The Iliad of Homer | Page 3

suppressed the sense of his author, and has not seldom
intermingled his own ideas with it, is a remark which, on 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 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