Homer

“ Puff-chops, thy guile is registered—the shock
That hurl'd me from thee, wreck'd as from a rock.—
Caitiff! on land I am thy better far,
To cuff and kick, to wrestle, run, and spar5,
But no—by craft thou'st drown'd me in the deep;
Yet ne'er doth heaven's avenging eyeball sleep:—
Ev'n now the embattled war-mice bless mine eye,
Blood calls for blood, and Puff-chops' hour is nigh! ”

“ Next Crumb-catch, battling for his slaughtered friends,
His spear-point sheer thro' grim Gnaw-garlic sends,
Unlet it probes his rent heart's inmost core,
Forward he falls, his soul seeks death's dark shore. ”

“ Palm of the host, the faultless Loaf-lurk's son:
A very Mars he flam'd, and Snap-scrap hight,
Prince of the Mice, their champion in the fight!
Full of fierce thoughts beside the lake he stood,
And doom'd destruction on the Frogs' fell brood,
Doom'd—and had well-nigh wrought, his might so vast,
When Parent-Jove his eye all-seeing cast
Fall on the fainting Frogs, and, touch'd with ruth,
Bow'd his dark brow and spake the word of truth:
"Woe worth the day! at yonder sickening sight
Ye gods! I faint, my spirit faints with fright14. ”

“ Don we our mail of proof, and all take post
On land's last brink, where shelves sheer down the coast.
When on our ranks with onslaught wild they burst,
Grasp each his helmet whom you grapple first,
And fling amid the waves ”

“ Who art thou, friend? whence bound for this lone shore?
What sire begat thee, and what mother bore3?
Tell all and truly tell, for should we find
In thee a comrade meet and to our mind,
Straight will we lead thee to our halls of state,
And load our guest with costly gifts and great.
King Puff-chops we—beside yon lake ador'd,
For many a day, the frogs' imperial lord!
Mud-lark our sire—on Po's sweet margent green
He wooed and won the tuneful Water-queen. ”

“ He who cannot attain the richness and harmony of 'Pope' may yet hope to surpass him in fidelity; and though the spirit and freedom of 'Chapman' may not be easily outgone, his conciseness and poetical feeling have not much to intimidate a competitor of ordinary endowments. ”

“ Sometimes a word, sometimes a bare allusion in the original, has served to recal a favourite passage to mind, and has thus become, as it were, a peg whereon to hang a few detached and, otherwise, unconnected fragments. [2] Such is the light in which I would have the reader regard them—and as such, I hope they will not prove altogether uninteresting to him. ”

“ I translate for the English reader, and do not think it sufficient to give him a loose idea of the original, but as fair and perfect a transcript of it as the difference of language will admit: at the same time it will, I trust, appear that I have not, in any instance, fallen into barbarisms or violated the idiom of my own country.
"It has been objected that my lines run into one another, and that they would have pleased more had the sense ended with the couplet. I once thought the same; and in many a school translation 'rhymed and rattled' on very glibly, and very much to my own satisfaction ”

“ My Publisher, however, suggesting that a slight addition would render its dimensions by no means inconveniently large, I was induced, after the sheets, originally intended, had been paged and struck off, to add the second book of the Iliad, with which the volume now concludes. ”

“ As to the imitations of Homer which present themselves at every page of our English Poets, the field is so wide, and the flowers so endless, that I prefer leaving them for the reader's own gathering—if he choose to undertake the task. They began to multiply upon my hands so fast, that I was compelled to omit them, or suffer the notes to swell beyond all bounds and proportion.
↑ Two, nevertheless, I will take the liberty of particularizing. The first occurs in my version of that noble line (the 49th of the first Book of the Iliad, page 3.) Δεινὴ δὲ κλαγγὴ κ. τ. λ. ”