The Iliad of Homer | Page 5

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 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