The Iliad of Homer - Get a Free Blog

Homer. I attempt him in no other hope
but that which one may entertain without
much vanity, of giving a more tolerable
copy of him than any entire translation in
verse has yet done. We have only those
of Chapman, Hobbes, and Ogilby. Chapman
has taken the advantage of an immeasurable
length of verse, notwithstanding
which, there is scarce any paraphrase
more loose and rambling than his.
He has frequent interpolations of four or
six lines; and I remember one in the thirteenth
book of the Odyssey, ver. 312,
where he has spun twenty verses out of
two. He is often mistaken in so bold a
manner, that one might think he deviated
on purpose, if he did not in other places
of his notes insist so much upon verbal
trifles. He appears to have had a strong
affectation of extracting new meanings
out of his author; insomuch as to promise,
in his rhyming preface, a poem of the
mysteries he had revealed in Homer; and