ABSTRACT

S. translated, wholly or in part, seven of the 33 Greek Hymns (songs in honour of gods) ascribed to Homer, six of them in January 1818, but the most considerable, the Hymn to Mercury, two and a half years later. Hogg had recommended the Hymns to S. on 5 April 1817 as ‘miraculous effusions of genius’ containing ‘magical verses’ (qu. A. Koszul, La Jeimesse de Shelley (Paris 1910) 438); S. read them the same summer (Mary Jnl i 176-7), requested them in an edition ‘printed distinctly from the Iliad or Odyssey’ from Lackington, Allen & Co. in October (L i 565) and evidently obtained this as he was billed for it in November (Nbk 11 f. 9). The edition sent, as Webb 350-1 has shown, was G. Hermann’s Homeri Hytnni et Epigrammata (Leipzig 1806); S.’s versions are drafted in Nbk 11, in Hermann’s order and numbering, working backwards: ‘Castor & Pollux’ is headed ‘33’ in the MS, ‘Earth’ ‘30’, and ‘Minerva’ ‘28’. ‘Vesta’ (Hestia, no. 29) was omitted (S. wrote the title in due sequence but crossed it out and passed on to translate ‘Minerva’). As was customary at the time, S. used the Latin equivalents of Greek names. Webb is mistaken, however, in suggesting that the final invocation of ‘Castor & Pollux’ was omitted because S. had not noticed the continuation of the text overleaf in Hermann, as S. did begin to translate the invocation (a mistake compounded in BSM xviii, Introduction lv and 272, even though the transcription of Nbk 11 p. 233 does give the passage, as ‘Farewell [?Ty ni iride], who wish’). His drafts suggest that S. may at first have contemplated omitting all the final invocations (see note to lines 25-8 of ‘To the Sun’). By 20 January 1818 he was working on his translations (Mary Jnl i 191), having probably begun them earlier under the stimulus of Hogg’s visit to Marlow (3-19 January) as S. wrote to him three days after his departure to say ‘The Hymns go on’ (L i 595). Composition was interrupted, however, by an attack of ophthalmia announced in the same letter, and then by the move from Albion House, in preparation for Italy, on 10 February. This may be the point at which the work finally broke off, by which time S. had translated the first five Hymns, each with a fair copy, and had drafted a version of the ‘Hymn to Venus’ up to line 58 of the Greek original. He ordered a copy of George Chapman’s translation of the Hymns on 22 January, ‘if possible by tomorrows Coach’ (L i 594), but even if he received