The Iliad of Homer | Page 9

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]
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:--
Mistaken meanings corrected,
admonente G. Wakefield.

B. XXIII.
L. 429. that the nave
Of thy neat wheel seem e'en to grind upon it.

L. 865. As when (the north wind freshening) near the bank
Up springs a fish in air, then falls again
And disappears beneath the sable flood,
So at the stroke, he bounded.

L. 1018. Thenceforth Tydides o'er his ample shield
Aim'd and still aim'd to pierce him in the neck.
Or better thus--
Tydides, in return, with spear high-poised
O'er the broad shield, aim'd ever at his neck,

Or best of all--

Then Tydeus' son, with spear high-poised above
The ample shield, stood aiming at his neck.

He had written these lines with a pencil, on a leaf at the end of his Iliad; and when I reflected on the cause which had given them birth, I could not but admire its disproportion to the effect. What the voice of persuasion had failed in for a year, accident had silently accomplished in a single day. The circumstance I allude to was this: I received a copy of the Iliad and Odyssey of Pope, then recently published by the Editor above mentioned, with illustrative and critical notes of his own. As it commended Mr. Cowper's Translation in the Preface, and occasionally pointed out its merits in the Notes, I was careful to place it in his way; though it was more from a habit of experiment which I had contracted, than from well-grounded hopes of success. But what a fortunate circumstance was the arrival of this Work! and by what name worthy of its influence shall I call it? In the mouth of an indifferent person it might be Chance; but in mine; whom it rendered so peculiarly happy, common gratitude requires that it should be Providence.
As I watched him with an indescribable interest in his progress, I had the satisfaction to find, that, after a few mornings given to promiscuous correction, and to frequent perusal of the above-mentioned Notes, he was evidently settling on the sixteenth Book. This he went regularly through, and