irrespective of nation or race, because of their universal
human interest. Each age in each country has produced
its translation of Homer, reflecting somewhat the spirit
of the particular epoch which produced it.

Among the many English poetic versions of the Iliad,
the most important are those of George Chapman ( 1559-
1634), the earliest; Alexander Pope ( 1688- 1744); William Cowper
( 1731- 1800); Edward, Earl of Derby ( 1799- 1869);
and William Cullen Bryant ( 1794- 1878). Of all these,
Bryant's is surpassed by none in fidelity to the spirit of
the original. In the following excerpt from Bryant
Preface to his translation, the student can learn all that
it is necessary for him to know about the version which
he is to study.

"Having now nearly completed my translation of the
Iliad of Homer, I sit down to write the Preface, that it
may be prefixed to the first volume. To this task of
translation, which I began in 1865, I afterwards gave
myself the more willingly because it helped in some
measure to divert my mind from a great domestic sor-
row. I am not sure that, when it shall be concluded, it
may not cost me some regret to part with so interesting
a companion as the old Greek poet, with whose thoughts
I have, for four years past, been occupied, though with
interruptions, in the endeavor to transfer from his own
grand and musical Greek to our less sonorous but still
manly and flexible tongue.

"In what I shall say of my own translation I do not
mean to speak in disparagement of any of the previous
English versions of the Iliad, nor to extenuate my obli-
gations to some of them. I acknowledge that although
Homer is, as Cowper has well observed, the most per-
spicuous of poets, I have been sometimes, perhaps often,
guided by the labors of my predecessors to a better mode
of dealing with certain refractory passages of my author

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