PREFACE

TO

HOMER'S ILIAD.

HOMER is universally allowed to have had the greatest Invention of any writer whatever. The praise of Judgment Virgil has justly contested with. him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular excellences; but his Invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. It is the Invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great Geniuses: the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which master every thing besides, can never attain to this. It furnishes Art with all her materials, and without it, Judgment itself can at best but steal wisely for Art is only like a prudent steward that lives on managing the riches of Nature. Whatever praises may be given to works of Judgment, there is not even a single beauty in them, to which the Invention must not contribute. As in the most regular gardens, Art can only reduce the beauties of Nature to more regularity, and such a figure, which

the common eye may better take in, and is therefore more entertained with. And perhaps the reason why common Critics are inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great and fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to pursue their observations through a uniform and bounded walk of Art, than to comprehend the vast and various extent of Nature.

Our Author's work is a wild paradise*, where if we cannot see all the beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the number of them is infinitely greater. 'Tis like a copious nursery which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants, each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things are too luxuriant, it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppressed by those of a stronger nature.

'These words seem to imply that the Iliad is deficient in point of regularity and conduct of the Fable. Whereas one of its most transcendent and unparalleled excellences is the coherence, the consistency, the simplicity, and the perspicuity, of its plan; all which qualities are the result of judgment as well as of invention; and all which the best critics, from Aristotle to Clarke, have joined in admiring and applauding. Let Quintilian speak for all the rest; in dispositione totius operis nonne humani generis modum excessit? And he excels Virgil as much in judgment as invention; and in exact disposition, just thought, correct elocution, and polished numbers, as in poetical fire. Mad. Dacier was vehemently angry at Mr. Pope for this paragraph. In fact, we do see the beauties of this well-ordered garden; which is not a mere nursery; its plants are not too luxuriant, and are arrived to perfection and maturity.

It is to the strength of this amazing Invention we are to attribute that unequalled fire and rapture, which is so forcible in Homer, that no man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him. What he writes, is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing moves, every thing lives, and is put in action. If a council be called, or a battle fought, you are not coldly informed of what was said or done as from a third person; the reader is hurried out of himself by the force of the Poet's imagination, and turns in one place to a hearer, in another to a spectator. The course of his verses resembles that of the army he describes,

Οἱ δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἴσαν, ὡσεί τε πυρὶ χθὼν πᾶσα νέμοιτο.

They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth before it. 'Tis however remarkable, that his fancy, which is every where vigorous, is not discovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its fullest splendour: it grows in the progress both upon himself and others, and becomes on fire like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity. Exact disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers, may have been found in a thousand; but this poetical fire, this Vivida vis animi, in a very few. Even in works where all those are imperfect or neglected, this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even while we disapprove. Nay, where this appears, though attended with absurdities, it brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing but its own splendour. This Fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass,

reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but every where equal and constant: in Lucan and Statius, it burst out in sudden, short, and interrupted flashes in Milton it glows like a furnace kept up

' Of all passages in our Author's Works, I most wish he had never written this tasteless and unjust comparison. But indeed he never speaks of our divine Bard, con amore. This has lately been done by Mr. Hayley, in his curious and animated Life of Milton. I do not honour Sir John Denham so much for his writing Cooper's Hill, as I do for being the very first person that spoke highly of Paradise Lost; who coming one day into the House of Commons with a proof-sheet of this Poem, wet from the press, and being asked what paper he held in his hand, replied, "It was part of the noblest poem that was ever written in any language, or in any age."

"Milton," says Warburton, with his usual love of bringing every thing into system, "found Homer possessed of the province of Morality; Virgil of Politics; and nothing left for him, but that of Religion. This he seized, as aspiring to share with them in the government of the poetic world; and by means of the superior dignity of his subject, hath gotten to the head of that triumvirate, which took so many ages in forming. These are the three species of the Epic Poem; for its largest sphere is human action, which can be considered but in a MORAL, POLITICAL, or RELIGIOUS View; and these the three makers; for each oftheir poems was struck at a heat, and came to perfection from its first essay. Here then the grand scene was closed, and all farther improvements of the Epic at an end." A cruel sentence indeed, and a very severe statute of Limitation! enough, if it had any foundation, to destroy every future attempt of any exalted genius that might arise. But, in truth, the assertion is totally groundless and chimerical. Each of the three poets might change the stations here assigned to them. Homer might assume to himself the province of politics; Virgil of morality; and Milton of both; who is also a strong proof that human action is not the largest sphere of Epic Poetry. But of all Dr. Warburton's forced and fanciful interpretations, next to his extraordinary interpretation of the Sixth Book of the Eneid, is the supposition, that Virgil, by the episode of Nisus and Euryalus, meant to recommend the Grecian institution of the Band of Lovers and Friends that fought at each other's sides: and, also,

to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: in Shakspeare, it strikes before we are aware, like an accidental fire from heaven: but in Homer, and in him only, it burns every where clearly, and every where irresistibly.

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I shall here endeavour to shew, how this vast Invention exerts itself in a manner superior to that of any poet, through all the main constituent parts of his work, as it is the great and peculiar characteristic which distinguishes him from all other authors. This strong and ruling faculty was like a powerful star, which, in the violence of its course, drew all things within its vorter. It seemed not enough

that by the behaviour and death of Amata, and her celebration of the Bacchic Rites in the Seventh Book, Virgil meant to proscribe and expose the abominable abuses that had crept into the mysteries. I lament that Mr. Gibbon, in his able confutation of the notion of Augustus's Initiation, has not touched on this topic.

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• Convinced that this Translation is the most spirited and the best ever given of any ancient Poet, and most suited to modern times and readers; yet I have always been of opinion, that Pope would have made it still more excellent, and would have profited much, if he could have seen Blackwell's Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer; a work, though written indeed with some affectation of style, that abounds in curious researches and observations, and places Homer in a new light; by endeavouring to shew how it has happened that no poet has ever equalled him for upwards of two thousand years; namely, by the united influence of the happiest climate; the most natural manners to paint ; the boldest language to use; the most expressive religion; and the richest subject to work upon. Nature, after all, is the surest rule, and real characters the best ground of fiction. The passions of the human mind, if truly awaked, and kept up by objects fitted. to them, dictate a language peculiar to themselves. Homer has copied it, and done justice to nature. We see her image in his draft and this Work is the great Drama of Life, acted in our view. A most ingenious theory, if not solid, in every respect.