e effect of long discontinuance was, that I became more
dissatisfied with it myself, than the most difficult to be pleased of
all my judges. Not for the sake of a few uneven lines or unwonted
pauses, but for reasons far more substantial. The diction seemed to me
in many passages either not sufficiently elevated, or deficient in the
grace of ease, and in others I found the sense of the original either
not adequately expressed or misapprehended. Many elisions still
remained unsoftened; the compound epithets I found not always happily
combined, and the same sometimes too frequently repeated.

There is no end of passages in HOMER, which must creep unless they are
lifted; yet in such, all embellishment is out of the question. The
hero puts on his clothes, or refreshes himself with food and wine, or
he yokes his steed, takes a journey, and in the evening preparation is
made for his repose. To give relief to subjects prosaic as these
without seeming unreasonably tumid is extremely difficult. Mr. Pope
much abridges some of them, and others he omits; but neither of these
liberties was compatible with the nature of my undertaking. These,
therefore, and many similar to these, have been new-modeled; somewhat
to their advantage I hope, but not even now entirely to my
satisfaction. The lines have a more natural movement, the pauses are
fewer and less stately, the expression as easy as I could make it
without meanness, and these were all the improvements that I could
give them.

The elisions, I believe, are all cured, with only one exception. An
alternative proposes itself to a modern versifier, from which there is
no escape, which occurs perpetually, and which, choose as he may,
presents him always with an evil. I mean in the instance of the
particle (_the_). When this particle precedes a vowel, shall he melt
it into the substantive, or leave the _hiatus_ open? Both practices
are offensive to a delicate ear. The particle absorbed occasions
harshness, and the open vowel a vacuity equally inconvenient.
Sometimes, therefore, to leave it open, and sometimes to ingraft it
into its adjunct seems most advisable; this course Mr. Pope has taken,
whose authority recommended it to me; though of the two evils I have
most frequently chosen the elision as the least.

Compound epithets have obtained so long in the poetical language of
our country, that I employed them without fear or scruple. To have
abstained from them in a blank verse translat