J. Johnson, Ll.b
CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH.
I have no other pretensions to the honorable name of Editor on this
occasion, than as a faithful transcriber of the Manuscript, and a
diligent corrector of the Press, which are, doubtless, two of the very
humblest employments in that most extensive province. I have wanted the
ability to attempt any thing higher; and, fortunately for the reader, I
have also wanted the presumption. What, however, I can do, I will.
Instead of critical remark, I will furnish him with anecdote. He shall
trace from beginning to end the progress of the following work; and in
proportion as I have the happiness to engage his attention, I shall
merit the name of a fortunate editor.
It was in the darkest season of a most calamitous depression of his
spirits, that I was summoned to the house of my inestimable friend the
Translator, in the month of January, 1794. He had happily completed a
revisal of his Homer, and was thinking of the preface to his new
edition, when all his satisfaction in the one, and whatever he had
projected for the other, in a moment vanished from his mind. He had
fallen into a deplorable illness; and though the foremost wish of my
heart was to lessen the intenseness of his misery, I was utterly unable
to afford him any aid.
I had, however, a pleasing though a melancholy opportunity of tracing
his recent footsteps in the Field of Troy, and in the Palace of Ithaca.
He had materially altered both the Iliad and Odyssey; and, so far as my
ability allowed me to judge, they were each of them greatly improved.
He had also, at the request of his bookseller, interspersed the two
poems with copious notes; for the most part translations of the ancient
Scholia, and gleaned, at the cost of many valuable hours, from the
pages of Barnes, Clarke, and Villoisson. It has been a constant subject
of regret to the admirers of “The Task,” that the exercise of such
marvelous original powers, should have been so long suspended by the
drudgery of translation; and in this view, their quarrel with the
illustrious Greek will be, doubtless, extended to his commentators.[1]
During two long years from this most anxious period, the translation
continued as it was; and though, in the hope of its being able to
divert his melancholy, I had attempted more than once to introduce it
to its Author, I was every time painfully obliged to desist. But in the
summer of ninety-six, when he had resided with me in Norfolk twelve
miserable months, the introduction long wished for took place. To my
inexpressible astonishment and joy, I surprised him, one morning, with
the Iliad in his hand; and with an excess of delight, which I am still
more unable to describe, I the next day discovered that he had been
writing.—Were I to mention one of the happiest moments of my life, it
might be that which introduced me to the following lines:—
Mistaken meanings corrected,
admonente G. Wakefield. B. XXIII. L. 429. that the nave
Of thy neat wheel seem e’en to grind upon it. L. 865. As when (the
north wind freshening) near the bank
Up springs a fish in air, then falls again
And disappears beneath the sable flood,
So at the stroke, he bounded. L. 1018. Thenceforth Tydides o’er his
ample shield
Aim’d and still aim’d to pierce him in the neck. Or better thus—
Tydides, in return, with spear high-poised
O’er the broad shield, aim’d ever at his neck, Or best of all— Then
Tydeus’ son, with spear high-poised above
The ample shield, stood aiming at his neck.
He had written these lines with a pencil, on a leaf at the end of his
Iliad; and when I reflected on the cause which had given them birth, I
could not but admire its disproportion to the effect. What the voice of
persuasion had failed in for a year, accident had silently accomplished
in a single day. The circumstance I allude to was this: I received a
copy of the Iliad and Odyssey of Pope, then recently published by the
Editor above mentioned, with illustrative and critical notes of his
own. As it commended Mr. Cowper’s Translation in the Preface, and
occasionally pointed out its merits in the Notes, I was careful to
place it in his way; though it was more from a habit of experiment
which I had contracted, than from well-grounded hopes of success. But
what a fortunate circumstance was the arrival of this Work! and by what
name worthy of its influence shall I call it? In the mouth of an
indifferent person it might be Chance; but in mine; whom it rendered so
peculiarly happy, common gratitude requires that it should be
Providence.
As I watched him with an indescribable interest in his progress, I had
the satisfaction to find, that, after a few mornings given to
promiscuous correction, and to frequent perusal of the above-mentioned
Notes, he was evidently settling on the sixteenth Book. This he went
regularly through, and the fruits of an application so happily resumed
were, one day with another, about sixty new lines. But with the end of
the sixteenth Book he had closed the corrections of the year. An
excursion to the coast, which immediately followed, though it promised
an accession of strength to the body, could not fail to interfere with
the pursuits of the mind. It was therefore with much less surprise than
regret, that I saw him relinquish the “_Tale of Troy Divine_.”
Such was the prelude to the last revisal, which, in the month of
January, ninety-seven, Mr. Cowper was persuaded to undertake; and to a
faithful copy, as I trust, of which, I have at this time the honor to
conduct the reader. But it may not be amiss to observe, that with
regard to the earlier books of the Iliad, it was less a revisal of the
altered text, than of the text as it stands in the first edition. For
though the interleaved copy was always at hand, and in the multitude of
its altered places could hardly fail to offer some things worthy to be
preserved, but which the ravages of illness and the lapse of time might
have utterly effaced from his mind, I could not often persuade the
Translator to consult it. I was therefore induced, in the course of
transcribing, to compare the two revisals as I went along, and to plead
for the continuance of the first correction, when it forcibly struck me
as better than the last. This, however, but seldom occurred; and the
practice, at length, was completely left off, by his consenting to
receive into the number of the books which were daily laid open before
him, the interleaved copy to which I allude.
At the end of the first six books of the Iliad, the arrival of spring
brought the usual interruptions of exercise and air, which increased as
the summer advanced to a degree so unfavorable to the progress of
Homer, that in the requisite attention to their salutary claims, the
revisal was, at one time, altogether at a stand. Only four books were
added in the course of nine months; but opportunity returning as the
winter set in, there were added, in less than seven weeks, four more:
and thus ended the year ninety-seven.
As the spring that succeeded was a happier spring, so it led to a
happier summer. We had no longer air and exercise alone, but exercise
and Homer hand in hand. He even followed us thrice to the sea: and
whether our walks were
“on the margin of the land,
O’er the green summit of the” cliffs, “whose base
Beats back the roaring surge,”
“or on the shore
Of the untillable and barren deep,”
they were always within hearing of his magic song. About the middle of
this busy summer, the revisal of the Iliad was brought to a close; and
on the very next day, the 24th of July, the correction of the Odyssey
commenced,—a morning rendered memorable by a kind and unexpected visit
from the patroness of that work, the Dowager Lady Spencer!
It is not my intention to detain the reader with a progressive account
of the Odyssey revised, as circumstantial as that of the Iliad, because
it went on smoothly from beginning to end, and was finished in less
than eight months.
I cannot deliver these volumes to the public without feeling emotions
of gratitude toward Heaven, in recollecting how often this corrected
Work has appeared to me an instrument of Divine mercy, to mitigate the
sufferings of my excellent relation. Its progress in our private hours
was singularly medicinal to his mind: may its presentment to the Public
prove not less conducive to the honor of the departed Author, who has
every claim to my veneration! As a copious life of the Poet is already
in the press, from the pen of his intimate friend Mr. Hayley, it is
unnecessary for me to enter on such extensive commendation of his
character, as my own intimacy with him might suggest; but I hope the
reader will kindly allow me the privilege of indulging, in some degree,
the feelings of my heart, by applying to him, in the close of this
Preface, an expressive verse (borrowed from Homer) which he inscribed
himself, with some little variation, on a bust of his Grecian Favorite.
Ως τε πατηρ ω παιδι, και ουποτε λησομαι αυτε.
Loved as his Son, in him I early found
A Father, such as I will ne’er forget.
Footnote:
Very few signatures had at this time been affixed to the notes; but I
afterward compared them with the Greek, note by note, and endeavored to
supply the defect; more especially in the last three Volumes, where the
reader will be pleased to observe that all the notes without signatures
are Mr. Cowper’s, and that those marked B.C.V. are respectively found
in the editions of Homer by Barnes, Clarke, and Villoisson. But the
employment was so little to the taste and inclination of the poet, that
he never afterward revised them, or added to their number more than
these which follow;—In the Odyssey, Vol. I. Book xi., the note 32.—Vol.