TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.
Weston-Underwood, Dec. 5, 1791.
My dear Friend,—Your last brought me two cordials; for what can better deserve that name than the cordial approbation of two such readers as your brother, the bishop, and your good friend and neighbour, the clergyman? The former I have ever esteemed and honoured with the justest cause, and am as ready to honour and esteem the latter as you can wish me to be, and as his wishes and talents deserve. Do I hate a parson? Heaven forbid! I love you all when you are good for any thing, and, as to the rest, I would mend them if I could, and that is the worst of my intentions towards them.
I heard above a month since that this first edition of my work was at that time nearly sold. It will not therefore, I presume, be long before I must go to press again. This I mention merely from an earnest desire to avail myself of all other strictures that either your good neighbour, Lord Bagot, the bishop, or yourself,
παντων εκπαγλοτατ' ανδρων,
may happen to have made, and will be so good as to favour me with. Those of the good Evander contained in your last have served me well, and I have already, in the three different places referred to, accommodated the text to them. And this I have done in one instance even a little against the bias of my own opinion.
... εγω δε κεν αυτος ἑλωμαι
'Ελθων συν πλεομεσσι.
The sense I had given of these words is the sense in which an old scholiast has understood them, as appears in Clarke's note in loco. Clarke indeed prefers the other, but it does not appear plain to me that he does it with good reason against the judgment of a very ancient commentator and a Grecian. And I am the rather inclined to this persuasion, because Achilles himself seems to have apprehended that Agamemnon would not content himself with Briseis only, when he says,
But I have OTHER precious things on board,
Of THESE take NONE away without my leave, &c.
It is certain that the words are ambiguous, and that the sense of them depends altogether on the punctuation. But I am always under the correction of so able a critic as your neighbour, and have altered, as I say, my version accordingly.