Part 49

THE END OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH BOOK.

[1] Shame a quality that hurts and helps men exceedingly.

EPILOGUE TO HOMER’S ILIADS

Thus far the Ilian ruins I have laid Open to English eyes. In which, repaid With thine own value, go, unvalued book, Live, and be lov’d. If any envious look Hurt thy clear fame, learn that no state more high Attends on virtue than pin’d envy’s eye. Would thou wert worth it that the best doth wound. Which this age feeds, and which the last shall bound!

Thus, with labour enough, though with more comfort in the merits of my divine author, I have brought my translation of his Iliads to an end. If, either therein, or in the harsh utterance or matter of my Comment before, I have, for haste, scattered with my burthen (less than fifteen weeks being the whole time that the last Twelve Books’ translation stood me in) I desire my present will (and I doubt not hability, if God give life, to reform and perfect all hereafter) may be ingenuously accepted for the absolute work. The rather, considering the most learned, with all their helps and time, have been so often, and unanswerably, miserably taken halting. In the mean time, that most assistful and unspeakable Spirit, by Whose thrice sacred conduct and inspiration I have finished this labour, diffuse the fruitful horn of His blessings through these goodness-thirsting watchings; without which, utterly dry and bloodless is whatsoever mortality soweth.

But where our most diligent Spondanus ends his work with a prayer to be taken out of these Mæanders and Euripian rivers (as he terms them) of Ethnic and Profane Writers (being quite contrary to himself at the beginning) I thrice humbly beseech the Most Dear and Divine Mercy (ever most incomparably preferring the great light of His Truth in His direct and infallible Scriptures) I may ever be enabled, by resting wondering in His right comfortable shadows in these, to magnify the clearness of His Almighty apparance in the other.

And with this salutation of Poesy given by our Spondanus in his Preface to these Iliads (_“All hail saint-sacred Poesy that, under so much gall of fiction, such abundance of honey doctrine hast hidden, not revealing them to the unworthy worldly! Wouldst thou but so much make me, that amongst thy novices I might be numbered, no time should ever come near my life that could make me forsake thee.”_) I will conclude with this my daily and nightly prayer, learned of the most learned Simplicius;—

_“Supplico tibi, Domine, Pater, et Dux rationis nostræ, ut nostræ nobilitatis recordemur quâ Tu nos ornasti; et ut Tu nobis præstò sis ut iis qui per sese moventur; ut et à corporis contagio brutorumque affectuum repurgemur, eosque superemus et regamus, et, sicut decet, pro instrumentis iis utamur. Deinde ut nobis adjumento sis, ad accuratam rationis nostræ correctionem, et conjunctionem cum iis qui verè sunt per lucem veritatis. Et tertium, Salvatori supplex oro, ut ab oculis animorum nostrorum caliginem prorsus abstergas, ut (quod apud Homerum est) norimus bene qui Deus, aut mortalis, habendus. Amen._”

FINIS

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