LOUD DERBY'S "HOMER." 



RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE BY EDWARD, EARL OF DERBY. 



From the fifth London Edition. 

 Two volumes, crown 8vo, on tinted paper. Price $5.00. 



Extracts from Notices and Reviews from the English Quarterlies, &c. 



" The merits of Lord Derby's translation may be summed up in one word : " it is 

 eminently attractive ; it is nstinct with life ; it may be read with fervent interest; it is im- 

 measurably nearer than Pope to the text of the original. * * * We think that Lord Derby's 

 translation will not only be read, but read over and over again. * * * Lord Derby has given 

 to England a version far more closely allied to the original, and superior to any that has 

 yet been attempted in the blank verse of our language." Edinburgh Review, January* 

 1S65. 



" As often as we return from even the best of them (other translations) to the translation 

 before us, we find ourselves in a purer atmosphere of taste. "We find more spirit, more 

 tact in avoiding either trivial or conceited phrases, and altogether a presence of merits, and 

 an absence of defects which continues, as we read, to lengthen more and more the distance 

 between Lord Derby and the foremost of his competitors." London Quarterly Review, 

 January, 1S65. 



" While the versification of Lord Derby is such as Pope himself would have admired, 

 bis Iliad is in all other essentials superior to that of his great rival. For the rest, if Pope is 

 dethroned what remains ? * * * It is the Iliad we would place in the hands of English 

 readers as the truest counterpart of the original, the nearest existing approach to a repro- 

 duction of that original's matchless feature." Saturday Review. 



"Among those curiosities of literature which are also its treasures, Lord Derby's trans- 

 ition of Homer must occupy a very conspicuous place. * * * Lord Derby's work is, on the 

 whole, more remarkable for the constancy of its excellence and the high level which it 

 maintains throughout, than for its special bursts of eloquence. It is uniformly worthy of 

 itself and its author." The Reader. 



" "Whatever may be the ultimate fate of this poem whether it take sufficient hold of 

 the public mind to satisfy that demand for a translation of Homer which we have alluded 

 to, and thus become a permanent classic of the language, or whether it give place to the still 

 more perfect production of some yet unknown poet it must equally be considered a 

 splendid performance ; and for the present we have no hesitation in saying that it is by 

 far the best representation of Homer's Iliad in the English language." 



J^IMERIC^JST NOTICES. 



The PullisJiers' 1 Circular says : At the advanced age of sixty-five, the Earl of Derby, 

 leader of the Tory party in England, has published a translation of Homer, in blank 

 verse. Nearly all the London critics unite in declaring, with The Times, " that it is by 

 fai the best representation of Homer's 'Iliad' in tho English language." His purpose 

 was to produce a translation, and not a paraphrase fairly and honestly giving the sense 

 of every passage and of every line. Without doubt the greatest of all living British orators, 

 he has now shown high poetic power as well as great scholarship. 



From the New York World : "The reader of English, who seeks to know what 

 Homer really was, and in what fashion he thought and felt and wrote, will owe to 

 Lord Derby his first honest opportunity of doing so. The Earl's translation is devoid alike of 

 pretension and of prettiness. It is animated in movement, simple and representative 

 in phraseology, breezy in atmosphere, if we may so speak, and pervaded by a refinement 

 of taste which is as far removed from daintiness or effeminacy as can well be imagined." 



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