Page:The poetical works of William Cowper (IA poeticalworksof00cowp).pdf/75

Rh in two volumes, quarto, at three guineas. I do not feel competent to criticize it. It seems to me dreary and dull, but not more so than other translations of Homer. He was qualified by his scholarship, which Pope was not. The translation, therefore, is probably as accurate as any translation can be. But he had no sympathy for the wars and battles. Arthur Cough's commentary on it is, after all the most exhaustive — "Where is the man who has ever read it?" His undertaking it at ail seems to me one of the misfortunes arising from the breach with Lady Austen. She might have suggested something better than the wasting of five years in such profitless labour.

What next ? For both he and his friends had learned that continual occupation was necessary to his well-being. Lady Hesketh was for another long poem, and proposed to him "The Mediterranean" as a subject. He replied, truly, that he ;did not know history enough, and that, moreover, it seemed a subject not for one ;poem, but for twenty. A neighbouring clergyman, Mr. Buchanan, proposed "The Four Ages of Man." He liked the idea extremely, and began upon it. He began also "Yardley Oak," keeping it apparently as a secret with which to surprise his friends when it was finished. But Johnson invited him to undertake an edition oi Milton, as a match for Boydell's Shakespeare, Cowper to write notes and translate the Latin and Italian poems, and Fuseli to do the illustrations. He undertook this, and did the work of translation with great pleasure, as well as success. But the