The Iliad of Homer - Get a Free Blog

moral of his poem required a contrary
character: it is thus that Rapin judges in
his comparison of Homer and Virgil.
Others select those particular passages of
Homer which are not so laboured as
some that Virgil drew out of them: this is
the whole management of Scaliger in his
Poetics. Others quarrel with what they
take for low and mean expressions,
sometimes through a false delicacy and
refinement, oftener from an ignorance of
the graces of the original, and then triumph
in the awkwardness of their own
translations: this is the conduct of Perrault
in his Parallels. Lastly, there are
others, who, pretending to a fairer proceeding,
distinguish between the personal
merit of Homer, and that of his work;
but when they come to assign the causes
of the great reputation of the Iliad, they
found it upon the ignorance of his times,
and the prejudice of those that followed:
and in pursuance of this principle, they