BIB_ID
232702
Accession number
MA 5042.4
Creator
Cowper, William, 1731-1800.
Display Date
Place not identified, 1791 August 22?.
Credit line
Gift of Charles Ryskamp in honor of Paul Mellon, 1999.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 23 x 18.8 cm
Notes
The letter is undated and unsigned. On the fourth page, Cowper has written the words "Answer 2." In The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, King and Ryskamp identify this letter as a copy made by Cowper at the time that he sent the original to Thurlow. See the published correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
The letter from Thurlow that this letter responds to is also part of this collection and has been cataloged as MA 5042.3. Thurlow's letter contains his translation of the passage from the Iliad quoted here.
Part of a collection of six letters and poems related to William Cowper, written between 1786 and 1792. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 5042.1-6).
The letter from Thurlow that this letter responds to is also part of this collection and has been cataloged as MA 5042.3. Thurlow's letter contains his translation of the passage from the Iliad quoted here.
Part of a collection of six letters and poems related to William Cowper, written between 1786 and 1792. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 5042.1-6).
Provenance
Charles Ryskamp.
Summary
Saying that they are of one mind "as to the agreeable effect of Rhime or Euphony in the lighter kinds of poetry;" discussing the role of rhyme in "grave poems of extreme length;" concerning his translation of the Iliad versus Pope's: "I hope I may say truly, it was not in a spirit of presumption that I undertook to do what, in your Lordship's opinion, neither Dryden nor Pope would have dared to do. On the contrary, I see not how I could have escaped that imputation had I follow'd Pope in his own way. A closer translation was call'd for. I verily believed that rhime had betrayed Pope into his deviations. For me, therefore, to have used his mode of versifying would have been to expose myself to the same miscarriage, at the same time that I had not his talents to atone for it. I agree with your Lordship that a translation perfectly close is impossible, because time has sunk the original strict import of a thousand phrases, and we have no means of recovering it. But if we cannot be unimpeachably faithful, that is no reason why we should not be as faithful as we can, and if Blank verse afford the fairest chance, then it claims the preference;" quoting a line from the Iliad in Greek and a line from Horace's Satires in Latin to express the idea that he can only do so much; adding "I have not treacherously departed from my pattern, that I might seem to give some proof of the justness of my own opinion, but have fairly and honestly adhered as closely to it as I could" and saying that Thurlow will not have to compliment him on his success, "either in respect of the poetical merit of my lines, or of their fidelity. They have just enough of each to make them deficient in the other;" including his translation of seventeen lines from Book IX of the Iliad (Achilles's reply to Phoenix - lines 758-772 in Cowper's published translation); writing "Since I wrote these I have look'd at Pope's. I am certainly somewhat closer to the Original than he, but farther I say not. - I shall wait with impatience for your Lords[hi]ps conclusion from these premisses...".
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