degree; and if I lose 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 so fast upon me that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject, to run them into verse or to give them the other har- 5 mony of prose. I have so long studied and practised both that they are grown into a habit and become familiar to me. In short, though I may lawfully plead some 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 10 of this my present 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 several intervals of sickness: they who think too well of their own performances are apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works 15 have cost them, and what other business of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask 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 20 if they deserved 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 sitting, though I alter not the draught, I must touch the same features over again and change the dead coloring 25 of the whole. In general, I will only say that I have written nothing which savors of immorality or profaneness; at least, I am not conscious to myself of any such intention. If there happen to be found an irreverent expression or a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses through my inad-30 vertency; if the searchers find any in the cargo, let them be staved or forfeited, like contrabanded goods; at least, let their authors be answerable for them, as being but imported merchandise and not of my own manufacture. On the other side, I have endeavored to choose such fables, both ancient 35 and modern, as contain in each of them some instructive moral; which I could prove by induction, but the way is tedious, and they leap foremost into sight without the reader's

trouble of looking after them. I wish I could affirm with a safe conscience that I had taken the same care in all my former writings; for it must be owned that, supposing verses are never so beautiful or pleasing, yet if they contain any5 thing which shocks religion or good manners, they are at best, what Horace says of good numbers without good sense "Versus inopes rerum, nugæque canora." Thus far, I hope, I am right in court, without renouncing my other right of self-defence where I have been wrongfully accused and my 10 sense wire-drawn into blasphemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a religious lawyer in a late pleading against the stage, in which he mixes truth with falsehood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating strongly that something may remain.

15

I resume the thrid of my discourse with the first of my translations, which was the first Iliad of Homer. If it shall please God to give me longer life and moderate health, my intentions are to translate the whole Ilias, provided still that I meet with those encouragements from the public which may 20 enable me to proceed in my undertaking with some cheerfulness. And this I dare assure the world beforehand, that I have found by trial Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil, though I say not the translation will be less laborious. For the Grecian is more according to my genius than the Latin 25 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 30 rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of expressions, which his language and the age in which he lived allowed him. Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confined; so that if Homer had not led the way, it was not in Virgil to have begun heroic poetry, 35 for nothing can be more evident than that the Roman poem is but the second part of the Ilias-a continuation of the same story, and the persons already formed; the manners of Eneas are those of Hector superadded to those which Homer

gave him. The adventures of Ulysses in the Odysseis are imitated in the first six books of Virgil's Eneis; and though the accidents are not the same (which would have argued him of a servile copying and total barrenness of invention), yet the seas were the same in which both the heroes wandered, 5 and Dido cannot be denied to be the poetical daughter of Calypso. The six latter books of Virgil's poem are the four and twenty Iliads contracted-a quarrel occasioned by a lady, a single combat, battles fought, and a town besieged. I say not this in derogation to Virgil, neither do I contradict any- 10 thing which I have formerly said in his just praise: 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 design; and if inven-15 tion be the first virtue of an epic poet, then the Latin poem can only be allowed the second place. Mr. Hobbes, in the preface to his own bald translation of the Ilias (studying poetry, as he did mathematics, when it was too late), Mr. Hobbes, I say, begins the praise of Homer where he should 20 have ended it. He tell us that the first beauty of an epic poem consists in diction, that is, in the choice of words and harmony of numbers. Now, the words are the coloring of the work, which in the order of nature is last to be considered: the design, the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts 25 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 definition of a poem. Words indeed, like glaring colors, are the first beauties that arise and strike the sight; but if the draught be false or lame, the figures ill- 30 disposed, the manners obscure or inconsistent, or the thoughts unnatural, then the finest colors 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 last, which is expression, the Roman poet is at least equal 35 to the Grecian, as I have said elsewhere, supplying the poverty of his language by his musical ear and by his diligence. But to return; our two great poets, being so different in their

tempers, one choleric and sanguine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic, that which makes them excel in their several ways is that each of them has followed his own natural inclination, as well in forming the design as in the execution of 5 it. The very heroes show their authors: Achilles is hot, impatient, revengeful-" Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer," etc.; Æneas, patient, considerate, careful of his people and merciful to his enemies, ever submissive to the will of Heaven -"quo fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur." I could 10 please myself with enlarging on this subject, but am forced to defer it to a fitter time. From all I have said I will only draw this inference, that the action of Homer being more full of vigor than that of Virgil, according to the temper of the writer, is of consequence more pleasing to the reader. 15 One warms you by degrees; the other sets you on fire all at once, and never intermits his heat. "Tis the same difference which Longinus makes betwixt the effects of eloquence in Demosthenes and Tully. One persuades, the other commands. You never cool while you read Homer, even not in the second 20 book (a graceful flattery to his countrymen); but he hastens from the ships, and concludes not that book till he has made you an amends by the violent playing of a new machine. From thence he hurries on his action with variety of events, and ends it in less compass than two months. This ve

25 hemence of his, I confess, is more suitable to my temper, and therefore I have translated his first book with greater pleasure than any part of Virgil; but it was not a pleasure without pains: the continual agitations of the spirits must needs be a weakening of any constitution, especially in age; and many 30 pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the heats, the Iliad of itself being a third part longer than all Virgil's works together.

This is what I thought needful in this place to say of Homer. I proceed to Ovid and Chaucer, considering the 35 former only in relation to the latter. With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue; from Chaucer the purity of the English tongue began. The manners of the poets were not unlike: both of them were well-bred, well-natured,

amorous, and libertine-at least in their writings, it may be also in their lives. Their studies were the same, philosophy and philology. Both of them were knowing in astronomy, of which Ovid's books of the Roman feasts and Chaucer's treatise of the astrolabe are sufficient witnesses; but Chaucer 5 was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil, Horace, Persius, and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and clearness: neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables, and most of Chaucer's stories were taken from his Italian contemporaries or their predecessors. Boccace his 10 Decameron was first published, and from thence our Englishman has borrowed many of his Canterbury Tales; yet that of Palamon and Arcite was written in all probability by some Italian wit in a former age, as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of Grizild was the invention of Petrarch, by him sent to 15 Boccace, from whom it came to Chaucer. Troilus and Cressida was also written by a Lombard author, but much amplified by our English translator, as well as beautified, the genius of our countrymen in general being rather to improve an invention than to invent themselves, as is evident, not only 20 in our poetry, but in many of our manufactures. I find I have anticipated already, and taken up from Boccace before I come to him; but there is so much less behind, and I am of the temper of most kings, who love to be in debt, are all for present money, no matter how they pay it afterwards; besides, 25 the nature of a preface is rambling, never wholly out of the way nor in it. This I have learnt from the practice of honest Montaigne; and return at my pleasure to Ovid and Chaucer, of whom I have little more to say. Both of them built on the inventions of other men; yet since Chaucer had something 30 of his own, as The Wife of Bath's Tale, The Cock and the Fox, which I have translated, and some others, I may justly give our countryman the precedence in that part, since I can remember nothing of Ovid which was wholly his. Both of them understood the manners, under which name I compre- 35 hend the passions and in a larger sense the descriptions of persons and their very habits. For an example, I see Baucis and Philemon as perfectly before me as if some ancient