in invention, Virgil has in judgment. Not that
we are to think that Homer wanted judgment, because Virgil had it in a
more eminent degree; or that Virgil wanted invention, because Homer
possessed a larger share of it; each of these great authors had more of
both than perhaps any man besides, and are only said to have less in
comparison with one another. Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the
better artist. In one we most admire the man, in the other the work.
Homer hurries and transports us with a commanding impetuosity; Virgil
leads us with an attractive majesty; Homer scatters with a generous
profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence; Homer, like the
Nile, pours out his riches with a boundless overflow; Virgil, like a
river in its banks, with a gentle and constant stream. When we behold
their battles, methinks the two poets resemble the heroes they
celebrate. Homer, boundless and resistless as Achilles, bears all
before him, and shines more and more as the tumult increases; Virgil,
calmly daring, like Æneas, appears undisturbed in the midst of the
action; disposes all about him, and conquers with tranquillity. And
when we look upon their machines, Homer seems like his own Jupiter in
his terrors, shaking Olympus, scattering the lightnings, and firing the
heavens: Virgil, like the same power in his benevolence, counselling
with the gods, laying plans for empires, and regularly ordering his
whole creation.

But after all, it is with great parts, as with great virtues, they
naturally border on some imperfection; and it is often hard to
distinguish exactly where the virtue ends, or the fault begins. As
prudence may sometimes sink to suspicion, so may a great judgment
decline to coldness; and as magnanimity may run up to profusion or
extravagance, so may a great invention to redundancy or wildness. If we
look upon Homer in this view, we shall perceive the chief objections
against him to proceed from so noble a cause as the excess of this
faculty.

Among these we may reckon some of his marvellous fictions, upon which
so much criticism has been spent, as surpassing all the bounds of
probability. Perhaps it may be with great and superior souls, as with
gigantic bodies, which, exerting themselves with unusual strength,
exceed what is commonly thought the due proportion of parts, to become
miracles in the whole; and, like the old heroes of that make, commit
something near extravagance, amidst a series of glorious and inimitable
performances. Thus Homer has his “speaking horses;” and Virgil his
“myrtles distilling blood;” where the latter has not so much as
contrived the easy intervention of a deity to save the probability.

It is owing to the same vast invention, that his similes have been
thought too exuberant and full of circumstances. The force of this
faculty is seen in nothing more, than in its inability to confine
itself to that single circumstance upon which the comparison is
grounded: it runs out into embellishments of additional images, which,
however, are so managed as not to overpower the main one. His similes
are like pictures, where the principal figure has not only its
proportion given agreeable to the original, but is also set off with
occasional ornaments and prospects. The same will account for his
manner of heaping a number of comparisons together in one breath, when
his fancy suggested to him at once so many various and correspondent
images. The reader will easily extend this observation to more
objections of the same kind.

If there are others which seem rather to charge him with a defect or
narrowness of genius, than an excess of it, those seeming defects will
be found upon examination to proceed wholly from the nature of the
times he lived in. Such are his grosser representations of the gods;
and the vicious and imperfect manners of his heroes; but I must here
speak a word of the latter, as it is a point generally carried into
extremes, both by the censurers and defenders of Homer. It must be a
strange partiality to antiquity, to think with Madame Dacier,[38] “that
those times and manners are so much the more excellent, as they are
more contrary to ours.” Who can be so prejudiced in their favour as to
magnify the felicity of those ages, when a spirit of revenge and
cruelty, joined with the practice of rapine and robbery, reigned
through the world: when no mercy was shown but for the sake of lucre;
when the greatest princes were put to the sword, and their wives and
daughters made slaves and concubines? On the other side, I would not be
so delicate as those modern critics, who are shocked at the servile
offices and mean employments in which we sometimes see the heroes of
Homer engaged. There is a pleasure in taking a view of that simplicity,
in opposition to the luxury of succeeding ages: in beholding monarchs
without their guards; princes tending their flocks, and princesses
drawing water from the springs. When we read Homer, we ought to reflect
that we are reading the most ancient author in the heathen world; and
those who consider him in this light, will double their pleasure in the
perusal of him. Let them think they are growing acquainted with nations
and people that are now no more; that they are stepping almost three
thousand years back into the remotest antiquity, and entertaining
themselves with a clear and surprising vision of things nowhere else to
be found, the only true mirror of that ancient world. By this means
alone their greatest obstacles will vanish; and what usually creates
their dislike, will become a satisfaction.
This consideration may further serve to answer for the constant use of
the same epithets to his gods and heroes; such as the “far-darting
Phœbus,” the “blue-eyed Pallas,” the “swift-footed Achilles,” &c.,
which some have censured as impertinent, and tediously repeated. Those
of the gods depended upon the powers and offices then believed to
belong to them; and had contracted a weight and veneration from the
rites and solemn devotions in which they were used: they were a sort of
attributes with which it was a matter of religion to salute them on all
occasions, and which it was an irreverence to omit. As for the epithets
of great men, Mons. Boileau is of opinion, that they were in the nature
of surnames, and repeated as such; for the Greeks having no names
derived from their fathers, were obliged to add some other distinction
of each person; either naming his parents expressly, or his place of
birth, profession, or the like: as Alexander the son of Philip,
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Diogenes the Cynic, &c. Homer, therefore,
complying with the custom of his country, used such distinctive
additions as better agreed with poetry. And, indeed, we have something
parallel to these in modern times, such as the names of Harold
Harefoot, Edmund Ironside, Edward Longshanks, Edward the Black Prince,
&c. If yet this be thought to account better for the propriety than for
the repetition, I shall add a further conjecture. Hesiod, dividing the
world into its different ages, has placed a fourth age, between the
brazen and the iron one, of “heroes distinct from other men; a divine
race who fought at Thebes and Troy, are called demi-gods, and live by
the care of Jupiter in the islands of the blessed.”[39] Now among the
divine honours which were paid them, they might have this also in
common with the gods, not to be mentioned without the solemnity of an
epithet, and such as might be acceptable to them by celebrating their
families, actions or qualities.
What other cavils have been raised against Homer, are such as hardly
deserve a reply, but will yet be taken notice of as they occur in the
course of the work. Many have been occasioned by an injudicious
endeavour to exalt Virgil; which is much the same, as if one should
think to raise the superstructure by undermining the foundation: one
would imagine, by the whole course of their parallels, that these
critics never so much as heard of Homer’s having written first; a
consideration which whoever compares these two poets ought to have
always in his eye. Some accuse him for the same things which they
overlook or praise in the other; as when they prefer the fable and
moral of the Æneis to those of the Iliad, for the same reasons which
might set the Odyssey above the Æneis; as that the hero is a wiser man,
and the action of the one more beneficial to his country than that of
the other; or else they blame him for not doing what he never designed;
as because Achilles is not as good and perfect a prince as Æneas, when
the very moral of his poem required a contrary character: it is thus
that Rapin judges in his comparison of Homer and Virgil. Others select
those particular passages of Homer which are not so laboured as some
that Virgil drew out of them: this is the whole management of Scaliger
in his Poetics. Others quarrel with what they take for low and mean
expressions, sometimes through a false delicacy and refinement, oftener
from an ignorance of the graces of the original, and then triumph in
the awkwardness of their own translations: this is the conduct of
Perrault in his Parallels. Lastly, there are others, who, pretending to
a fairer proceeding, distinguish between the personal merit of Homer,
and that of his work; but when they come to assign the causes of the
great reputation of the Iliad, they found it upon the ignorance of his
times, and the prejudice of those that followed; and in pursuance of
this principle, they make those accidents (such as the contention of
the cities, &c.) to be the causes of his fame, which were in reality
the consequences of his merit. The same might as well be said of
Virgil, or any great author whose general character will infallibly
raise many casual additions to their reputation. This is the method of
Mons. de la Mott; who yet confesses upon the whole that in whatever age
Homer had lived, he must have been the greatest poet of his nation, and
that he may be said in his sense to be the master even of those who
surpassed him.
In all these objections we see nothing that contradicts his title to
the honour of the chief invention: and as long as this (which is indeed
the characteristic of poetry itself) remains unequalled by his
followers, he still continues superior to them. A cooler judgment may
commit fewer faults, and be more approved in the eyes of one sort of
critics: but that warmth of fancy will carry the loudest and most
universal applauses which holds the heart of a reader under the
strongest enchantment. Homer not only appears the inventor of poetry,
but excels all the inventors of other arts, in this, that he has
swallowed up the honour of those who succeeded him. What he has done
admitted no increase, it only left room for contraction or regulation.
He showed all the stretch of fancy at once; and if he has failed in
some of his flights, it was but because he attempted everything. A work
of this kind seems like a mighty tree, which rises from the most
vigorous seed, is improved with industry, flourishes, and produces the
finest fruit: nature and art conspire to raise it; pleasure and profit
join to make it valuable: and they who find the justest faults, have
only said that a few branches which run luxuriant through a richness of
nature, might be lopped into form to give it a more regular appearance.
Having now spoken of the beauties and defects of the original, it
remains to treat of the translation, with the same view to the chief
characteristic. As far as that is seen in the main parts of the poem,
such as the fable, manners, and sentiments, no translator can prejudice
it but by wilful omissions or contractions. As it also breaks out in
every particular image, description, and simile, whoever lessens or too
much softens those, takes off from this chief character. It is the
first grand duty of an interpreter to give his author entire and
unmaimed; and for the rest, the diction and versification only are his
proper province, since these must be his own, but the others he is to
take as he finds them.
It should then be considered what methods may afford some equivalent in
our language for the graces of these in the Greek. It is certain no
literal translation can be just to an excellent original in a superior
language: but it is a great mistake to imagine (as many have done) that
a rash paraphrase can make amends for this general defect; which is no
less in danger to lose the spirit of an ancient, by deviating into the
modern manners of expression. If there be sometimes a darkness, there
is often a light in antiquity, which nothing better preserves than a
version almost literal. I know no liberties one ought to take, but
those which are necessary to transfusing the spirit of the original,
and supporting the poetical style of the translation: and I will
venture to say, there have not been more men misled in former times by
a servile, dull adherence to the letter, than have been deluded in ours
by a chimerical, insolent hope of raising and improving their author.
It is not to be doubted, that the fire of the poem is what a translator
should principally regard, as it is most likely to expire in his
managing: however, it is his safest way to be content with preserving
this to his utmost in the whole, without endeavouring to be more than
he finds his author is, in any particular place. It is a great secret
in writing, to know when to be plain, and when poetical and figurative;
and it is what Homer will teach us, if we will but follow modestly in
his footsteps. Where his diction is bold and lofty, let us raise ours
as high as we can; but where his is plain and humble, we ought not to
be deterred from imitating him by the fear of incurring the censure of
a mere English critic. Nothing that belongs to Homer seems to have been
more commonly mistaken than the just pitch of his style: some of his
translators having swelled into fustian in a proud confidence of the
sublime; others sunk into flatness, in a cold and timorous notion of
simplicity. Methinks I see these different followers of Homer, some
sweating and straining after him by violent leaps and bounds (the
certain signs of false mettle), others slowly and servilely creeping in
his train, while the poet himself is all the time proceeding with an
unaffected and equal majesty before them. However, of the two extremes
one could sooner pardon frenzy than frigidity; no author is to be
envied for such commendations, as he may gain by that character of
style, which his friends must agree together to call simplicity, and
the rest of the world will call dulness. There is a graceful and
dignified simplicity, as well as a bold and sordid one; which differ as
much from each other as the air of a plain man from that of a sloven:
it is one thing to be tricked up, and another not to be dressed at all.
Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.
This pure and noble simplicity is nowhere in such perfection as in the
Scripture and our author. One may affirm, with all respect to the
inspired writings, that the Divine Spirit made use of no other words
but what were intelligible and common to men at that time, and in that
part of the world; and, as Homer is the author nearest to those, his
style must of course bear a greater resemblance to the sacred books
than that of any other writer. This consideration (together with what
has been observed of the parity of some of his thoughts) may, methinks,
induce a translator, on the one hand, to give in to several of those
general phrases and manners of expression, which have attained a
veneration even in our language from being used in the Old Testament;
as, on the other, to avoid those which have been appropriated to the
Divinity, and in a manner consigned to mystery and religion.
For a further preservation of this air of simplicity, a particular care
should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and
proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. They have
something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned
gravity and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which
would be utterly lost by endeavouring to give them what we call a more
ingenious (that is, a more modern) turn in the paraphrase.
Perhaps the mixture of some Græcisms and old words after the manner of
Milton, if done without too much affectation, might not have an ill
effect in a version of this particular work, which most of any other
seems to require a venerable, antique cast. But certainly the use of
modern terms of war and government, such as “platoon, campaign, junto,”
or the like, (into which some of his translators have fallen) cannot be
allowable; those only excepted without which it is impossible to treat
the subjects in any living language.
There are two peculiarities in Homer’s diction, which are a sort of
marks or moles by which every common eye distinguishes him at first
sight; those who are not his greatest admirers look upon them as
defects, and those who are, seemed pleased with them as beauties. I
speak of his compound epithets, and of his repetitions. Many of the
former cannot be done literally into English without destroying the
purity of our language. I believe such should be retained as slide
easily of themselves into an English compound, without violence to the
ear or to the received rules of composition, as well as those which
have received a sanction from the authority of our best poets, and are
become familiar through their use of them; such as “the
cloud-compelling Jove,” &c. As for the rest, whenever any can be as
fully and significantly expressed in a single word as in a compounded
one, the course to be taken is obvious.
Some that cannot be so turned, as to preserve their full image by one
or two words, may have justice done them by circumlocution; as the
epithet einosiphyllos to a mountain, would appear little or ridiculous
translated literally “leaf-shaking,” but affords a majestic idea in the
periphrasis: “the lofty mountain shakes his waving woods.” Others that
admit of different significations, may receive an advantage from a
judicious variation, according to the occasions on which they are
introduced. For example, the epithet of Apollo, ἑκηβόλος or
“far-shooting,” is capable of two explications; one literal, in respect
of the darts and bow, the ensigns of that god; the other allegorical,
with regard to the rays of the sun; therefore, in such places where
Apollo is represented as a god in person, I would use the former
interpretation; and where the effects of the sun are described, I would
make choice of the latter. Upon the whole, it will be necessary to
avoid that perpetual repetition of the same epithets which we find in
Homer, and which, though it might be accommodated (as has been already
shown) to the ear of those times, is by no means so to ours: but one
may wait for opportunities of placing them, where they derive an
additional beauty from the occasions on which they are employed; and in
doing this properly, a translator may at once show his fancy and his
judgment.
As for Homer’s repetitions, we may divide them into three sorts: of
whole narrations and speeches, of single sentences, and of one verse or
hemistitch. I hope it is not impossible to have such a regard to these,
as neither to lose so known a mark of the author on the one hand, nor
to offend the reader too much on the other. The repetition is not
ungraceful in those speeches, where the dignity of the speaker renders
it a sort of insolence to alter his words; as in the messages from gods
to men, or from higher powers to inferiors in concerns of state, or
where the ceremonial of religion seems to require it, in the solemn
forms of prayers, oaths, or the like. In other cases, I believe the
best rule is, to be guided by the nearness, or distance, at which the
repetitions are placed in the original: when they follow too close, one
may vary the expression; but it is a question, whether a professed
translator be authorized to omit any: if they be tedious, the author is
to answer for it.
It only remains to speak of the versification. Homer (as has been said)
is perpetually applying the sound to the sense, and varying it on every
new subject. This is indeed one of the most exquisite beauties of
poetry, and attainable by very few: I only know of Homer eminent for it
in the Greek, and Virgil in the Latin. I am sensible it is what may
sometimes happen by chance, when a writer is warm, and fully possessed
of his image: however, it may reasonably be believed they designed
this, in whose verse it so manifestly appears in a superior degree to
all others. Few readers have the ear to be judges of it: but those who
have, will see I have endeavoured at this beauty.
Upon the whole, I must confess myself utterly incapable of doing
justice to Homer. I attempt him in no other hope but that which one may
entertain without much vanity, of giving a more tolerable copy of him
than any entire translation in verse has yet done. We have only those
of Chapman, Hobbes, and Ogilby. Chapman has taken the advantage of an
immeasurable length of verse, notwithstanding which, there is scarce
any paraphrase more loose and rambling than his. He has frequent
interpolations of four or six lines; and I remember one in the
thirteenth book of the Odyssey, ver. 312, where he has spun twenty
verses out of two. He is often mistaken in so bold a manner, that one
might think he deviated on purpose, if he did not in other places of
his notes insist so much upon verbal trifles. He appears to have had a
strong affectation of extracting new meanings out of his author;
insomuch as to promise, in his rhyming preface, a poem of the mysteries
he had revealed in Homer; and perhaps he endeavoured to strain the
obvious sense to this end. His expression is involved in fustian; a
fault for which he was remarkable in his original writings, as in the
tragedy of Bussy d’Amboise, &c. In a word, the nature of the man may
account for his whole performance; for he appears, from his preface and
remarks, to have been of an arrogant turn, and an enthusiast in poetry.
His own boast, of having finished half the Iliad in less than fifteen
weeks, shows with what negligence his version was performed. But that
which is to be allowed him, and which very much contributed to cover
his defects, is a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation,
which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have
writ before he arrived at years of discretion.
Hobbes has given us a correct explanation of the sense in general; but
for particulars and circumstances he continually lops them, and often
omits the most beautiful. As for its being esteemed a close
translation, I doubt not many have been led into that error by the
shortness of it, which proceeds not from his following the original
line by line, but from the contractions above mentioned. He sometimes
omits whole similes and sentences; and is now and then guilty of
mistakes, into which no writer of his learning could have fallen, but
through carelessness. His poetry, as well as Ogilby’s, is too mean for
criticism.
It is a great loss to the poetical world that Mr. Dryden did not live
to translate the Iliad. He has left us only the first book, and a small
part of the sixth; in which if he has in some places not truly
interpreted the sense, or preserved the antiquities, it ought to be
excused on account of the haste he was obliged to write in. He seems to
have had too much regard to Chapman, whose words he sometimes copies,
and has unhappily followed him in passages where he wanders from the
original. However, had he translated the whole work, I would no more
have attempted Homer after him than Virgil: his version of whom
(notwithstanding some human errors) is the most noble and spirited
translation I know in any language. But the fate of great geniuses is
like that of great ministers: though they are confessedly the first in
the commonwealth of letters, they must be envied and calumniated only
for being at the head of it.
That which, in my opinion, ought to be the endeavour of any one who
translates Homer, is above all things to keep alive that spirit and
fire which makes his chief character: in particular places, where the
sense can bear any doubt, to follow the strongest and most poetical, as
most agreeing with that character; to copy him in all the variations of
his style, and the different modulations of his numbers; to preserve,
in the more active or descriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the
more sedate or narrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches, a
fulness and perspicuity; in the sentences, a shortness and gravity; not
to neglect even the little figures and turns on the words, nor
sometimes the very cast of the periods; neither to omit nor confound
any rites or customs of antiquity: perhaps too he ought to include the
whole in a shorter compass than has hitherto been done by any
translator who has tolerably preserved either the sense or poetry. What
I would further recommend to him is, to study his author rather from
his own text, than from any commentaries, how learned soever, or
whatever figure they may make in the estimation of the world; to
consider him attentively in comparison with Virgil above all the
ancients, and with Milton above all the moderns. Next these, the
Archbishop of Cambray’s Telemachus may give him the truest idea of the
spirit and turn of our author; and Bossu’s admirable Treatise of the
Epic Poem the justest notion of his design and conduct. But after all,
with whatever judgment and study a man may proceed, or with whatever
happiness he may perform such a work, he must hope to please but a few;
those only who have at once a taste of poetry, and competent learning.
For to satisfy such a want either, is not in the nature of this
undertaking; since a mere modern wit can like nothing that is not
modern, and a pedant nothing that is not Greek.
What I have done is submitted to the public; from whose opinions I am