The Iliad
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 εἰνοσίφυλλος 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