cular care
should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and
proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. They have
something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned gravity
and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which would be
utterly lost by endeavouring to give them what we call a more ingenious
(that is, a more modern) turn in the paraphrase.

Perhaps the mixture of some Graecisms and old words after the manner of
Milton, if done without too much affectation, might not have an ill effect
in a version of this particular work, which most of any other seems to
require a venerable, antique cast. But certainly the use of modern terms
of war and government, such as "platoon, campaign, junto," or the like,
(into which some of his translators have fallen) cannot be allowable;
those only excepted without which it is impossible to treat the subjects
in any living language.

There are two peculiarities in Homer's diction, which are a sort of marks
or moles by which every common eye distinguishes him at first sight; those
who are not his greatest admirers look upon them as defects, and those who
are, seemed pleased with them as beauties. I speak of his compound
epithets, and of his repetitions. Many of the former cannot be done
literally into English without destroying the purity of our language. I
believe such should be retained as slide easily of themselves into an
English compound, without violence to the ear or to the received rules of
composition, as well as those which have received a sanction from the
authority of our best poets, and are become familiar through their use of
them; such as "the cloud-compelling Jove," &c. As for the rest, whenever
any can be as fully and significantly expressed in a single word as in a
compounded one, the course to be taken is obvious.

Some that cannot be so turned, as to preserve their full image by one or
two words, may have justice done them by circumlocution; as the epithet
einosiphyllos to a mountain, would appear little or ridiculous translated
literally "leaf-shaking," but affords a majestic idea in the periphrasis:
"the lofty mountain shakes his waving woods." Others that admit of
different significations, may receive an advantage from a judicious
variation, according to the occasions on which they are introduced. For
example, the epithet of Apollo, hekaebolos or "far-shooting," is capable
of two explications; one l