The Iliad of Homer | Page 9

to end the progress of the
following work; and in proportion as I have the happiness to engage his attention, I shall
merit the name of a fortunate editor.
It was in the darkest season of a most calamitous depression of his spirits, that I was

summoned to the house of my inestimable friend the Translator, in the month of January,
1794. He had happily completed a revisal of his HOMER, and was thinking of the
preface to his new edition, when all his satisfaction in the one, and whatever he had
projected for the other, in a moment vanished from his mind. He had fallen into a
deplorable illness; and though the foremost wish of my heart was to lessen the
intenseness of his misery, I was utterly unable to afford him any aid.
I had, however, a pleasing though a melancholy opportunity of tracing his recent
footsteps in the Field of Troy, and in the 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