PREFACE.

HE first twelve books of this Translation of the entire

THE

Iliad were published in the spring of 1862, when they were honored with the notice, in journals and periodicals, of many able critics, including the distinguished names of Dr. Whewell and Lord Lindsay. The generally favourable tone of the criticisms then elicited, has induced a careful revision of those twelve books, and the translation of the twelve remaining books;— the completed work exhibiting, it is hoped, many marks of its having profited by an attentive consideration of the strictures and suggestions of which the former half was thought deserving by such competent judges.

The translation was commenced, undesignedly, and as matter of experiment, after reading Mr. Kingsley's Andromeda; and it was continued, as an amusement, and without, in the first instance, any view to publication. This may account. for the fact that the first book was, originally-and, possibly, may still be as a whole, less close as a translation, and less regular in rhythm, than the subsequent books :-a circumstance somewhat unpropitious to a favorable impression; inasmuch as

that book, from its very position, as well as from its having, more frequently than any other portion of the poem, been experimented upon by part-translators, is naturally the most obvious to criticism.

The quasi-filial relation in which the translation stood to Mr. Kingsley's Andromeda, may account for that feature which was urged by some critics as a prominent ground of objection to it viz., the retention of the Greek accentuation of the proper The Translator read, and he must own, admired, such

names.

lines as

"There they set Andromedèn, most beautiful, shaped like a Goddess,"

and

"Hebè, Harmoniè, and the golden Queen Aphrodite,"

and he therefore thought-erroneously, as he now admits, although still admiring Mr. Kingsley's lines, above cited, that the Greek accentuations should be always preserved. Further consideration, aided by the light of criticism, has, however, satisfied him that, as a rule, the effect of such retention is unpleasing to an English ear. He has therefore, at the cost of much labor, eliminated it from the first twelve books, and has avoided it in the remaining twelve; except in some very rare cases, where the aggregation of proper names is such as to render it necessary, either to retain the accentuation of the

• See note subjoined to the list of proper names, infrà.

original, or to abandon the principle, here professedly adopted, of a line-by-line translation. When it is said that the present professes to be a line-by-line translation, it is not meant that each one line of the original is always accurately represented by one line of the translation—although such is usually the case-but that, (with some very rare exceptions, mostly, if not altogether, occurring in the first and second books,) each paragraph of the original, is represented by the same number of lines in the translation. And in each of the books the identity of aggregate result is maintained. Upon this, as upon all other points, a translator has to strike a balance between advantages and disadvantages. The case is necessarily one for compromises. Few, however, who have themselves tried to translate the Iliad, or who are intimately familiar with the poem, can doubt that a close adherence to the peculiar structure, is all but essential to a due rendering of the spirit of the original. The antithetical arrangement of that original, and the continual embodiment of separate images, in separate lines, or couplets -or even portions-of lines, can never be adequately represented by a translation which admits systematically of a breaking up and fusion of the ideas of the great poet. The result is like that of a cross sea breaking up and destroying the magnificence of the long succession of those rolling waves which form Homer's favourite simile for his advancing armies, and which are so suggestive of his own lines.

Upon the vexed question of metre, the Translator can

only say that now, on the completion of his task, he sees no reason to regret having selected the Hexameter. In it, and in it alone, is it possible, he believes, to combine adequate fidelity to the original, with that vigor and rapidity of movement, without which a translation may reproduce the ideas of the poet, and may be an exceedingly elaborate, elegant, and artistic production, but is not Homer; any more than the obelisk of Luxor is the Matterhorn. The want of rapidity of movement may be considered to be the one great drawback from the merits of the recent translation by Lord Derby, as also from those of the far less known, yet more vigorous, translation now in course of publication by Mr. Charles Ichabod Wright and is, perhaps, a defect inherent in the English heroic blank verse. In writing thus, the Translator must not be supposed to be viewing with self-complacency his own efforts as compared with those of others; but merely to express his continued adherence to the metre which he originally selected; and which he believes has the sanction of a sufficient number of educated readers, to prevent the publication of an Hexameter translation of the Iliad, of even average merit, being treated as a literary intrusion. He is also satisfied that very many of those who now entertain a sense of dislike to the metre, would feel differently if their ears were but habituated to its use. The difficulty arising from the acquired habit of associating certain metres with Classical poetry, and other metres with English poetry, may-to use the words of a writer whose