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world; and, as Homer is the author nearest to those, his style must of
course bear a greater resemblance to the sacred books than that of any
other writer. This consideration (together with what has been observed of
the parity of some of his thoughts) may, methinks, induce a translator, on
the one hand, to give in to several of those general phrases and manners
of expression, which have attained a veneration even in our language from
being used in the Old Testament; as, on the other, to avoid those which
have been appropriated to the Divinity, and in a manner consigned to
mystery and religion.
For a further preservation of this air of simplicity, a particular care
should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and
proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. They have
something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned gravity
and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which would be
utterly lost by endeavouring to give them what we call a more ingenious
(that is, a more modern) turn in the paraphrase.
Perhaps the mixture of some Graecisms and old words after the manner of
Milton, if done without too much affectation, might not have an ill effect
in a version of this particular work, which most of any other seems to
require a venerable, antique cast. But certainly the use of modern terms
of war and government, such as "platoon, campaign, junto," or the like,
(
into which some of his translators have fallen) cannot be allowable;
those only excepted without which it is impossible to treat the subjects
in any living language.
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