2. The preying sadness that Cowper sought to escape from by the work of translating Homer was occasioned by disappointment in youth; attempted suicide; dread of everlasting punishment, and fear of insanity. A romantic attachment for his cousin in his youth met with the disfavor of his father. Doubts of his ability to fill the requirements of an office for which he was named so preyed upon his mind that he attempted suicide. After this he believed that in that act he had committed a deadly sin, and he could only see between him and heaven a high wall which he despaired of ever being able to scale. He possessed a naturally melancholy temperament, and was subject to insanity, of which he had a great dread. He began the translation of Homer into blank verse to divert his mind from morbid introspection, and he succeeded so well that the six years he spent in this labor were among the happiest of his life.
3. The original of the quotation, “From the center to the utmost pole,” is to be found in Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” book I, line 74. The quotation is not, however, literally made. In Milton it reads:
“As far removed from God and light of heav’n,
As from the center thrice to th’ utmost pole.”
Pope also uses a similar expression in his lines reading:
“Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole.”
4. Macedonia’s madman was Alexander the Great. He was so called because he was dazzled or crazed with his own success; from his rash and impetuous disposition, and the many acts of inhumanity he perpetrated; because his horrible butchery and cruelty at times indicated a species of madness; because his brilliant successes so turned his head that he sought to be worshiped as the son of a god. Byron, in his Age of Bronze, refers to him as the madman in these lines:
“How vain, how worse than vain, at length appear
The madman’s wish, the Macedonian tear.