to characterize his "sublime and elegant translator."

"Of the qualifications requisite for such an arduous undertaking, both from its nature and extent, it cannot be disputed that Pope was endowed with sympathetic genius, with a delicate perception of poetic beauty, a trembling sensibility, prepared to vibrate at every impulse of sentimental passion, an ear finely tuned, by the hand of nature and the key of art, to the voice of melody; with a comprehensive dominion over all the poetical versatilities of language, and all the harmonious capacities of English verse, But another endowment, eminently advantageous to a faithful execution of such a project, the competency of his learning,

and absorbs the separate excellencies of all the musical fraternity that preceded him. Nor am I unpersuaded, that the standing epithets of his gods and heroes, with other appropriate forms of speech, were already provided to his hands, and become sanctified by long prescription to invariable use. Whether any other assistances might be derived by Homer, who probably makes but few excursions in the main facts beyond the high road of authentic history, from the remains of older bards, in the general plan and structure of his wonderful performance the eye of criticism cannot possibly descry, from her low elevation on the wreck of literature, through the palpable darkness and wide waste of such remote antiquity."

WAKEFIELD'S Pope's Homer vii. Gen. Obs. p.liv-lviii.

I mean, may be the subject of reasonable controversy.

"I shall engage in a circumstantial discussion of this point, and lay at once my collection of evidences before the public, without fear and without reserve: conscious as I am, that my supreme admiration of the poetical powers of this extraordinary man, which has bordered on enthusiasm from my very infancy, will amply secure, with the dispassionate and candid, my exertions on this argument, without an appeal to general character, from every suspicion of petulant singularity, pedantic affectation or barbarous malignity."

Johnson in his life of Pope observes that "to those who censured his politics were added enemies yet more dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, and his qualifications for a translator of Homer. To these he made no public opposition; but in one of his letters escapes from them as well as he can. At an age like his, for he was not more than twenty-five, with an irregular education, and a course of life of which much seems to have passed in conversation, it is not very likely that he overflowed with Greek. But when he felt himself deficient he sought

* "Gen. Obs." p.lx.

assistance; and what man of learning would refuse to help him?? 1291 od 29:29 d Yo Pope's acute biographer presently adds, off her had the French Homers of La Valterie and.. Dacier, and the English of Chapman, Hobbs, and Ogylby. With Chapman he had very frequent consultations, and perhaps never translated any passage till he had read his version, which indeed he has been sometimes suspected of using instead of the original.1

Johnson has also preserved a letter from Pope to a literary friend, in which the trans lator confesses his "own imperfectness in the language" of Homer, and acknowledges the deference he paid to that sense of the original.. given him by Hobbs and Chapman.omaqes us valls

Upon such high authority were doubts en-"

tertained as to that classical knowledge which some of Pope's admirers had so boldly claimed tot for him. But the present undertakings enot gaged his editor in a more critical enquiry into this subject than could be fairly demandedTMTM

1

z Ibid. 80. This account of Pope's obligations to Chapman, Mr. W. calls an indistinct and apparently conjectural state-r mently in tanto ao sito o

Liv "WAKEFIELD's Pope's Homer," i. Pref, lxi, Note..

"Johnson's Works," xi. 197. See part of this Letter quoted with remarks in Wakefield's Gen. Obs. Ixviii.

in a general biography of English Poets, and he expresses the result of this investigation with no small confidence in the conclusions to which it had conducted him.

Õ་་

A

b It is my persuasion then that our poet, far from appre hending with suitable, promptitude the original language of the author, whom he undertook to exhibit in an English dress, was not so familiarly acquainted even with the Latin tongue,

form an instantaneous conception of a passage by reading Homer in the Latin interpretation of him, that accompanies13the school editions: by which expressions I understand such a ready conception of a sentence, as would enable a reader to give an adequate translation of it with a fidelity that superseded a repeated and laborious perusal; a perusal altogether incompatible, it is evident, with a timely execution of so long a work! In proof of this assertion, I can decisively pronounce, after an experimental examination of his whole performance, that he appears uniformly to have collected the general purport of every passage from some of his predecessors, Dryden, Dacier, Chapman, or Ogilby: a process, not to be supposed, for a momfient invariably pursued by any man, capable of De forming a distinct, and generally speaking, a true delineation of his author from the verbal metaphrase of a Latin version. The e truth of this declaration will admit of no controversy after a practical examination shall be instituted by a specific comparison of our poet's version with those of the translators here mentioned: a truth sufficiently corroborated by our ability to refer all his misrepresentations, which are frequent and in many cases singular and gross, with all his alterations and y additions, which are innumerable, to one or other of his pre- un decessors; except in very few instances, which analogy will set to the account of my incompetency, from reading not sufficiently extensive and imperfect, information, to trace all

Proceeding to the other branch of his duty as an editor of this work, he observes, that "if we turn our attention to the translation itself, and consider the great extent and multifarious difficulties of such an undertaking; we must pronounce it an unrivalled effort, in its kind, of ingenuity and taste. In the descriptive parts of the poem, such as the catalogue of the ships and the list of warriors, the translation of our countryman is at least equal to its original: and in the sublimer exhibitions of Homer's genius, particularly the descriptions of his battles, our English bard seems instinct with all the genuine fire, with all the divine enthusiasm, of his sublime exemplar, and kindles in his progress with the unborrowed raptures of native rage. His failings (for even the Iliad

of Pope is stamped with this signature of hu

要

manity) were a defect in suitable fidelity to his author, a want of simplicity, unnecessary and incongruous additions, careless or injudicious omissions, unpardonable rhymes.

his authorities and assistances, rather than ascribe this failure to a fundamental error in my supposition. But the notes, I presume, which I have interspersed through the course of the poems, will ascertain this determination beyond all possibility of contradiction.

• Ibid. Ixxiv.

"Gen. Ob." lx-lxii.