"sir,
* * * * *
"Present, Sir, if you please, my compliments to your friend Mr. Fuseli, and tell him, that I shall be obliged to him if, when he has finished the revisal of the 8th book, he will be so good as to send it to General Cowper's, in Charles Street, together with his strictures. Assure him, likewise, that I will endeavour, by the closest attention to all the peculiarities of my original, to save him as much trouble as I can hereafter. I now perfectly understand what it is that he requires in a translation of Homer; and being convinced of the justness of his demands, will attempt at least to conform to them. Some escapes will happen in so long a work, which he will know how to account for and to pardon.
"I have been employed a considerable time in the correction of the first seven books, and have not yet begun the ninth; but I shall in a day or two, and will send it as soon as finished.
"I am, Sir,
"Your most humble servant,
"William Cowper."
"Mr. Joseph Johnson."
Fuseli grew tired of the labour which he had imposed upon himself, before the Iliad was finished; but yet he went through the task of correcting the translation of that poem until its conclusion. The following extract of a letter to Mr. Roscoe, dated 25th November, 1789, shows his feelings upon the subject:—
"You are not surely serious when you desire to have your remarks on Cowper's Iliad burnt; whatever they contain upon the specific turn of language is just; many observations are acute, most elegant: though, perhaps, I cannot agree to all; for instance, the word rendered murky is not that which, in other passages, expresses the negative transparency of water: it means, I believe, in the text, a misty appearance: this depended on a knowledge of the Greek.
"I heartily wish with you, that Cowper had trusted to his own legs, instead of a pair of stilts, to lift him to fame."
When Cowper began the Odyssey, Fuseli pleaded, and, as will be shown, justly pleaded, that his numerous avocations would not allow him time to correct the translation; this the poet states, and regrets the circumstance in his preface. He however saw parts of the poem as it was passing through the press, and made some observations thereon: these are given in notes, to which the initial letter F. is affixed.