Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/57

 Homere, Prince of Poets. Translated according to the Greeke in iudgement of his best Commentaries.' It is dedicated to the Earl of Essex, and comprises the first, second, and seventh to eleventh books inclusive. In the dedicatory epistle, an address of stately dignity. Chapman speaks of his straitened circumstances and deplores the frivolity of an age in which poetry was accounted but 'idleness and vanity.' The metre adopted in this preliminary essay was the rhymed verse of fourteen syllables, which Chapman afterwards employed in his complete translation of the 'Iliad.' Later in 1598 Chapman published 'Achilles Shield. Translated as the other seven Bookes of Homer, out of his eighteenth booke of Iliades,' 4to. The dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Essex contains a fervid vindication of Homer against the aspersions of Scaliger, for whom Chapman had a profound contempt. Following the dedicatory epistle is an address to the 'Understander,' from which we learn that the dedicatory epistle prefixed to the 'Seaven Bookes' had been 'accounted too dark and too much laboured,' an objection which Chapman combats with much earnestness and scorn. In the translation of 'Achilles Shield' Chapman uses rhymed lines of ten syllables, the metre in which the 'Odyssey' is translated. Some years elapsed before the publication of 'Homer, Prince of Poets: translated according to the Greeke in twelve Bookes of his Iliads,' fol., which bears no date on the title-page, but was certainly not issued before 1609. This edition has the engraved title by William Hole, which was afterwards used for the complete translation of the 'Iliad' and for the 'Whole Works of Homer.' The book is dedicated in a poetical epistle of remarkable dignity to Prince Henry; and there are also prefixed a complimentary sonnet to Queen Anne and a 'Poem to the Reader.' At the end of the volume are fourteen sonnets to noble patrons; and one of these sonnets is addressed to the Earl of Salisbury, who is styled lord treasurer, an office conferred upon him on 4 May 1609. The translation of books i-ii, vii-xi, is the same as in the edition of 1598. On 8 April 1611 the complete translation of the 'Iliad' was entered on the Stationers' register. The book was published (doubtless in the same year) under the title 'The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets. Never before in any language truely translated. With a Comment upon some of his chiefe places,' n. d., fol. In this edition Chapman gave a fresh translation of books i. and ii. (down to the catalogue of the ships). From the 'Preface to the Reader ' we learn that the last twelve books had been translated in less than fifteen weeks. Some malicious critics had asserted that Chapman made his translation not from the original Greek, but from Latin or French versions; and to these assertions Chapman gives an indignant denial, referring readers to his commentary as a proof of his sufficiency in the Greek tongue. It must be confessed that the commentary does not bear any marks of deep or accurate scholarship. In this edition Chapman withdrew three of the sonnets (addressed to Lady Arabella Stuart, Lord Wotton, and Lord Arundel) that he had appended to the translation of books i-xii., and added five others. After completing the translation of the 'Iliad' he set himself to translate the 'Odyssey.' On 2 Nov. 1614 there is an entry in the Stationers' register to Nathaniel Butter of 'Twenty-four Bookes of Homer's Odisses by George Chapman.' The first twelve books had been previously published, but few copies of this separate impression are found. When the translation was completed the last twelve books were united with the previous impression of the first twelve; a blank leaf was inserted after book xii., and the pagination was made continuous. Some copies of the 'Odyssey' have a printed title; in others the title is engraved. The book was dedicated to Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, in an epistle written partly in verse and partly in prose. Finally the translations of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' were united in one folio volume, and issued under the title of 'The Whole Works of Homer, Prince of Poets, in his Iliads and Odysses.' On the verso of the engraved title is a portrait of Chapman, with an inscription dated 1616; and on the next page is an engraving of two Corinthian coumns surmounted by the Prince of Wales' plume and motto; beneath are some verses to the memory of Prince Henry. At length, circ. 1624, Chapman concluded his Homeric labours by issuing 'The Crowne of all Homer's Workes, Batrachomyomachia or the Battaile of Frogs and Mise. His Hymn's and Epigrams, translated in ten-syllabled rhymed verse (the metre used in the translation of the 'Odyssey'). The engraved title by William Pass contains a fine portrait of the venerable translator.

Chapman's Homer is one of the great achievements of the Elizabethan age, a monument of skill and devotion. The mistranslations are many and grievous, and it is clear that Chapman's knowledge of Greek was not profound; but through the whole work there breathes a spirit of sleepless energy that amply atones for all crudities and conceits. Among Chapman's contemporaries the translation was received with applause.