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I might have done the same without intending | takes which no context can redress; as where

that compliment, for they are also to be found in Eustathius, and the sentiment I believe is that of all mankind. I cannot really tell what to say to this whole remark; only that in the first part of it, Madam Dacier is displeased that I do not agree with her, and in the last that I do: but this is a temper which every polite man should overlook in a lady.

To punish my ingratitude, she resolves to expose my blunders, and selects two which I suppose are the most flagrant, out of the many for which she could have chastised me. It happens that the first of these is in part the translator's, and in part her own, without any share of mine : she quotes the end of a sentence, and he puts in French what I never wrote in English: "Homer," I said, "opened a new and boundless walk for his imagination, on, and created a world for himself in the invention of fable;" which he translates, Homere crea pour son usage un monde mouvant, en inventant la fable."

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Madam Dacier justly wonders at this nonsense in me; and I, in the translator. As to what I meant by Homer's invention of fable, it is afterwards particularly distinguished from that extenNive sense in which she took it, by these words. "If Homer was not the first who introduced the deities (as Herodotus imagines) into the religion of Greece, he seems the first who brought them into a system of machinery for poetry."

The other blunder she accuses me of is, the mistaking a passage in Aristotle, and she is pleased to send me back to this philosopher's treatise of Poetry, and to her preface on the Odyssey, for my better instruction. Now though I am saucy enough to think that one may sometimes differ from Aristotle without blundering, and though I am sure one may sometimes fall into an errour by following him servilely; yet I own, that to quote any author for what he never said, is a blunder; (but, by the way, to correct an author for what he never said, is somewhat worse than a blunder.) My words were these: "As there is a greater variety of characters in the Iliad than in any other poem, so there is of speeches. Every thing in it has manners, as Aristotle expresses it; that is, every thing is acted or spoken: very little passes in narration." She justly says, that "Every thing which is acted or spoken, has not necessarily manners merely because it is acted or spoken." Agreed: but I would ask the question, whether any thing can have manners which is neither acted nor spoken? If not, then the whole Iliad being almost spent in speech and action, almost every thing in it has manners, since Homer has been proved before, in a long paragraph of the preface, to have excelled in drawing characters and painting manhers, and indeed his whole poem is one continued occasion of showing this bright part of his talent.

she makes Eustathius call Cratisthenes the Phliasian, Callisthenes the Physician2. What a triumph might some slips of this sort have afforded to Homer's, hers, and my enemies, from which shẹ was only screened by their happy ignorance! How unlucky had it been, when she insulted Mr. de la Motte for omitting a material passage in the speech of Helen to Hector, Iliad vi. if some champion for the moderns had by chance understood so much Greek, as to whisper him, that there was no such passage in Homer?

Our concern, zeal, and even jealousy, for our great author's honour were mutual, our endeavours to advance it were equal, and I have as often trembled for it in her hands, as she could in mine. It was one of the many reasons I had to wish the longer life of this lady, that I must certainly have regained her good opinion, in spite of all misrepresenting translators whatever. 1 could not have expected it on any other terms than being approved as great, if not as passionate, an admirer of Homer as herself. For that was the first condition of her favour and friendship; otherwise not one's taste alone, but one's morality had been corrupted, nor would any man's religion have been suspected, who did not implicitly believe in an author whose doctrine is so conformable to Holy Scripture. However, as different people have different ways of expressing their belief, some purely by public and general acts of worship, others by a reverend sort of reasoning and inquiry about the grounds of it; it is the same in admiration, some prove it by exclamations, others by respect. I have observed that the loudest huzzas given to a great man in triumph, proceed not from his friends but the rabble; and as I have fancied it the same with the rabble of critics, a desire to be distinguished from them has turned me to the more moderate, and, I hope, more rational method. Though I am a poet, I would not be an enthusiast; and though I am an En❘glishman, I would not be furiously of a party. I am far from thinking myself that genius, upon whom, at the end of these remarks, Madam Dacier congratulates my country: one capable of "correcting Homer, and consequently of reforming mankind, and amending this constitution." It was not to Great Britain this ought to have been applied, since our nation has one happiness for which she might have preferred it to her own, that, as much as we abound in other miserable misguided sects, we have at least none of the blasphemers of Homer. We stedfastly and unanimously believe, both his poem, and our constitution, to be the best that ever human wit invented: that the one is not more incapable of amendment than the other; and (old as they both are) we despise any French or Englishman whatever, who shall presume to retrench, to innovate, or to make the least alteration in either. Far therefore from the genius for which Madam Dacier mistook me, my whole desire is but to preserve the humble character of a faithful translator, and a quiet subject.

To speak fairly, it is impossible she could read even the translation, and take my sense so wrong as she represents it; but I was first translated ignorantly, and then read partially. My expression indeed was not quite exact; it should have been, "Every thing has manners, as Aristotle calls them." "But such a fault methinks might have been spared, since if one was to look with that p. 476. disposition she discovers towards me, even on her own excellent writings, one might find some mis

2 Dacier Remarques sur le 4me livre de l' Odyss. De la Corruption du Goût

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VERSES TO MR. DRYDEN.

TO

MR. DRYDEN,

ON HIS EXCELLENT TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL.

WHENE'ER great Virgil's lofty verse I see,
The pompous scene charms my admiring eye:
There different beauties in perfection meet;
The thoughts as proper, as the numbers sweet :
And when wild fancy mounts a daring height,
Judgment steps in, and moderates her flight.
Wisely he manages his wealthy store,

Still says enough, and yet implies still more :
For though the weighty sense be closely wrought,
The reader's left to improve the pleasing thought.

Hence we despair to see an English dress
Should e'er his nervous energy express;
For who could that in fetter'd rhyme enclose,
Which without loss can scarce be told in prose!
But you, great Sir, his manly genius raise;
And make your copy share an equal praise.
Oh how I see thee in soft scenes of love,
Renew those passions he alone could move!
Here Cupid's charms are with new art exprest,
And pale Elisa leaves her peaceful rest:
Leaves her Elysium, as if glad to live,
To love, and wish, to sigh, despair, and grieve,
And die again for him that would again deceive.
Nor does the mighty Trojan less appear
Than Mars himself amidst the storms of war.
Now his fierce eyes with double fury glow,
And a new dread attends th' impending blow:
The Daunian chiefs their eager rage abate,
And, though unwounded, seem to feel their fate.

Long the rude fury of an ignorant age,
With barbarous spite, prophan'd his sacred page.
The heavy Dutchmen, with laborious toil,
Wrested his sense, and cramp'd his vigorous style;
No time, no pains, the drudging pedants spare;
But still his shoulders must the burden bear.
While through the mazes of their comments led,
We learn not what he writes, but what they read.
Yet, through these shades of undistinguish'd night
Appear'd some glimmering intervals of light;
Till mangled by a vile translating sect,
Like babes by witches in effigy rackt;
Till Ogleby, mature in dulness, rose,
And Holborn doggrel, and low chiming prose,
His strength and beauty did at once depose.
But now the magic spell is at an end,
Since ev'n the dead in you hath found a friend;
You free the bard from rude oppressors' power,
And grace his verse with charms unknown before:

He, doubly thus oblig'd, must doubting stand,
Which chiefly should his gratitude command;
Whether should claim the tribute of his heart,
The patron's bounty, or the poet's art.

Alike with wonder and delight we view'd
The Roman genius in thy verse renew'd:
We saw thee raise soft Ovid's amorous fire,
And fit the tuneful Horace to thy lyre:
We saw new gall imbitter Juvenal's pen,
And crabbed Perseus made politely plain :
Virgil alone was thought too great a task;
What you could scarce perform, or we durst ask:
A task! which Waller's Muse could ne'er engage;
A task! too hard for Denham's stronger rage :
Sure of success they some slight sallies try'd,
But the fenc'd coast their bold attempts defy'd.
With fear their o'ermatch'd forces back they
Quitted the province fate reserv'd for you. [drew,
In vain thus Philip did the Persians storm;
A work his son was destin'd to perform.

"O had Roscommon liv'd to hail the day,
And sing loud Pæans through the crowded way;
When you in Roman majesty appear,
Which none know better, and none come so near :"
The happy author would with wonder see,
His rules were only prophecies of thee :
And were he now to give translators light,
He'd bid them only read thy work, and write.

For this great task our loud applause is due;
We own old favours, but must press for new:
Th' expecting world demands one labour more;
And thy lov'd Homer does thy aid implore,
To right his injur'd works, and set them free
From the lewd rhymes of graveling Ogleby.
Nor will his birth renew the ancient jar;
Then shall his verse in grateful pomp appear,

And in our Britain think the poet born.
On those Greek cities we shall look with scorn,

TO

MR. DRYDEN,

ON HIS TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL.

We read, how dreams and visions heretofore

The prophet and the poet could inspire;
And make them in unusual rapture soar,
With rage divine, and with poetic fire.

O could I find it now; -would Virgil's shade
But for a while vouchsafe to bear the light;
To grace my numbers, and that Muse to aid,
Who sings the poet that has done him right.

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