able one, and having made myself, in former years, some what 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 Illiad, 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 turns 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, with 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 before-hand 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 had reached the end of the poem, the first book of my version was a twelvemonth old. When I came to consider it, after having laid it by so long, it did not satisfy me; I set myself to mend it, and did so. But still it appeared to me improvable, and that nothing would so effectually secure that point as to give the whole book a new translation. With the exception of a very few lines, I have so done, and was never in my life so convinced of the soundness of Horace's advice to publish nothing in haste; so much advantage have I derived from doing that twice which I thought I had accomplished notably at once. He, indeed, recommends nine years imprisonment of your verses before you send them abroad; but the ninth part of that time, is, I believe, as much as there is need of to open a man's eyes upon his own defects, and to secure him from the danger of premature self-approbation. Neither ought it to be forgotten, that nine years make so wide an interval between the cup and the lip, that a thousand things may fall out between. New engagements may occur, which may make the finishing of that which a poet has begun impossible. In nine years he may rise into a situation, or he may sink into one, utterly incompatible with his purpose. His constitution may break in nine years, and sickness may disqualify him for improving what he enterprized in the days of his health.

His inclination may change, and he may find some other employment more agreeable; or another poet may enter upon the same work, and get the start of him. Therefore, my friend Horace, though I acknowledge your principle to be good, I must confess the practice you would ground it upon is carried to an extreme. The rigour that I exercised upon the first book, I intend to exercise upon all that follow, and have now actually advanced into the middle of the seventh, nowhere admitting more than one line in fifty of the first translation. You must not imagine that I had been careless and hasty in the first instance. In truth, I had not; but, in rendering so excellent a poet as Homer into our language, there are so many points to be attended to, both in respect of language and numbers, that a first attempt must be fortunate indeed if it does not call aloud for a second. You saw the specimen, and you saw (1 am sure) one great fault in it; I mean the harshness of some of the elisions. I do not altogether take the blame of these to myself, for into some of them I have been absolutely driven and hunted by a series of reiterated objections, made by a critical friend, whose scruples and delicacies teazed me almost out of all patience."

With a view to make his translation as perfect as possible, Cowper, before he committed it to the press, availed himself of the assistance of several eminent critics, from some of whom he derived considerable assistance, which, at every convenient opportunity, he very readily and gratefully acknowledged. The remarks of others, however, to whose notice he had been persuaded to submit parts of his manuscript, were so frivolous and perfectly hypercritical, as to occasion him considerable vexation. Of this, the closing remarks of the last, and the whole of the following extract will afford ample proof. "The vexation and perplexity that attends a multiplicity of criticisms by various

hands, many of which are sure to be futile, many of them unfounded, and some of them contradictory to others, is inconceivable, except by the author, whose ill-fated work happens to be the subject of them. This also appears to me self-evident, that if a work have passed under the review of one man of taste and learning, and have had the good fortune to please him, his approbation gives security for that of all others qualified like himself. I speak thus, after having just escaped such a storm of trouble, occasioned by endless remarks, hints, suggestions, and objections, as drove me almost to despair, and to the very verge of a resolution to drop my undertaking for ever. With infinite difficulty, I at last sifted the chaff from the wheat, availed myself of what appeared to me just, and rejected the rest, but not till the labour and anxiety had nearly undone all that one judicious critic had been doing for me.I assure you, I can safely say, that vanity and self-importance had nothing to do in all this distress that I suffered. It was merely the effect of an alarm that I could not help taking, when I compared the great trouble I had with a few lines only thus handled, with that which I foresaw such handling of the whole must necessarily give me. I felt beforehand that my constitution would not bear it. Though Johnson's friend has teased me sadly, I verily believe that I shall have no more such cause to complain of him. We now understand one another, and I firmly believe that I might have gone the world through before I had found his equal in an accurate and familiar acquaintance with the original. Though he is a foreigner, he has a perfect knowledge of the English language, and can consequently appreciate its beauties, as well as discover its defects.

"The animadversions of the critic you sent me, hurt me more than they would have done, had they come from a

person from whom I might have expected such treatment. In part they appeared to me unjust, and in part illnatured; and, the man himself being an oracle in almost every body's account, I apprehended that he had done me much mischief. Why he says that the translation is far from exact is best known to himself. For I know it to be as exact as is compatible with poetry; and prose translations of Homer are not wanted. The world has one already. I am greatly pleased with the amendments of a friend, to whom I sent a specimen, which he has returned amended with so much taste and candour, and accompanied with so many expressions of kindness, that it quite charmed me. He has chiefly altered the lines incumbered with elisions, and I will just take this opportunity to tell you, because I know you to be as much interested in what I write as myself, that some of the most offensive of these elisions were occasioned by mere criticism. I was fairly hunted into them by vexatious objections, made without end by and his friends,

and altered, and altered, till at last I scarcely cared how I altered. I am not naturally insensible, and the sensibilities I had by nature have been wonderfully enhanced by a long series of shocks, given to a frame of nerves that was never very athletic. I feel accordingly, whether painful or pleasant, in the extreme; am easily elevated, and easily cast down. The power of a critic freezes my poetical powers, and discourages me to such a degree, that makes me ashamed of my own weakness. Yet I presently recover my confidence again, especially when I have every reason to believe, as in the case you refer to, that a critic's censures are harsh and unreasonable, and arise more from his own wounded and mortified feelings, than from any defect in the work itself."

Notwithstanding the irritation produced in the mind of the poet by the trifling amendments and vexatious criticisms