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seriously and as with armed garrisons defended and heartened; that which engenders and disperseth that wilful pestilence, would be purged and extirpate; but that which teacheth, being overturned, that which is taught is consequently subject to eversion; and if the honour, happiness and preservation of true humanity consist in observing the laws fit for man's dignity, and that the elaborate prescription of those laws must of necessity be authorized, favoured, and defended before any observation can succeed; is it unreasonable to punish the contempt of that moving prescription with one man's death; when at the heels of it follows common neglect of observation, and in the neck of it, an universal ruin? This, my Lord, I enforce only to interrupt in others that may read this unsavoury stuff, the too open-mouthed damnation of royal and virtuous Ptolemy's severity. For to digest, transform, and sweat a man's soul into rules and attractions to society, such as are fashioned and tempered with her exact and long laboured contention of study, in which she tosseth with her impertial discourse before her, all cause of fantastical objections and reproofs; and without which she were as wise as the greatest number of detractors that shall presume to censure her; and yet by their flash and insolent castigations to be slighted and turned over their miserably vain tongues in an instant, is an injury worthy no less penalty than Ptolemy inflicted. To take away the heels of which running profanation, I hope your Lordship's honourable countenance will be as the unicorn's horn, to lead the way to English Homer's yet poisoned fountain; for till that favour be vouchsafed, the herd will never drink, since the venomous galls of some of their fellows have infected it, whom, alas, I pity. Thus confidently affirming your name and dignities shall never be more honoured in a poor book than in English Homer, I cease to afflict your Lordship with my tedious Dedicatories, and to still sacred Homer's spirit through a language so fit and so favourless; humbly presenting your Achillean virtues with Achilles' shield; wishing as it is much more admirable and divine, so it were as many times more rich, than the Shield the Cardinal pawned at Antwerp.

By him that wisheth all the degrees of judgment and honour to attend your deserts to the highest, GEORGE CHAPMAN.

TO THE UNDERSTANDER

You are not everybody, to you, as to one of my very few friends, I may be bold to utter my mind, nor is it more impair to an honest and absolute man's sufficiency to have few friends, than to an Homerical poem to have few commenders; for neither do common dispositions keep fit or plausible consort with judicial and simple honesty, nor are idle capacities comprehensible of an elaborate poem. My Epistle dedicatory before my seven books, is accounted dark and too much laboured: for the darkness there is nothing good or bad, hard or soft, dark or perspicuous, but in respect; and in respect of men's light, slight, or envious perusals (to whose loose capacities any work worthily composed is knit with a riddle) and that the style is material flowing, and not rank: it may perhaps seem dark to rank riders or readers that have no more souls than burbolts; but to your comprehension, and in itself, I know it is not. For the affected labour bestowed in it I protest two mornings both ended it and the Reader's Epistle; but the truth is, my desire and strange disposition in all things I write, is to set down uncommon, and most profitable coherents for the time: yet further removed from abhorred affectation than from the most popular and cold disgestion. And I ever imagine that as Italian and French Poems to our studious linguists win much of their discountried affection, as well because the understanding of foreign tongues is sweet to their apprehension, as that the matter and invention is pleasing; so my far-fetched, and as it were beyond-sea manner of writing, if they would take as much pains for their poor country

men as for a proud stranger when they once understand it, should be much more gracious to their choice conceits than a discourse that falls naked before them and hath nothing but what mixeth itself with ordinary table-talk. For my variety of new words, I have none ink-pot I am sure you know, but such as I give passport with such authority, so significant and not ill-sounding, that if my country language were an usurer, or a man of this age speaking it, he would thank me for enriching him. Why, alas, will my young master the reader affect nothing common, and yet like nothing extraordinary? Swaggering is a new word amongst them, and round-headed custom gives it privilege with much imitation, being created as it were by a natural Prosopopeia without etymology or derivation; and why may not an elegancy authentically derived, and as I may say of the upper house, be entertained as well in their lower consultation with authority of Art, as their own forgeries licked up by nature? All tongues have enriched themselves from their original (only the Hebrew and Greek which are not spoken amongst us) with good neighbourly borrowing, and as with infusion of fresh air, and nourishment of new blood in their still growing bodies, and why may not ours? Chaucer, by whom we will needs authorize our true English, had more new words for his time than any man needs to devise now. And therefore for current wits to cry from standing brains, like a brood of frogs from a ditch, to have the ceaseless flowing river of our tongue turned into their frog-pool, is a song far from their arrogation of sweetness, and a sin would soon bring the plague of barbarism amongst us; which in faith it needs not be hastened with defences of his ignorant furtherers, since it comes with meal-mouthed toleration too savagely upon us. To be short; since I had the reward of my labours in their consummation, and the chief pleasure of them in mine own profit, no young prejudicate or castigatory brain hath reason to think I stand trembling under the airy stroke of his fevery censure, or that I did ever expect any flowing applause from his dry fingers; but the satisfaction and delight that might probably redound to every true lover of virtue, I set in the seat of mine own profit and contentment; and if there be any one in whom this success is enflowered, a few sprigs of it shall be my garland. Since then this never-equalled Poet is to be understood, and so full of government and direction to all estates; stern anger and the affrights of war, bearing the main face of his subject, soldiers shall never spend their idle hours more profitably, than with his studious and industrious perusal; in whose honours his deserts are infinite. Counsellors have never better oracles than his lines; fathers have no morals so profitable for their children as his counsels; nor shall they ever give them more honoured injunction than to learn Homer without book, that being continually conversant in him, his height may descend to their capacities, and his substance prove their worthiest riches. Husbands, wives, lovers, friends, and allies, having in him mirrors for all their duties; all sorts of which concourse and society in other more happy ages, have instead of sonnets and lascivious ballads, sung his Iliads. Let the length of the verse never discourage your endeavours; for talk our quidditical Italianists of what proportion soever their strutting lips affect, unless it be in these couplets into which I have hastily translated this Shield, they shall never do Homer so much right, in any octaves canzons, canzonets, or with whatsoever fustian Epigraphs they shall entitle their measures. Only the extreme false printing troubles my conscience, for fear of your deserved discouragement in the impair of your poet's sweetness; whose general divinity of spirit, clad in my willing labours (envious of none nor detracting any) I commit to your good nature and solid capacity.

THE FIRST BOOK OF HOMER'S ILIADS.

ARGUMENT.

APOLLO'S priest to th' Argive fleet doth bring
Gifts for his daughter, prisoner to the king;
For which her tender'd freedom he entreats;
But, being dismiss'd with contumelious threats,
At Phoebus' hands, by vengeful prayer, he seeks
To have a plague inflicted on the Greeks.
Which had, Achilles doth a council cite,
Emboldening Calchas, in the king's despite,
To tell the truth why they were punish'd so.
From hence their fierce and deadly strife did
grow.

For wrong in which acides* so raves,
That goddess Thetis, from her throne of waves
Ascending heaven, of Jove assistance won,
To plague the Greeks by absence of her son,
And make the general himself repent
To wrong so much his army's ornament.
This found by Juno, she with Jove contends;
Till Vulcan, with heaven's cup, the quarrel ends.

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To plague the army, and to death by troops the soldiers went. Occasion'd thus: Chryses, the priest, came to the fleet to buy,

For presents of unvalued price, his daughter's liberty.

The golden sceptre and the crown of Phoebus in his hands

Proposing; and made suit to all, but most to the commands

Of both th' Atrides, who most ruled. "Great Atreus' sons," said he, "And all ye well-greaved Greeks, the Gods, whose habitations be

In heavenly houses, grace your powers with Priam's razed town,

And grant ye happy conduct home! To win which wish'd renown

Of Jove, by honouring his son, far-shooting Phoebus, deign

For these fit presents to dissolve the ransomable chain

Of my loved daughter's servitude."
Greeks entirely gave

The

Glad acclamations, for sign that their desires would have

The grave priest reverenced, and his gifts of so much price embraced. The General yet bore no much mind, but With violent terms the priest, and said :— viciously disgraced

" 'Dotard! avoid our fleet,

Where lingering be not found by me; nor Let ever visit us again; lest nor thy godthy returning feet

head's crown,

Nor sceptre, save thee! Her thou seek'st
I still will hold mine own,
Till age

deflower her. In our court at From her loved country, she shall ply her Argos, far transferr'd web, and see prepared* With all fit ornaments my bed. Incense

me then no more,

But, if thou wilt be safe, be gone." This

said, the sea-beat shore,

Obeying his high will, the priest trod off

with haste and fear.

And, walking silent, till he left far off his

enemies' ear;

* "See my bed made," it may be Englished. The word is ἀντιόωσαν, which signifies contra stantem, as standing of one side opposite to another on the other side; which yet others Eacides, surname of Achilles, being the translate capessentem et adornantem; which, grandchild of Æacus.

since it shows best to a reader, I follow.

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Took for her freedom; not a gift; but all

the ransom quit ; And she convey'd, with sacrifice, till her enfranchised feet

Tread Chrysa under; then the God, so pleased, perhaps we may

Move to remission." Thus, he sate; and up, the great in sway,

Heroic Agamemnon rose, eagerly bearing all;

lis mind's seat overcast with fumes; an anger general

ll'd all his faculties; his eyes sparkled like kindling fire,

nich sternly cast upon the priest, thus vented he his ire:

"Prophet of ill! for never good came from thee towards me

Not to a word's worth; evermore thou took'st delight to be

Offensive in thy auguries, which thou continuest still;

5 Now casting thy prophetic gall, and vouching all our ill,

1 Shot from Apollo, is imposed since I refused the price

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Of fair Chyrseis' liberty; which would in no worth rise

To my rate of herself, which moves my vows to have her home;

Past Clytemnestra loving her, that graced my nuptial room

With her virginity and flower. Nor ask

her merits less

For person, disposition, wit, and skill in housewiferies.

And yet, for all this, she shall go, if more conducible

That course be then her holding here. rather wish the weal

Of my loved army than the death. Provide yet instantly

Supply for her, that I alone of all our royalty

Lose not my winnings: 'tis not fit, ye see all I lose mine

Forced by another, see as well some other may resign

His prize to me." To this replied the swiftfoot, god-like son

Of Thetis, thus: "King of us all, in all ambition

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And given our soldiers; which again to take into our hands

Were ignominious and base. Now then, since God commands,

Part with thy most-loved prize to him; not any one of us

Exacts it of thee; yet we all, all loss thou suffer'st thus,

Will treble, quadruple, in gain, when Jupiter bestows

The sack of well-wall'd Troy on us; which by his word he owes."

"Do not deceive yourself with wit," he answer'd, "god-like man,

Though your good name may colour it; 'tis not your swift foot can Outrun me here; nor shall the gloss, set on it with the God, Persuade me to my wrong. maintain in sure abode

Wouldst thou

Thine own prize, and slight me of mine? Resolve this: if our friends,

As fits in equity my worth, will right me with amends,

So rest it; otherwise, myself will enter personally

On thy prize, that of Ithacus, or Ajax, for supply;

Let him on whom I enter rage. But come, we'll order these

Hereafter, and in other place. Now put to sacred seas

Our black sail; in it rowers put, in it fit sacrifice;

And to these I will make ascend my so much envied prize,

Bright-cheek'd Chryseis. For conduct of all which, we must choose

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chief out of our counsellors. Thy service we must use,

Idomeneus; Ajax, thine; or thine, wise Ithacus ;

Or thine, thou terriblest of men, thou son of Peleus,

Which fittest were, that thou might'st see these holy acts perform'd,

For which thy cunning zeal so pleads;
and he, whose bow thus storm'd
For our offences, may be calm'd."
Achilles, with a frown,

Thus answer'd: "O thou impudent! of no good but thine own

Ever respectful; but of that, with all craft

covetous;

With what heart can a man attempt a service dangerous,

Or at thy voice be spirited to fly upon a foe, Thy mind thus wretched? For myself, I was not injured so

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