are in my mind, the reader must determine. I think myfelf as vigorous as ever in the faculties of my foul, excepting only my memory, which is not impaired to any great degree; and if I lofe not more of it, I have no great reason to complain. What judgment I had, increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in fo faft upon me, that my only difficulty is to chufe or to reject; to run them into verfe, or to give them the other harmony of profe. I have fo long studied and practised both, that they are grown into a habit, and become familiar to me. In fhort, though I may lawfully plead fome part of the old gentleman's excuse; yet I will reserve it till I think I have greater need, and ask no grains of allowance for the faults of this my prefent work, but those which are given of course to human frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortness of time in which I writ it, or the feveral intervals of sickness: they who think too well of their own performances, are apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works have cost them; and what other business of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to afk the question, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if they deferved no better?

With this account of my present undertaking, I conclude the first part of this discourse: in the second part, as at a second fitting, though I alter not the draught, I muft touch the fame features over again, and change the VOL. III.

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dead colouring of the whole. In general I will only fay, that I have written nothing which favours of immorality or profanenefs; at least, I am not conscious to myself of any such intention. If there happen to be found an irreverent expreffion, or a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses through my inadvertency; if the fearchers find any in the cargo, let them be staved or forfeited, like contraband goods; at least, let their authors be answerable for them, as being but imported merchandise, and not of my own manufacture. On the other fide, I have endeavoured to choofe fuch fables, both ancient and modern, as contain in each of them fome inftructive moral, which I could prove by induction, but the way is tedious; and they leap foremost into fight, without the reader's trouble of looking after them. I wish I could affirm with a fafe confcience, that I had taken the fame care in all my former writings; for it must be owned, that supposing verfes are never fo beautiful or pleasing, yet if they contain any thing which fhocks religion, or good-manners, they are at beft, what Horace fays of good numbers without good fenfe, "Verfus inopes rerum, nugæque "canore." Thus far, I hope, I am right in court, without renouncing my other right of felf-defence, where I have been wrongfully accufed, and my sense wire-drawn into blasphemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a religious lawyer, in a late pleading against the ftage; in which he mixes truth with falfehood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating ftrongly, that fomething may remain.

I refume

I resume the thread of my discourse with the first of my tranflation, which was the first Iliad of Homer. If it fhall please God to give me longer life, and moderate health, my intentions are to tranflate the whole Ilias; provided still that I meet with thofe encouragements from the public, which may enable me to procced in my undertaking with fome chearfulness. And this I dare affure the world before-hand, that I have found, by trial, Homer a more pleafing task than Virgil (though I say not the translation will be lefs laborious): for the Grecian is more according to my genius, than the Latin poet. In the works of the two authors we may read their manners, and natural inclinations, which are wholly different. Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words: Homer was rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of expreffions, which his language, and the age in which he lived, allowed him: Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confined: fo that if Homer had not led the way, it was not in Virgil to have begun heroic poetry: for nothing can be more evident, than that the Roman poem is but the second part of the Ilias; a continuation of the fame ftory: and the persons already formed: the manners of Æneas are thofe of Hector fuperadded to thofe which Homer gave him. The Adventures of Ulyffes in the Odyffeis are imitated in the first Six Books of Virgil's Æneis: and though the accidents are not the fame (which would

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would have argued him of a fervile copying, and total barrenness of invention) yet the feas were the fame, in which both the heroes wandered; and Dido cannot be denied to be the poetical daughter of Calypfo. The fix latter books of Virgil's poem are the four and twenty Iliads contracted: a quarrel occafioned by a lady, a fingle combat, battles fought, and a town befieged. fay not this in derogation to Virgil, neither do I contradict any thing which I have formerly said in his just praife for his Episodes are almost wholly of his own invention; and the form, which he has given to the telling, makes the tale his own, even though the original story had been the same. But this proves, however, that Homer taught Virgil to defign: and if invention be the first virtue of an Epic poet, then the Latin poem can only be allowed the fecond place. Mr Hobbes, in the preface to his own bald tranflation of the Ilias, (studying poetry as he did mathematicks, when it was too late) Mr Hobbes, I say, begins the praife of Homer where he fhould have ended it. He tells us, that the first beauty of an Epic poem confifts in diction, that is, in the choice of words, and harmony of numbers: now, the words are the colouring of the work, which in the order of nature is laft to be confidered. The defign, the difpofition, the manners, and the thoughts, are all before it: where any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in the imitation of human life; which is in the very defiition of a poem. Words indeed, like glaring colours, are the firft beauties that arife, and ftrike the fight: but if the draught be falfe or lame, the figures ill-dif

pofed,

pofed, the manners obfcure or inconfiftent, or the thoughts unnatural, then the finest colours are but daubing, and the piece is a beautiful monster at the best. Neither Virgil nor Homer were deficient in any of the former beauties; but in this laft, which is expreffion, the Roman poet is at least equal to the Gre. cian, as I have faid elsewhere; fupplying the poverty of his language by his mufical ear, and by his diligence. But to return: our two great poets, being fo different in their tempers, one choleric and fanguine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic; that which makes them excel in their feveral ways, is, that each of them has followed his own natural inclination, as well in forming the defign, as in the execution of it. The very heroes fhew their authors; Achilles is hot, impatient, revengeful," Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, cc acer, &c." Æneas patient, confiderate, careful of his people, and merciful to his enemies : ever fubmiffive to the will of heaven, "quo fata trahunt, retrahuntque, "fequamur." I could please myself with enlarging on this fubject, but I am forced to defer it to a fitter time. From all I have faid, I will only draw this inference, that the action of Homer being more full of vigour than that of Virgil, according to the temper of the writer, is of confequence more pleafing to the reader. One warms you by degrees; the other fets you on fire all at once, and never intermits his heat. It is the fame difference which Longinus makes betwixt the effects of eloquence in Demofthenes and Tully. One perfuades ; the other commands. You never cool while you read Homer,

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