Homer

The Odyssey of Homer Library, Unabridged edition

There would have been less controversy about the proper method of Homeric translation, if critics had recognised that the question is a purely relative one, that of Homer there can be no final translation. The taste and the literary habits of each age demand different qualities in poetry, and therefore a different sort of rendering of Homer. To the men of the time of Elizabeth, Homer would have appeared bald, it seems, and lacking in ingenuity, if he had been presented in his antique simplicity. For the Elizabethan age. Chapman supplied what was then necessary, and the mannerisnithat were then deg Biefe-xoafh Lessence of poetry, namely, daring and luxurious conceits. Thus in Chapman sverse Troy must shed her towersi for tears of overthrow, and when the winds toss Odysseus about, their sport must be called the horrid tennis. In the age of A nne, dignity and correctness had to be given to Homer, and Pope gave them by aid of his dazzling rhetoric, his antitheses, his mtteU, his command of every conventional and favourite artifice. Without Chapman sconceits, Homer spoems would hardly have been what the Elizabethans took for poetry; without Pope ssmoothness, and Pope spoints, the Iliad and Odyssey would have seemed tame, rude, and harsh in the age of A nne.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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