that of feveral others of my friends, to whom all acknowledgments are rendered unneceffary by the privileges of a familiar correfpondence: and I am fatiffied I can no way better oblige men of their turn, than by my filence. In short, I have found more patrons than ever Homer wanted. He would have thought himself happy to have met the fame favour at Athens that has been shewed me by its learned rival, the Univerfity of Oxford *. And I can hardly envy him those pompous honours he received after death, when I reflect on the enjoyment of fo many agreeable obligations, and easy friendships, which make the fatisfaction of life. This diftinction is the more to be acknowledged, as it is fhewn to one whose pen has never gratified the prejudices of particular parties, or the vanities of particular men. Whatever the fuccefs may prove, I shall never repent of an undertaking in which I have experienced the candour and friendship of so many persons of merit; and in which I hope to pass some of thofe years of youth that are generally loft in a circle of follies, after a manner neither wholly unuseful to others, nor difagreeable to myself. *It is remarkable that in the long lift of his Subscribers prefixed to the first quarto Edition, ten Colleges in Oxford subfcribed for their refpective Libraries, and not a fingle College in Cambridge. It was thought improper to omit this Poftfcript to the Odyffey, as it is apparently one of our Author's most elegant and finished compofitions in profe. It were to be wifhed he had enlarged on the fubject; for a Critical Treatife on the Nature and Conduct of the Odyffey, is as yet wanting in our language; the Difcourfe prefixed to Pope's Tranflation, by Broome, being but a meagre and defective Extract from Boffu. More than forty years ago, three Effays were printed in the third volume of the Adventurer, on the excellence of the Odyssey. They were defigned to fhew this excellence in the manner of conducting the fable, which is of the complex kind; in the extenfive utility of its moral; in the vaft and entertaining variety of scenes, objects, and events, which it contains; in the ftrokes of nature, and pathos; in the true and accurate delineation of ancient manners, customs, and habits; and the lively pictures of civil and domeftic life, more calculated to keep our attention alive and active, than the martial uniformity of the Iliad; and in its exhibiting the most perfect pattern of a legitimate Epopée. But the Author of thefe Effays confined himfelf to too fhort a compafs for a fubject of fuch utility and importance; and may perhaps, in fome future day, lengthen them into a more formal Treatife. POSTSCRIPT TO THE ODYSSEY. CANNOT difmifs this Work without a few obferI vations on the true Character and Style of it. Whoever reads the Odyffey with an eye to the Iliad, expecting to find it of the fame character, or of the fame fort of fpirit, will be grievously deceived, and err against the first principle of Criticifm, which is to confider the nature of the piece, and the intent of its Author. The Odyffey is a moral and political work, instructive to all degrees of men, and filled with images, examples and precepts, of civil and domestic life. Homer is here a perfon Qui didicit, patriæ quid debeat, & quid amicis, The Odyffey is the reverse of the Iliad, in Moral, Subject, Manner, and Style; to which it has no fort of relation, but as the ftory happens to follow in order 2 |
