rhyme requires, farther removed from the vernacular idiom both in the
language itself and in the arrangement of it, we shall not long doubt
which of these two very different species of verse threatens the
composer with most expense of study and contrivance. I feel it
unpleasant to appeal to my own experience, but, having no other
voucher at hand, am constrained to it. As I affirm, so I have found. I
have dealt pretty largely in both kinds, and have frequently written
more verses in a day, with tags, than I could ever write without them.
To what has been here said (which whether it have been said by others
or not, I cannot tell, having never read any modern book on the
subject) I shall only add, that to be poetical without rhyme, is an
argument of a sound and classical constitution in any language.

A word or two on the subject of the following translation, and I have
done.

My chief boast is that I have adhered closely to my original,
convinced that every departure from him would be punished with the
forfeiture of some grace or beauty for which I could substitute no
equivalent. The epithets that would consent to an English form I have
preserved as epithets; others that would not, I have melted into the
context. There are none, I believe, which I have not translated in one
way or other, though the reader will not find them repeated so often
as most of them are in HOMER, for a reason that need not be mentioned.

Few persons of any consideration are introduced either in the Iliad or
Odyssey by their own name only, but their patronymic is given also. To
this ceremonial I have generally attended, because it is a
circumstance of my author's manner.