Then let them scoff—two prizes thou hast won;
Freedom for captives, and thy God's "Well done."
These were subsequently altered as follow:
Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love
From all the just on earth and all the blest above.
Cowper's version of Homer, which has formed so frequent a subject in the preceding pages, led to a public discussion, in which the interests of literature and the success of his own undertaking were deeply concerned. The question agitated was the relative merits of rhyme and blank verse, in undertaking a translation of that great poet. Johnson, the great dictator in the republic of letters, in his predilection for rhyme, had almost proscribed the use of blank verse in poetical composition. "Poetry," he observes, in his life of Milton, "may subsist without rhyme; but English poetry will not please, nor can rhyme ever be safely spared, but where the subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to that which is called the lapidary style; has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers; and therefore tires by long continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, not one is popular. What reason could urge in its defence, has been confuted by the ear."
Johnson, however, makes an exception, in the instance of Milton.
"But, whatever be the advantages of rhyme," he adds, "I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing, may write blank verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme."
In his critique on the "Night Thoughts," he makes a similar concession. "This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments, and the digressive sallies of imagination, would have been compressed and constrained by confinement to rhyme."[644]
Cowper, it will be remembered, questions the correctness of Johnson's taste on this subject, and vindicates the force and majesty of blank verse with much weight of argument. With respect, however, to the important question, how a translation of Homer might be best executed, his sentiments are delivered so much at large in the admirable preface to his version of the Iliad, that we shall lay a few extracts from it before the reader.
"Whether a translation of Homer," he remarks, "may be best executed in blank verse or in rhyme, is a question in the decision of which no man can find difficulty, who has ever duly considered what translation ought to be, or who is in any degree practically acquainted with those very different kinds of versification. I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense, of his original. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomes itself a snare; and the readier he is at invention and expedient, the more likely he is to be betrayed into the widest departures from the guide whom he professes to follow."
It was this acknowledged defect in Pope, that led Cowper to engage in his laborious undertaking of producing a new version.