unknown to the inhabitants of Greece.

They had no recourfe to the Barbarians for poetical beauties, but fought for every thing in Homer, where, indeed, there is but little which they might not find.

The Italians have been very diligent tranflators; but I can hear of no verfion, unless perhaps Anguillara's Ovid may be excepted, which is read with eagerness. The Iliad of Salvini every reader may discover to be punctiliously exact; but it seems to be the work of a linguift fkilfully pedantick, and his countrymen, the proper judges of its power to please, reject it with disgust. Their predeceffors the Romans have left some specimens of tranflation behind them,

them, and that employment must have had fome credit in which Tully and Germanicus engaged; but unless we fuppofe, what is perhaps true, that the plays of Terence were verfions of Menander, nothing tranflated feems ever to have risen to high reputation. The French, in the meridian hour of their learning, were very laudably industrious to enrich their own language with the learning of the ancients; but found themselves reduced, by whatever neceffity, to turn the Greek and Roman poetry into profe. Whoever could read an author, could tranflate him. From fuch rivals little can be feared.

The chief help of Pope in this arduous undertaking was drawn from the verfions

verfions of Dryden. Virgil had borrowed much of his imagery from Homer, and part of the debt was now paid by his tranflator. Pope fearched the pages of Dryden for happy combinations of heroic diction; but it will not be denied that he added much to what he found. He cultivated our language with fo much diligence and art, that he has left in his Homer a treafure of poetical elegancies to pofterity. His verfion may be faid to have tuned the English tongue; for fince its appearance no writer, however deficient in other powers, has wanted melody. Such a series of lines fo elaborately corrected, and fo fweetly modulated, took poffeffion of the publick ear, the vulgar was ena

moured

moured of the poem, and the learned wondered at the tranflation.

But in the most general applaufe difcordant voices will always be heard. It has been objected by fome, who wish to be numbered among the fons of learning, that Pope's verfion of Homer is not Homerical; that it exhibits no refemblance of the original and characteristick manner of the Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful fimplicity, his artlefs grandeur, his unaffected majefty. This cannot be totally denied; but it must be remembered that neceffitas quod cogit defendit; that may be lawfully done which cannot be forborn. Time and place will always enforce regard. In eftimating this tranflation, confideration

muft be had of the nature of our lan

guage, the form of our metre, and, above all, of the change which two thousand years have made in the modes of life and the habits of thought. Virgil wrote in a language of the fame general fabrick with that of Homer, in verses of the fame measure, and in an age nearer to Homer's time by eighteen hundred years; yet he found, even then, the state of the world fo much altered, and the demand for elegance fo much increased, that mere nature would be endured no longer; and perhaps, in the multitude of borrowed paffages, very few can be .fhewn which he has not embellished

There