Part 11 (1/2)

TRANSLATIONS AND PAMPHLETS

The best of my unpublished MSS of any size or consequence is perhaps my translation of Book Alpha of the Iliad, quite literal and in its original metre of hexah to lose by it; for there are already at least twelve English versions of Homer unread, perhaps unreadable Still, so Sosius; for my literal and hexametrical translation is almost what Carthusians used to call ”a crib,” and perhaps sohes's _Practical Teacher_,winter evenings in the country wearisome to my homeflock, I used to read to thest other books, a literary daughter suggested Pope's Homer; which, as I read, after a little while, I found to be so very free and incorrect a translation (if htly) that I resolved to see what I could do by reading frolish) metre I soon found it quite easy to be both terse and literal; and having rhyth of rhy ”off the reel” directly frolish

This version is still unblotted by printer's ink: if any compositor pleases he is welcoratis: only I do not promise to do more than I have done, Book Alpha Life is too short for such literary playwork

Here followeth a sample: quite literal: line for line, almost word for word: my translation renders Homer exactly I choose the short bit where Thetis pleads with Jove for her irate son, because I ae in his mind when he drew his word-picture of Vivien with Merlin

”But now at length the twelfthCalorious band of i at their head And Thetis, res Of her own son, and his claih the air fleift to high heaven, ascending Oly alone on the loftiest peak of theZeus, son of Kronos, apart from the other celestials

So she sat closely beside hiht she handled his beard, and tenderly stroked it, Whispering thus her prayer to Zeus, the great king, son of Kronos,” &c &c

Let that suffice with a _caetera desunt_

I need not say that I have written innumerable other, translated pieces, from earliest days of school exercises to these present There is scarcely a classic I have not so tauist) I have touched--with dictionary and other help, a few bits of Petrarch, Dante, &c; examples whereof may be seen in my ”Modern Pyramid,” as already mentioned

Sundry Pamphlets

My several publications in pae or two,--the chief perhaps (and therefore I begin with it) being es, issued at the tireat exhibition in 1851, due to a letter I wrote to the Bishop of London on Nove such a universal psalm Mr

Brettell, a printer, issued this curiosity of typography: for it has all the strange types which the Bible Society could lend; and several other, versions than the fifty published (soreat voluland, nor Germany, nor Aes contributed by missionaries in the four quarters of the world My hymn was ”a simple psalm, so constructed as scarcely to exclude a truth, or to offend a prejudice; with special reference to the great event of this year, and yet so ordered that it can never be out of season” ”This polyglot hyical curiosity: soliterally into all the languages of the earth one plain psalm, a world-wide call to man to render thanks to God” Dr Wesley and several others contributed the music, and the best scholars of all lands did the literature: the es was pronounced a marvel in its way; and I have a bookful of notices, of course laudatory, where it was not possible to find fault with so sive the hymn admission here, as the booklet is excessively scarce

The title goes--”A Hyes (upwards of fifty versions)

”Glorious God! on Thee we call, Father, Friend, and Judge of all; Holy Saviour, heavenly King, Ho!

”In the wonders all around Ever is Thy Spirit found, And of each good thing we see All the good is born of Thee!

”Thine the beauteous skill that lurks Everywhere in Nature's works-- Thine is Art, with all its worth, Thine each masterpiece on earth!

”Yea,--and, foreht, for this is Thine, Shed abroad the love divine!

”Lo, our God! Thy children here Fro still,-- For 'peace on earth, towards oodwill!'

”May ith fraternal h redee love, Be the blest of God above!”

Beside this, I give from memory a list of others of the pamphlet sort, perhaps i to ancient Albury,--whereof this ainst its demolition to Bishop Sumner, and used the expression inthe old church in his park for a new one elsewhere would ”lay the foundation in his first-born and in his youngest son set up its gates” (Josh vi 26); and the two sons of the lord of the ly was foretold

2 ”A Voice from the Cloister,” whereof I have spoken before

3 ”A Prophetic Ode,”--happily hindered fro true, only because the Rifle ry colonels, from our unprotected shores There are also in the poenetic heat, and possible habitability; also others about thought-reading and the like; all this being long in advance of the age, for that ode was published by Bosworth in 1852 Also, I anticipated then as now--

”To fly as a bird in the air Despot th Light as the lark upsprings, Buoyed by tas!”

With plenty of other curious matter That ode is extinct, but will revive