Preface.
In the spring of 1862 I was induced, at the request of some personal
friends, to print, for private circulation only, a small volume of
"Translations of Poems Ancient and Modern," in which was included the
first Book of the Iliad. The opinions expressed by some competent
judges of the degree of success which had attended this "attempt to
infuse into an almost literal English version something of the spirit,
as well as the simplicity, of the great original," [Footnote:
Introduction to unpublished volume.] were sufficiently favourable to
encourage me to continue the work which I had begun. It has afforded
me, in the intervals of more urgent business, an unfailing, and
constantly increasing source of interest; and it is not without a
feeling of regret at the completion of my task, and a sincere
diffidence as to its success, that I venture to submit the result of my
labour to the ordeal of public criticism.
Various causes, irrespective of any demerits of the work itself, forbid
me to anticipate for this translation any extensive popularity. First,
I fear that the taste for, and appreciation of, Classical Literature,
are greatly on the decline; next, those who have kept up their
classical studies, and are able to read and enjoy the original, will
hardly take an interest in a mere translation; while the English
reader, unacquainted with Greek, will naturally prefer the harmonious
versification and polished brilliancy of Pope's translation; with
which, as a happy adaptation of the Homeric story to the spirit of
English poetry, I have not the presumption to enter into competition.
But, admirable as it is, Pope's Iliad can hardly be said to be Homer's
Iliad; and there may be some who, having lost the familiarity with the
original language which they once possessed, may, if I have at all
succeeded in my attempt, have recalled to their minds a faint echo of
the strains which delighted their earlier days, and may recognize some
slight trace of the original perfume.
Numerous as have been the translators of the Iliad, or of parts of it,
the metres which have been selected have been almost as various: the
ordinary couplet in rhyme, the Spenserian stanza, the Trochaic or
Ballad metre, all have had their partisans, even to that "pestilent
heresy" of the so-called English Hexameter; a metre wholly repugnant to
the genius of our language; which can only be pressed into the service
by a violation of every rule of prosody; and of which, notwithstanding
my respect for the eminent men who have attempted to naturalize it, I
could never read ten lines without being irresistibly reminded of
Canning's
Dactylics call'st thou them? God help thee, silly one!
But in the progress of this work, I have been more and more confirmed
in the opinion which I expressed at its commencement, that (whatever
may be the extent of my own individual failure) "if justice is ever to
be done to the easy flow and majestic simplicity of the grand old Poet,
it can only be in the Heroic blank verse." I have seen isolated
passages admirably rendered in other metres; and there are many
instances in which a translation line for line and couplet for couplet
naturally suggests itself, and in which it is sometimes difficult to
avoid an involuntary rhyme; but the blank verse appears to me the only
metre capable of adapting itself to all the gradations, if I may use
the term, of the Homeric style; from the finished poetry of the
numerous similes, in which every touch is nature, and nothing is
overcoloured or exaggerated, down to the simple, almost homely, style
of some portions of the narrative. Least of all can any other metre do
full justice to the spirit and freedom of the various speeches, in
which the old warriors give utterance, without disguise or restraint,
to all their strong and genuine emotions. To subject these to the
trammels of couplet and rhyme would be as destructive of their chief
characteristics, as the application of a similar process to the
Paradise Lost of Milton, or the tragedies of Shakespeare; the effect
indeed may be seen by comparing, with some of the noblest speeches of
the latter, the few couplets which he seems to have considered himself
bound by custom to tack on to their close, at the end of a scene or an
act.
I have adopted, not without hesitation, the Latin, rather than the
Greek, nomenclature for the Heathen Deities. I have been induced to do
so from the manifest incongruity of confounding the two; and from the
fact that though English readers may be familiar with the names of
Zeus, or Aphrodite, or even Poseidon, those of Hera, or Ares, or
Hephaestus, or Leto, would hardly convey to them a definite
signification.
It has been my aim throughout to produce a translation and not a
paraphrase; not indeed such a translation as would satisfy, with regard
to each word, the rigid requirements of accurate scholarship; but such
as would fairly and honestly give the sense and spirit of every
passage, and of every line; omitting nothing, and expanding nothing;
and adhering, as closely as our language will allow, ever to every
epithet which is capable of being translated, and which has, in the
particular passage, anything of a special and distinctive character. Of
the many deficiencies in my execution of this intention, I am but too
conscious; whether I have been in any degree successful, must be left
to the impartial decision of such of the Public as may honour this work
with their perusal.
D.
Knowsley, Oct., 1864
