If my old friend would look into my Preface, he would find a principle laid down there, which perhaps it would not be easy to invalidate, and which properly attended to would equally secure a translation from stiffness and from wildness. The principle I mean is this—"Close, but not so close as to be servile! free, but not so free as to be licentious!" A superstitious fidelity loses the spirit, and a loose deviation the sense of the translated author—a happy moderation in either case is the only possible way of preserving both.
Thus I have disciplined you both, and now, if you please, you may both discipline me. I shall not enter my version in my book till it has undergone your strictures at least, and, should you write to the noble critic again, you are welcome to submit it to his. We are three awkward fellows indeed, if we cannot amongst us make a tolerable good translation of six lines of Homer.
Adieu!
W. C.
TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.
Weston, Jan. 5, 1794.
My dear Hayley,—I have waited, but waited in vain, for a propitious moment when I might give my old friend's objections the consideration they deserve; I shall at last be forced to send a vague answer, unworthy to be sent to a person accustomed, like him, to close reasoning and abstruse discussion; for I rise after ill rest, and with a frame of mind perfectly unsuited to the occasion. I sit too at the window for light's sake, where I am so cold that my pen slips out of my fingers. First, I will give you a translation, de novo, of this untranslateable prayer. It is shaped as nearly as I could contrive to his lordship's ideas, but I have little hope that it will satisfy him.
Grant Jove, and all ye Gods, that this my son
Be, as myself have been, illustrious here!
A valiant man! and let him reign in Troy!
May all who witness his return from fight
Hereafter, say—he far excels his sire;
And let him bring back gory trophies, stript
From foes slain by him, to his mother's joy.
Imlac in Rasselas says—I forget to whom, "You have convinced me that it is impossible to be a poet." In like manner I might say to his lordship, you have convinced me that it is impossible to be a translator; to be a translator, on his terms at least, is I am sure impossible. On his terms, I would defy Homer himself, were he alive, to translate the Paradise Lost into Greek. Yet Milton had Homer much in his eye when he composed that poem; whereas Homer never thought of me or my translation. There are minutiæ in every language, which, transfused into another, will spoil the version. Such extreme fidelity is in fact unfaithful. Such close resemblance takes away all likeness. The original is elegant, easy, natural; the copy is clumsy, constrained, unnatural: to what is this owing? To the adoption of terms not congenial to your purpose, and of a context, such as no man writing an original work would make use of. Homer is every thing that a poet should be. A translation of Homer, so made, will be every thing a translation of Homer should not be; because it will be written in no language under heaven. It will be English, and it will be Greek, and therefore it will be neither. He is the man, whoever he be, (I do not pretend to be that man myself,) he is the man best qualified as a translator of Homer, who has drenched, and steeped, and soaked himself in the effusions of his genius, till he has imbibed their colour to the bone, and who, when he is thus dyed through and through, distinguishing between what is essentially Greek, and what may be habited in English, rejects the former, and is faithful to the latter, as far as the purposes of fine poetry will permit, and no farther: this, I think, may be easily proved. Homer is everywhere remarkable either for ease, dignity, or energy of expression; for grandeur of conception, and a majestic flow of numbers. If we copy him so closely as to make every one of these excellent properties of his absolutely unattainable, which will certainly be the effect of too close a copy, instead of translating, we murder him. Therefore, after all his lordship has said, I still hold freedom to be an indispensable—freedom, I mean, with respect to the expression; freedom so limited, as never to leave behind the matter; but at the same time indulged with a sufficient scope to secure the spirit, and as much as possible of the manner. I say as much as possible, because an English manner must differ from a Greek one, in order to be graceful, and for this there is no remedy. Can an ungraceful, awkward, translation of Homer be a good one? No: but a graceful, easy, natural, faithful version of him, will not that be a good one? Yes: allow me but this, and I insist upon it, that such a one may be produced on my principles, and can be produced on no other.
I have not had time to criticise his lordship's other version. You know how little time I have for anything, and can tell him so.
Adieu! my dear brother. I have now tired both you and myself; and with the love of the whole trio, remain yours ever,