the Homeric age. Knight infers from the
usage of the word deltos, "writing tablet," instead of diphthera,
"skin," which, according to Herod. 5, 58, was the material
employed by the Asiatic Greeks for that purpose, that this poem
was another offspring of Attic ingenuity; and generally that the
familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a strong argument against
so ancient a date for its composition."

Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope's design,
I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation, and on my own
purpose in the present edition.

Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been irregular, and his
earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of Ogilby. It
is not too much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a
disposition to be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive
deeply into the minute and delicate features of language. Hence his whole
work is to be looked upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a
translation. There are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes, which
prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical attainments
were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it is probable that
these examinations were the result rather of the contradictory versions
already existing, than of a desire to make a perfect transcript of the
original. And in those days, what is called literal translation was less
cultivated than at present. If something like the general sense could be
decorated with the easy gracefulness of a practised poet; if the charms of
metrical cadence and a pleasing fluency could be made consistent with a
fair interpretation of the poet's meaning, his _words_ were less jealously
sought for, and those who could read so good a poem as Pope's Iliad had
fair reason to be satisfied.

It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope's translation by our own
advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be content to look at it
as a most delightful work in itself,--a work which is as much a part of
English literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not be torn from
our kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most
cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because
Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to
amphikupellon being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from us
to defend the faults of Po