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Christian cause rather than have served it, by a prudish abstinence from them; and that St. Paul himself, conducted to them as we have been, would have found it expedient to have done as we have done. It is always impossible to conjecture to much purpose, from the beginnings of a providential event, how it will terminate. If we have neither received nor communicated any spiritual good at present, while conversant with our new acquaintance, at least no harra has befallen on either side; and it were too hazardous an assertion, even for our censorious neighbours to make, that the cause of the gospel can never be served in any of our future interviews with them, because it does not appear to have been served at present. In the mean time, I speak a strict truth as in the sight of God, when I say that we are neither of us at all more addicted to gadding than heretofore. We both naturally love seclusion from company, and never go into it without putting a force upon our own dispositions; at the same time I will confess, and you will easily conceive, that the melancholy incident to such close confinement as we have so long endured, finds itself a little relieved by such amusements as a society so innocent affords. You may look round the Christian world, and find few, I believe, of our station, who have so little intercourse as we with the world, that is not Christian. We place all the uneasiness that you have felt for us on the subject, to the account of that cordial friendship of which you have long given us a proof. But you may be assured, that notwithstanding all the rumours to the contrary, we are exactly what we were when you saw us last:-I, miserable on account of God's departure from me, which I believe to be final; and she seeking his return to me in the path of duty, and by continual prayer."

After the publication of Cowper's second volume of poems, and indeed, for some considerable time before its actual appearance, he was diligently engaged in producing a new translation of Homer's unrivalled poems. His reasons for undertaking a work of so great magnitude, and that required such immense labour: and the spirited manner with which he brought it to a close, shall be related as nearly as possible in his own words. Writing to Mr. Newton, he thus describes the commencement of this great undertaking: "I am employed in writing a narrative, but not so useful as that you have just published. Employment, however, with the pen, is through habit become essential to my well-being; and to produce always original poems, especially of considerable length, is not so easy. For some weeks after I had finished the Task,

and sent away the last sheet corrected, I was through necessity idle, and suffered not a little in my spirits for being so. One day, being in such distress of mind as was hardly supportable, I took up the Iliad; and merely to direct attention, and with no more preconception of what I was then entering upon, than I have at this moment of what I shall be doing this day twenty years hence, translated the first twelve lines of it. The same necessity pressed me again, I had recourse to the same expedient, and translated more. Every day bringing its occasion for employment with it, every day conse quently added something to the work; till at last I began to reflect thus:-The Iliad and the Odyssey together consists of about forty thousand verses. To translate these forty thousand verses will furnish me with occupation for a considerable time. I have already made some progress, and find it a most agreeable amusement. Homer, in point of purity, is a most blameless writer, and though he was not an enlightened man, has interspersed many great and valuable truths throughout both his poems. In short, he is in all respects a most venerable old gentleman, by an acquaintance with whom no man can disgrace himself; the literati are all agreed to a man, that although Pope has given us two pretty poems, under Homer's title, there is not to be found in them the least portion of Homer's spirit, nor the least resemblance of his manner. I will try, therefore, whether I cannot copy him more happily myself. I have at least the advantage of Pope's faults and failings, which like so many beacons upon a dangerous coast, will serve me to steer by, and will make my chance for success more probable. These, and many other considerations, but especially a mind that abhorred a vacuum as its chief bane, impelled me so effectually to the work, that ere long, I mean to publish proposals for a subscription of it, having advanced so far as to be warranted in doing so."

In another letter to the same correspondent, the following just and critical remarks on Pope's translation occur: “Your sentiments of Pope's Homer agree perfectly with those of every competent judge with whom I have at any time conversed about it. I never saw a copy so unlike the original. There is not, I believe, in all the world to be found, an uninspired poem so simple as are both of those of Homer; nor in all the world a poem more bedizened with ornaments than Pope's translation of them. Accordingly, the sublime of Homer in the hands of Pope, becomes bloated and tumid, and his description tawdry. Neither had Pope the faintest con ception of those exquisite discriminations of character for

which Homer is so remarkable. All his persons, and equally upon all occasions, speak in an inflated and strutting phraseology, as Pope has managed them; although in the original, the dignity of their utterance, even when they are most majestic, consists principally in the simplicity of their sentiments, and of their language. Another censure I must pass upon our Anglo-Grecian, out of many that obtrude themselves upon me, but for which I have now neither time nor room to spare, which is, that with all his great abilities, he was defective in his feelings to a degree, that some passages in his own poems make it difficult to account for. No writer more pathetic than Homer, because none more natural; and because none less natural than Pope, in his version of Homer, therefore, than he, none less pathetic. One of the great faults of Pope's translation is, that it is licentious. To publish, therefore, a translation that should be at all chargeable with the same fault, would be useless. Whatever will be said of mine, when it does appear, it shall never be said that it is not faithful. I thank you heartily both for your wishes and prayers, that should a disappointment occur, I may not be too much hurt by it. Strange as it may seem to say it, and unwilling as I should be to say it to any person less candid than yourself, I will nevertheless say that I have not entered upon this work, unconnected as it must needs appear with the cause of God, without the direction of his providence, nor have I been altogether unassisted by him in the performance of it. Time will show to what it ultimately tends. I am inclined to think that it has a tendency, to which I myself am at present a perfect stranger. Be that as it may, he knows my frame, and will consider that I am dust, and dust too that has been so trampled under foot, and beaten, that a storm less violent than an unsuccessful issue of such a business might occasion, would be sufficient to blow me quite away. As I know not to what end this my present occupation may finally lead, so neither did I know when I wrote it, or at all suspect, one valuable end, at least, that was to be answered by the Task. It has pleased God to prosper it; and being composed in blank verse, it is likely to prove as seasonable an introduction to a blank verse Homer, by the same hand, as any that could have been devised; yet when I wrote the last line of the Task, I as little suspected that I should ever engage in a version of the old Asiatic tale, as you do now."

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Having undertaken a work that required so much labour, he bestowed upon it the utmost pains, and allowed nothing to divert his attention from it. In his correspondence the fol

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lowing remarks occur. "The little time that I can devote to any other purpose than that of poetry, is, as you may suppose, stolen. Homer is urgent; much is done, and much still remains undone, and no school-boy is more attentive to the performance of his daily task than I am.—In truth, my time is very much occupied; and the more so, because I not only have a long and laborious work in hand,-for such it would prove at any rate, but because I make it a point to bestow my utmost attention to it, and to give it all the finishing that the most scrupulous accuracy can command. As soon as breakfast is over I retire to my nutshell of a summer-house, which is my verse manufactory, and here I abide seldom less than three hours, and not often more. In the afternoon I return to it again; and all the daylight that follows, except what is sometimes devoted to a walk, is given to Homer. It is well for me, that a course which is now become necessary, is so much my choice. Assure yourself, therefore, that when at any time it happens that I am in arrears in my correspondence with you, neither neglect nor idleness is the cause. have a daily occupation of forty lines to translate, a task which I never excuse myself from, when it is possible to perform it. Equally sedulous I am in the matter of transcribing, so that between both, my mornings and evenings are, for the most part, completely engaged. Add to this, that though my spirits are seldom so bad but I can write verse, they are often at so low an ebb as to make the production of a letter impossible. I am now in the twentieth book of Homer, and shall assuredly proceed, because the farther I go the more I find myself justified in the undertaking; and in due time, if I live, shall assuredly publish. In the whole I shall have composed about forty thousand verses, about which forty thousand verses, I shall have taken great pains, on no occasion suffering a slovenly line to escape me. I leave you to guess, therefore, whether, such a labour once achieved, I shall not determine to turn it to some account, and to gain myself profit by it if I can; if not, at least, some credit for my reward. Till I had made such a progress in my present undertaking as to put it out of all doubt, that, if I lived, I should proceed in, and finish it, I kept the matter to myself. It would have done me little honour to have told my friends, that I had an arduous enterprise in hand, if afterwards I must have told them that I had dropped it. Knowing it to have been universally the opinion of the literati, ever since they have allowed themselves to consider the matter coolly, that a translation, properly so called, of Homer,

is, notwithstanding what Pope has done, a desideratum in the English language; it struck me that an attempt to supply the deficiency would be an honourable one, and having made myself, in former years, somewhat critically, master of the original, I was by this double consideration, induced to make the attempt myself.-I am now translating into blank verse the last book of the Iliad, and mean to publish by subscription. I wish that all English readers had an unsophisticated and unadulterated taste, and could relish real simplicity. But, I am well aware, that in this respect, I am under a disadvantage, and that many, especially many ladies, missing many pretty terms of expression that they have admired in Pope, will account my translation, in those particulars, defective. But, I comfort myself with the thought that in reality it is no defect; on the contrary, that the want of all such embellishments as do not belong to the original, will be one of its principal merits, with persons really capable of relishing Homer. He is the best poet that ever lived for many reasons, but for none more than that majestic plainness that distinguishes him from all others. As an accomplished person moves gracefully without thinking of it, in like manner, the dignity of Homer seems to have cost him no labour. It was natural to him to say great things, and to say them well, and little ornaments were beneath his notice."

The following extract will show that no person ever appeared before the public in a work of any literary importance, and more correct views of its legitimate claims under such circumstances. "I thank you for your friendly hints and precautions, and shall not fail to give them the guidance of my pen. I respect the public, and I respect myself, and had rather want bread than expose myself wantonly to the condemnation of either. I hate the affectation so frequently found in authors, of negligence and slovenliness, and in the present case am sensible how necessary it is to shun them, when I undertake the vast and invidious labour of doing better than Pope has done before me. I thank you for all that you have said and done in my cause, and beforehand for all that you shall say and do hereafter. I am sure that there will be no deficiency on your part. On my own part I assure you that no pains shall be wanted to make the work as complete as possible. I am now in a scene of perfect tranquillity and the profoundest silence, kicking up the dust of heroic narrative and besieging Troy again. I told you that I had almost finished the translation of the Iliad, and I verily thought so. But I was never more mistaken. By the time when I

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