The Iliad of Homer
The Iliad of Homer
Translated into English Blank Verse by William Cowper
Edited by Robert Southey.
Book Excerpt
ginal,
convinced that every departure from him would be punished with the
forfeiture of some grace or beauty for which I could substitute no
equivalent. The epithets that would consent to an English form I have
preserved as epithets; others that would not, I have melted into the
context. There are none, I believe, which I have not translated in one
way or other, though the reader will not find them repeated so often
as most of them are in HOMER, for a reason that need not be mentioned.
Few persons of any consideration are introduced either in the Iliad or
Odyssey by their own name only, but their patronymic is given also. To
this ceremonial I have generally attended, because it is a
circumstance of my author's manner.
HOMER never allots less than a whole line to the introduction of a speaker. No, not even when the speech itself is no longer than the line that leads it. A practice to which, since he never departs from it, he must have been determined by some cogent reason. He probably deemed it a
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when one writes with hands its readable , when with brain its art n when with heart magnus opus...and that is ILLIAD a perfection...while reading it one can truly feel joire-de-vivre...
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