[1] Queen of arts—the soul.

TO THE SACRED FOUNTAIN OF PRINCES, SOLE EMPRESS OF BEAUTY AND VIRTUE, ANNE, QUEEN OF ENGLAND, ETC.

With whatsoever honour we adorn Your royal issue, we must gratulate you, Imperial Sovereign; who of you is born Is you, one tree make both the bole and bow. If it be honour then to join you both To such a pow’rful work as shall defend Both from foul death and age’s ugly moth, This is an honour that shall never end. They know not virtue then, that know not what The virtue of defending virtue is; It comprehends the guard of all your State, And joins your greatness to as great a bliss. Shield virtue and advance her then, great Queen, And make this book your glass to make it seen. Your Majesty’s in all subjection most humbly consecrate, GEO. CHAPMAN.

TO THE READER

Lest with foul hands you touch these holy rites, And with prejudicacies too profane, Pass Homer in your other poets’ slights, Wash here. In this porch to his num’rous fane, Hear ancient oracles speak, and tell you whom You have to censure. First then Silius hear, Who thrice was consul in renowned Rome, Whose verse, saith Martial, nothing shall out-wear.

SILIUS ITALICUS, LIB. XIII. 777

He, in Elysium having cast his eye Upon the figure of a youth, whose hair, With purple ribands braided curiously, Hung on his shoulders wond’rous bright and fair, Said: “Virgin, what is he whose heav’nly face Shines past all others, as the morn the night; Whom many marvelling souls, from place to place, Pursue and haunt with sounds of such delight; Whose count’nance (were’t not in the Stygian shade) Would make me, questionless, believe he were A very God?” The learned virgin made This answer: “If thou shouldst believe it here, Thou shouldst not err. He well deserv’d to be Esteem’d a God; nor held his so-much breast A little presence of the Deity, His verse compris’d earth, seas, stars, souls at rest; In song the Muses he did equalize, In honour Phœbus. He was only soul, Saw all things spher’d in nature, without eyes, And rais’d your Troy up to the starry pole.” Glad Scipio, viewing well this prince of ghosts, Said: “O if Fates would give this poet leave To sing the acts done by the Roman hosts, How much beyond would future times receive The same facts made by any other known! O blest Æacides, to have the grace That out of such a mouth thou shouldst be shown To wond’ring nations, as enrich’d the race Of all times future with what he did know! Thy virtue with his verse shall ever grow.”

Now hear an Angel sing our poet’s fame, Whom fate, for his divine song, gave that name.

ANGELUS POLITIANUS, IN NUTRICIA

More living than in old Demodocus, Fame glories to wax young in Homer’s verse. And as when bright Hyperion holds to us His golden torch, we see the stars disperse, And ev’ry way fly heav’n, the pallid moon Ev’n almost vanishing before his sight; So, with the dazzling beams of Homer’s sun, All other ancient poets lose their light. Whom when Apollo heard, out of his star, Singing the godlike act of honour’d men, And equalling the actual rage of war, With only the divine strains of his pen, He stood amaz’d and freely did confess Himself was equall’d in Mæonides.

Next hear the grave and learned Pliny use His censure of our sacred poet’s muse.

Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 7. cap. 29. Turned into verse, that no prose may come near Homer.

Whom shall we choose the glory of all wits, Held through so many sorts of discipline And such variety of works and spirits, But Grecian Homer, like whom none did shine For form of work and matter? And because Our proud doom of him may stand justified By noblest judgments, and receive applause In spite of envy and illiterate pride, Great Macedon, amongst his matchless spoils Took from rich Persia, on his fortunes cast, A casket finding, full of precious oils, Form’d all of gold, with wealthy stones enchas’d, He took the oils out, and his nearest friends Ask’d in what better guard it might be us’d? All giving their conceits to sev’ral ends, He answer’d: “His affections rather choos’d An use quite opposite to all their kinds, And Homer’s books should with that guard be serv’d, That the most precious work of all men’s minds In the most precious place might be preserv’d. The Fount of Wit was Homer, Learning’s Sire, And gave antiquity her living fire.”

Volumes of like praise I could heap on this, Of men more ancient and more learn’d than these, But since true virtue enough lovely is With her own beauties, all the suffrages Of others I omit, and would more fain That Homer for himself should be belov’d, Who ev’ry sort of love-worth did contain. Which how I have in my conversion prov’d I must confess I hardly dare refer To reading judgments, since, so gen’rally, Custom hath made ev’n th’ ablest agents err[2] In these translations; all so much apply Their pains and cunnings word for word to render Their patient authors, when they may as well Make fish with fowl, camels with whales, engender, Or their tongues’ speech in other mouths compell. For, ev’n as diff’rent a production Ask Greek and English, since as they in sounds And letters shun one form and unison; So have their sense and elegancy bounds In their distinguish’d natures, and require Only a judgment to make both consent In sense and elocution; and aspire, As well to reach the spirit that was spent In his example, as with art to pierce His grammar, and etymology of words. But as great clerks can write no English verse,[3] Because, alas, great clerks! English affords, Say they, no height nor copy; a rude tongue, Since ’tis their native; but in Greek or Latin Their writs are rare, for thence true Poesy sprung; Though them (truth knows) they have but skill to chat in, Compar’d with that they might say in their own; Since thither th’ other’s full soul cannot make The ample transmigration to be shown In nature-loving Poesy; so the brake That those translators stick in, that affect Their word-for-word traductions (where they lose The free grace of their natural dialect, And shame their authors with a forcéd gloss) I laugh to see; and yet as much abhor[4]] More license from the words than may express Their full compression, and make clear the author; From whose truth, if you think my feet digress, Because I use needful periphrases, Read Valla, Hessus, that in Latin prose, And verse, convert him; read the Messines That into Tuscan turns him; and the gloss Grave Salel makes in French, as he translates; Which, for th’ aforesaid reasons, all must do; And see that my conversion much abates The license they take, and more shows him too, Whose right not all those great learn’d men have done, In some main parts, that were his commentors. But, as the illustration of the sun Should be attempted by the erring stars, They fail’d to search his deep and treasurous heart; The cause was, since they wanted the fit key Of Nature, in their downright strength of Art.[5] With Poesy to open Poesy: Which, in my poem of the mysteries Reveal’d in Homer, I will clearly prove; Till whose near birth, suspend your calumnies, And far-wide imputations of self-love. ’Tis further from me than the worst that reads, Professing me the worst of all that write; Yet what, in following one that bravely leads, The worst may show, let this proof hold the light. But grant it clear; yet hath detraction got My blind side in the form my verse puts on; Much like a dung-hill mastiff, that dares not Assault the man he barks at, but the stone He throws at him takes in his eager jaws, And spoils his teeth because they cannot spoil. The long verse hath by proof receiv’d applause Beyond each other number; and the foil, That squint-ey’d Envy takes, is censur’d plain; For this long poem asks this length of verse, Which I myself ingenuously maintain Too long our shorter authors to rehearse. And, for our tongue that still is so impair’d[6] By travelling linguists, I can prove it clear, That no tongue hath the Muse’s utt’rance heir’d For verse, and that sweet music to the ear Strook out of rhyme, so naturally as this; Our monosyllables so kindly fall, And meet oppos’d in rhyme as they did kiss; French and Italian most immetrical, Their many syllables in harsh collision Fall as they break their necks; their bastard rhymes Saluting as they justled in transition, And set our teeth on edge; nor tunes, nor times Kept in their falls; and, methinks, their long words Shew in short verse as in a narrow place Two opposites should meet with two-hand swords Unwieldily, without or use or grace. Thus having rid the rubs, and strow’d these flow’rs In our thrice-sacred Homer’s English way, What rests to make him yet more worthy yours? To cite more praise of him were mere delay To your glad searches for what those men found That gave his praise, past all, so high a place; Whose virtues were so many, and so crown’d By all consents divine, that, not to grace Or add increase to them, the world doth need Another Homer, but ev’n to rehearse And number them, they did so much exceed. Men thought him not a man; but that his verse Some mere celestial nature did adorn; And all may well conclude it could not be, That for the place where any man was born, So long and mortally could disagree So many nations as for Homer striv’d, Unless his spur in them had been divine. Then end their strife and love him, thus receiv’d, As born in England; see him over-shine All other-country poets; and trust this, That whosesoever Muse dares use her wing When his Muse flies, she will be truss’d by his, And show as if a bernacle should spring Beneath an eagle. In none since was seen A soul so full of heav’n as earth’s in him. O! if our modern Poesy had been As lovely as the lady he did limn, What barbarous worldling, grovelling after gain, Could use her lovely parts with such rude hate, As now she suffers under ev’ry swain? Since then ’tis nought but her abuse and Fate, That thus impairs her, what is this to her As she is real, or in natural right? But since in true Religion men should err As much as Poesy, should the abuse excite The like contempt of her divinity, And that her truth, and right saint-sacred merits, In most lives breed but rev’rence formally, What wonder is’t if Poesy inherits Much less observance, being but agent for her, And singer of her laws, that others say? Forth then, ye moles, sons of the earth, abhor her, Keep still on in the dirty vulgar way, Till dirt receive your souls, to which ye vow, And with your poison’d spirits bewitch our thrifts. Ye cannot so despise us as we you; Not one of you above his mole-hill lifts His earthy mind, but, as a sort of beasts, Kept by their guardians, never care to hear Their manly voices, but when in their fists They breathe wild whistles, and the beasts’ rude ear Hears their curs barking, then by heaps they fly Headlong together; so men, beastly giv’n, The manly soul’s voice, sacred Poesy, Whose hymns the angels ever sing in heav’n, Contemn and hear not; but when brutish noises, For gain, lust, honour, in litigious prose Are bellow’d out, and crack the barbarous voices Of Turkish stentors, O, ye lean to those, Like itching horse to blocks or high may-poles; And break nought but the wind of wealth, wealth, all In all your documents; your asinine souls, Proud of their burthens, feel not how they gall. But as an ass, that in a field of weeds Affects a thistle, and falls fiercely to it, That pricks and galls him, yet he feeds, and bleeds, Forbears a while, and licks, but cannot woo it To leave the sharpness; when, to wreak his smart, He beats it with his foot, then backward kicks, Because the thistle gall’d his forward part; Nor leaves till all be eat, for all the pricks, Then falls to others with as hot a strife, And in that honourable war doth waste The tall heat of his stomach, and his life; So in this world of weeds you worldlings taste Your most-lov’d dainties, with such war buy peace, Hunger for torment, virtue kick for vice, Cares for your states do with your states increase, And though ye dream ye feast in Paradise, Yet reason’s daylight shews ye at your meat Asses at thistles, bleeding as ye eat.