There are faults in this and even blunders, notably in the natural
history; and "serenest lymph" is a sad departure from Homeric
simplicity. Still on the whole the passage in the translation charms,
and its charm is tolerably identical with that of the original. In
more martial and stirring passages the failure is more signal, and here
especially we feel that if Pope's rhyming couplets are sorry
equivalents for the Homeric hexameter, blank verse is superior to them
only in a negative way. The real equivalent, if any, is the romance
metre of Scott, parts of whose poems, notably the last canto of
_Marmion_ and some passages in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, are
about the most Homeric things in our language. Cowper brought such
poetic gifts to his work that his failure might have deterred others
from making the same hopeless attempt. But a failure his work is; the
translation is no more a counterpart of the original, than the Ouse
creeping through its meadows is the counterpart of the Aegean rolling
before a fresh wind and under a bright sun.
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