[702] The Poet's kinsman.
[703] Private correspondence.
[704] Paradise Lost, Book iii.
[705] He alludes to his notes on Homer.
[706] What the proposed literary partnership was, which Hayley suggested, we know not; it is evident that it was not the poem of "The Four Ages," which forms the subject of the following letter, and in which Cowper acquiesced.
[707] Hayley made a second proposition to unite with Cowper in the projected poem of "The Four Ages," and to engage the aid of two distinguished artists, who were to embellish the work with appropriate designs. We believe that Lawrence and Flaxman were the persons to whom Hayley refers. We cannot sufficiently regret the failure of this plan, which would have enriched literature and art with so happy a specimen of poetical and professional talent. But the period was unhappily approaching which was to suspend the fine powers of Cowper's mind, and to shroud them in the veil of darkness.
[708] Chapman's version is thus described by Warton: he "frequently retrenches or impoverishes what he could not feel and express," and yet is "not always without strength and spirit." By Anton, in his Philosophical Satires, published in 1616, he is characterised as
"Greeke-thund'ring Chapman, beaten to the age,
With a deepe furie and a sudden rage."
The testimony of Bishop Percy is flattering. "Had Chapman," he observes, "translated the Iliad in blank verse, it had been one of our chief classic performances."
[709] Cowper is mistaken in this supposition. Wood, in his Athenæ, records an edition of the Iliad in 1675; and of the Odyssey in 1667, and there was a re-impression of both in 1686.