Page:The Iliad of Homer Faithfully Translated Into Unrhymed English Metre.djvu/9



such a people as the ancient Greeks were at this moment existing in the Eastern Archipelago; and if an Englishman who had resided many years among them were faithfully to describe their manners and sentiments, the state of religion and of knowledge, the organization of society, and the arts of peace and war among them;—the book would probably be a universal favourite. Homer himself has done this, and done it with native simplicity and vividness. He sets us as in the midst of the most ancient Grreeks. We may disbelieve, as in a modern novels every individual fact; yet from his poem, as from a good novel, the stranger will imbibe a perfect idea of the state of society. Homer is in truth to his reader better than the best book of travels into old Greece.

Nor only so; but by reason of the unbounded popularity of his poems with his countrymen, their influence over the Greek mind may be compared to the combined effect produced in England by the Bible and by Shakespeare. In discerning the mind of Homer,—as to its intellectual and moral tone,—we get discernment not into one Greek only, but into all the Greeks, of whom he is emphatically a noble type. In this respect, the substance of what he tells is often of less importance to us than the manner in which he tells it; and it becomes a first-rate duty of a translator to adhere closely to his manner and habit of thought, as also to his moral sentiments.