AustLit

Epigraph: "No doubt it will be objected by many readers of the following Homeric descriptions, that all the matters mentioned in them as being represented upon the shield of Achilles, could not have been so represented in anything like the given compass however magnified in imagination. But in view of such an objection as this, we are to consider, first, that it has to be granted, that this particular shield was designed and fabricated by a God—by a divine artificer; and, secondly, that Homer is criticizing, as it were,— "in a learned spirit of observation,"—this celestial piece of handicraft. Struck, with his fine insight, by the life-like might and expression of the several pictures, as these are presently displayed upon the shield, he goes on to expound, with the full privilege of a Poet, the whole story which they have each of them suggested to his special imagination. Or by the inspiring suggestiveness to him of the incidents which are thereon represented, he is enabled to relate to us, as an Interpreter, all and every of those foregone circumstances which must have concurred in progressively evolving them. And here we have at least two capital considerations that may be set, with almost plenary effect, against any such objection as that which is above anticipated.

But why this new version? Have we not had attempts enough already, in this field, from the hands of all sorts of versifiers? Not exactly; for those versions which the present writer has happened to meet with, have nearly all of them been very obviously unfaithful, or very deplorably unequal, to the always strong, but always simple, spirit and style of the original. And they were so chiefly, as it appears to him, because habited in a poetic garb altogether too modern and ornate--or if this fault was spared them, then because of their having proceeded from men whose life-long avocations and experiences had been either too in-door and urban, or too limitedly literary.]"