least, I am not conscious to myself of any such intention. If there
happen to be found an irreverent expression, or a thought too wanton,
they are crept into my verses through my inadvertency; if the searchers
find any in the cargo, let them be staved or forfeited, like contraband
goods; at least, let their authors be answerable for them, as being but
imported merchandise, and not of my own manufacture. On the other side,
I have endeavoured to choose such fables, both ancient and modern, as
contain in each of them some instructive moral, which I could prove by
induction; but the way is tedious, and they leap foremost into sight,
without the reader's trouble of looking after them. I wish I could
affirm with a safe conscience, that I had taken the same care in all my
former writings; for it must be owned, that supposing verses are never
so beautiful or pleasing, yet if they contain anything which shocks
religion, or good manners, they are at best, what Horace says of good
numbers without good sense, _Versus inopes rerum, nugaeque canorae_.
Thus far, I hope, I am right in court, without renouncing my other right
of self-defence, where I have been wrongfully accused, and my sense
withdrawn into blasphemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a religious
lawyer, in a late pleading against the stage, in which he mixes truth
with falsehood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating
strongly, that something may remain.
I resume the thread of my discourse with the first of my translation,
which was the first Iliad of Homer. If it shall please God to give me
longer life, and moderate health, my intentions are to translate the
whole Ilias; provided still that I meet with those encouragements from
the public which may enable me to proceed in my undertaking with some
cheerfulness. And this I dare assure the world beforehand, that I have
found, by trial, Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil (though I say
not the translation will be less laborious); for the Grecian is more
according to my genius, than the Latin poet. In the works of the two
authors, we may read their manners and natural inclinations, which are
wholly different. Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was
violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was
propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words; Homer was rapid in his
thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of
expressions, which his language, and the age in which he lived, allowed
him: Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confined; so that
if Homer had not led the way, it was not in Virgil to have begun heroic
poetry; for nothing can be more evident, than that the Roman poem is but
the second part of the Ilias; a continuation of the same story, and the
persons already formed: the manners of AEneas are those of Hector
superadded to those which Homer gave him. The adventures of Ulysses in
the Odysseis are imitated in the first six books of Virgil's AEneas, and
though the accidents are not the same (which would have argued him of a
servile copying, and total barrenness of invention), yet the seas were
the same in which both the heroes wandered, and Dido cannot be denied to
be the poetical daughter of Calypso. The six latter books of Virgil's
poem are the four and twenty Iliads contracted; a quarrel occasioned by
a lady, a single combat, battles fought, and a town besieged. I say not
this in derogation to Virgil, neither do I contradict anything which I
have formerly said in his just praise, for his episodes are almost
wholly of his own invention; and the form which he has given to the
telling makes the tale his own, even though the original story had been
the same. But this proves, however, that Homer taught Virgil to design;
and if invention be the first virtue of an epic poet, then the Latin
poem can only be allowed the second place. Mr Hobbs, in the preface to
his own bald translation of the Ilias (studying poetry as he did
mathematics, when it was too late), Mr Hobbs, I say, begins the praise
of Homer where he should have ended it. He tells us, that the first
beauty of an Epic poem consists in diction, that is, in the choice of
words, and harmony of numbers. Now, the words are the colouring of the
work, which in the order of nature is last to be considered: the design,
the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts, are all before it; where
any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in