ble 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 t