I might have done the fame without intending that compliment, for they are alfo to be found in Euftathius, and the fentiment I believe is that of all mankind. I cannot really tell what to say to this whole remark; only that in the first part of it, Madam Dacier is difpleafed that I do not agree with her, and in the laft that I do: but this is a temper which every polite man fhould over-look in a lady.

To punish my ingratitude, the refolves to expofe my blunders, and felects two which I fuppofe are the most flagrant, out of the many for which he could have chaftifed me. It happens that the firft of these is in part the tranflator's, and in part her own, without any fhare of mine: the quotes the end of a fentence, and he puts in French what I never wrote in English: "Homer (I faid) opened a new and boundless walk "for his imagination, and created a world for him"felf in the invention of fable ;" which he tranflates, Homere crea pour fon ufage un monde mouvant, ea inventant la fable.

Madam Dacier justly wonders at this nonfenfe in me; and I, in the tranflator. As to what I meant by Homer's invention of fable, it is afterwards particularly diftinguished from that extenûve fenfe in which fhe took it, by thefe words. "If Homer was not the first who "introduced the Deities (as Herodotus imagines) into "the religion of Greece, he seems the first who brought "them into a fyftem of machinery for poetry."

The other blunder the accufes me of is, the mistaking a paffage in Ariftotle, and she is pleased to fend

me

me back to this philofopher's treatise of Poetry, and to I her preface on the Odyffey, for my better inftruction. Now though I am faucy enough to think that one may fometimes differ from Ariftotle without blundering, and though I am fure one may fometimes fall into an error by following him fervilely; yet I own, that to quote any author for what he never said, is a blunder; (but, by the way, to correct an author for what he never faid, is fomewhat worfe than a blunder.) My words were thefe: "As there is a greater variety of "characters in the Iliad than in any other poem, fo "there is of fpeeches. Every thing in it has manners, "as Ariftotle expreffes it; that is, every thing is acted

or spoken: very little paffes in narration." She justly fays, that "Every thing which is acted or spoken, "has not neceffarily manners merely because it is "acted or spoken." Agreed: but I would ask the queftion, whether any thing can have nianners which is neither acted nor spoken? If not, then the whole Iliad being almost spent in fpeech and action, almost every thing in it has manners, fince Homer has been proved before, in a long paragraph of the preface, to have excelled in drawing characters and painting manners, and indeed his whole poem is one continued occafion of thewing this bright part of his talent.

To fpeak fairly, it is impoffible fhe could read even the tranflation, and take my fenfe fo wrong as the reprefents it; but I was firft tranflated ignorantly, and then read partially. My expreffion indeed was not quite exact; it should have been, "Every thing has 66 manners as Ariftotle calls them." But fuch a fault methinks might have been spared, fince if one was to

look

look with that difpofition fhe discovers towards me, even on her own excellent writings, one might find fome mistakes which no context can redrefs; as where she makes Euftathius call Cratifthenes the Phliafian, Callifthenes the Physician *. What a triumph might fome flips of this fort have afforded to Homer's, hers, and my enemies, from which fhe was only fcreened by their happy ignorance! How unlucky had it been, when the infulted Mr. de la Motte for omitting a material paffage in the fpeech of Helen, to Hector, Iliad vi. if fome champion for the moderns had by chance understood fo much Greek, as to whisper him, that there was no such paffage in Homer?

Our concern, zeal, and even jealoufy, for our great author's honour were mutual, our endeavours to advance it were equal, and I have as often trembled for it in her hands, as he could in mine. It was one of the many reasons I had to wish the longer life of this lady, that I must certainly have regained her good opinion, in spite of all mirepresenting translators whatever. I could not have expected it on any other terms than being approved as great, if not as paffionate, an admirer of Homer as herfelf. For that was the firft condition of her favour and friendship; otherwise not one's taste alone, but one's morality had been corrupted, nor would any man's religion have been suspected, who did not implicitly believe in an author whofe doctrine is fo conformable to Holy Scripture. However, as different people have different ways of expreffing their belief, fome purely by public and general acts of

* Dacier Remarques fur le 4me livre de l'Odyff. p. 476. De la Corruption du Gout.

of worship, others by a reverend fort of reafoning and enquiry about the grounds of it; it is the fame in admiration, fome prove it by exclamations, others by refpect. I have observed that the loudest huzzas given to a great man in triumph, proceed not from his friends, but the rabble; and as I have fancied it the fame with the rabble of critics, a defire to be distinguished from them has turned me to the more moderate, and, I hope, more rational method. Though I am a poet, I would not be an enthusiast; and though I am an Englishman, I would not be furiously of a party. I am far from thinking myself that genius, upon whom, at the end of thefe remarks, Madam Dacier congratulates my country: one capable of, "correcting Homer, and "confequently of reforming mankind, and amending "this conftitution." It was not to Great Britain this ought to have been applied, fince our nation has one happiness for which she might have preferred it to her own, that, as much as we abound in other miferable mitguided fects, we have at leaft none of the blafphemers of Homer. We steadfastly and unanimously believe, both his poem, and our conftitution, to be the best that ever human wit invented that the one is not more incapable of amendment than the other; and (old as they both are) we difpife any French or Englifhman whatever, who fhall presume to retrench, to innovate, or to make the least alteration in either. Far therefore from the genius for which Madam Dacier miftook me, my whole defire is but to preferve the humble character of a faithful translator, and a quiet subject.

CON