merits, and petty imperfections are certainly to be found in the translation of Pope. These are temperately, and judiciously displayed in the liberal essay of that gentle and amiable critic, Spence, on the Odyssey; who, though he was rather partial to blankverse, yet regarded Pope's Homer, as a work entitled to great admiration. It is indeed a work so truly admirable, that I should be sorry, if the more faithful version of my favourite friend, could materially injure the honour of its author; but between Pope and Cowper there is no contest: They are performers on different instruments," as Cowper has very properly remarked himself, in the Preface to his own translation.

We may apply to the two translators, there fore, the comprehensive Latin words, that Gibbon applied to two eminent lawyers" Magis Pares, quam similes," but of the two translators it may be added, that each has attained such a degree of excellence in the mode he adopted, as will probably remain unsurpassed for ever. Instead therefore of endeavouring to decide which is entitled to the greater portion of praise, a reader, who has derived great pleasure from both, may rather wish (for the embellishment and honour of the English language) that

it may exhibit a double version of every great ancient poet perfectly equal in spirit and beauty to the Homers of Pope and Cowper. My impartial esteem for the merits of these two pre-eminent translators had almost tempted me to introduce in this composition a minute display of their alternate successes and failures in many most striking passages of Homer, but on reflection it appears to me, that such a comparison, if fairly and extensively conducted, would form an episode too large for the body of my work, and the spirit of my departed friend seem to admonish me against it, in the following words of his Grecian favourite.

Μητ' ας με μαλ' αινες, μητε τι νεικεί
Είδοσι γαρ τοι ταυτα μετ' Αργείοις αγορεύεις,

Neither praise me much, nor blame,

For these are Grecians, in whose ears thou speak'st,
And know me well!

Cowper's Homer's Iliad, 10.

I will therefore confine myself to the general result of such a comparison, and I am persuaded that all unprejudiced scholars, who may amuse themselves

by pursuing the comparison, will find the result to be this: that both the English poets have rendered noble justice to their original, taken altogether; that in separate parts each translator has frequently sunk beneath him, and each in their happier moments surpassed the model which they endeavoured to copy.

As to the emolument that each translator received, for labour so extensive and so meritorious, we may observe with concern, that Cowper obtained for his Iliad and Odyssey united, not half the sum, which the zeal of many active and liberal friends, enabled Pope to collect from his Iliad alone. That work though accomplished early in his life, produced to its author considerably more than five thousand pounds. The years employed by each translator in the same arduous undertaking were nearly equal. But to form that equality, we must include the time devoted by Cowper to the great changes he made in new modelling his translation.

"I began the Iliad in my twenty-fifth year (said Pope to Mr. Spence) and it took up that and five more to finish it."

Pope had partners in the latter portion of his work: Cowper accomplished his mighty labour by his own exertions; and he seems to have taken an

honest pleasure in recording with his own hand, the time, and the pains that he bestowed on his Translation.

In the copy of Clarke's Homer, which he valued particularly as the gift of his friend, Mr. Rose, he inserted the following memorandum.

My translation of the Iliad I

began on the twenty-first day of November, in the year 1784, and finished the translation of the Odyssey or the twenty-fifth day of August, 1790: during eight months of this time I was hindered by indisposition, so that I have been occupied in the work on the whole five years and one month.

W. Cowper.

"Mem.I gave the work another revisal, while it was in the press, which I finished March 4,

1791."

When we add to this account all the time which he gave to preparations for a second edition, it will hardly be hyperbolical to say, that his deeply studied version of Homer was, like the siege of Troy, a work of ten years. Nor will this time appear won

derful, when we recollect how determined Cowper was to be as minutely faithful, as possible, to the exact sense of his original. Ths following passage from one of his Letters to Mr. Park will shew how much he gratified his own mind by such scrupulous fidelity. In thanking his friend for a present of Chapman's Iliad, he says▬▬▬▬▬▬

Weston, July 15, 1793.

I have consulted him in one pas

sage of some difficulty, and find him giving a sense of his own, not at all warranted by the words of Homer. Pope sometimes does this; and sometimes, omits the difficult part entirely. I can boast of having done neither, though it has cost me infinite pains to exempt myself from the necessity.

The late Mr. Wakefield, in republishing Pope's Homer, has mentioned Cowper's superior fidelity to his original, with the liberal praise of a scholar, but he falls, I think, into injudicious severity on the structure of his verse-a severity the more remarkable, as he warmly censures Boswell for unfeeling petulance,