Page:First book of the Iliad; Battle of the frogs and mice; Hymn to the Delian Apollo; Bacchus, or, the Rovers; second book of the Iliad (IA firstbookofiliad00home).pdf/15

With respect to the notes, I have merely to remark, that, excepting the scriptural, and some few other familiar parallelisms, they are likely to present very little in the shape of direct illustration of the text. Sometimes a word, sometimes a bare allusion in the original, has served to recal a favourite passage to mind, and has thus become,

periphrasis. This error, too, is the less excusable on my part, from the line being rendered, word for word, and with excellent effect, in a "Specimen of an English Homer in Blank Verse," published anonymously in 1807; and also in the recent specimen of Mr. Sotheby.
If permitted to make a second attempt, I would render the line, with its context, thus—though, after all, far from satisfactorily—

"Then from the fleet sat for aloof—and drew
His silver bow—fast forth the arrows flew—
While ever as they fled—incessant rang
That silver bow—and terrible the twang.


Or perhaps in the following triplet—if the use of "yew," in the third line for "low," may be allowable:—an extension of meaning sanctioned, it may be observed, by the example of Dryden, in his Virgil.—En. ix. 854. xi. 1247.
Then from the fleet sat far aloof—and threw
An arrow forth—while ever as it flew,
Dire was the twanging of his silver yew.


The other needless departure from the letter of the Greek, which has been suggested to me by a critical friend, is my rendering of the 388th line of the first Book. It stands the 11th line from the bottom of page 16, infra; in place of which I would read the second verse of the couplet as follows:—
Straight rose the king and uttered, in his pride,
A ruffian threat:—that threat is ratified.