re it
proper to mention them here, would do me great honor. They have
encouraged me by their approbation, have assisted me with valuable
books, and have eased me of almost the whole labor of transcribing.

And now I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended. To the
illustrious Greek I owe the smooth and easy flight of many thousand
hours. He has been my companion at home and abroad, in the study, in
the garden, and in the field; and no measure of success, let my labors
succeed as they may, will ever compensate to me the loss of the
innocent luxury that I have enjoyed, as a translator of HOMER.

Footnote:
1. Some of the few notes subjoined to my translation of the Odyssey
are by Mr. FUSELI, who had a short opportunity to peruse the MSS.
while the Iliad was printing. They are marked with his initial.

PREFACE
PREPARED BY MR. COWPER,
FOR A
SECOND EDITION.

Soon after my publication of this work, I began to prepare it for a
second edition, by an accurate revisal of the first. It seemed to me,
that here and there, perhaps a slight alteration might satisfy the
demands of some, whom I was desirous to please; and I comforted myself
with the reflection, that if I still failed to conciliate all, I
should yet have no cause to account myself in a singular degree
unfortunate. To please an unqualified judge, an author must sacrifice
too much; and the attempt to please an uncandid one were altogether
hopeless. In one or other of these classes may be ranged all such
objectors, as would deprive blank verse of one of its principal
advantages, the variety of its pauses; together with all such as deny
the good effect, on the whole, of a line, now and then, less
harmonious than its fellows.

With respect to the pauses, it has been affirmed with an unaccountable
rashness, that HOMER himself has given me an example of verse without
them. Had this been true, it would by no means have concluded against
the use of them in an English version of HOMER; because, in one
language, and in one species of metre, that may be musical, which in
another would be found disgusting. But the assertion is totally
unfounded. The pauses in Homer's verse are so frequent and various,
that to name another poet, if pauses are a fault, more faulty than he,
were, perhaps, impossible. It may even be questioned, if a single
passa