charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing fluency could be made consistent with

a fair interpretation of the poet’s meaning, his words were less

jealously sought for, and those who could read so good a poem as Pope’s

Iliad had fair reason to be satisfied.


It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope’s translation by our own

advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be content to look at it as a

most delightful work in itself,—a work which is as much a part of English

literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not be torn from our kindly

associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most cherished companion, or

our most looked-for prize, merely because Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have

made us so much more accurate as to

ἀμφικύπελλον

being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from us to defend the

faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman’s fine, bold, rough

old English;—far be it from us to hold up his translation as what a

translation of Homer might be. But we can still dismiss Pope’s

Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the consciousness that they must have

read a very great number of books before they have read its fellow.


THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.


Christ Church.


THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER.


BOOK I.


ARGUMENT.

MINERVA’S DESCENT TO ITHACA.


The poem opens within forty eight days of the arrival of Ulysses in his

dominions. He had now remained seven years in the Island of Calypso, when the

gods assembled in council, proposed the method of his departure from thence and

his return to his native country. For this purpose it is concluded to send

Mercury to Calypso, and Pallas immediately descends to Ithaca. She holds a

conference with Telemachus, in the shape of Mantes, king of Taphians; in which

she advises him to take a journey in quest of his father Ulysses, to Pylos and

Sparta, where Nestor and Menelaus yet reigned; then, after having visibly