ABSTRACT
S. translated the Hymn to Mercury, longest of the so-called Homeric Hymns, in the first half of July 1820, two and a half years after his translations of six shorter Hymns in January 1818 (see headnote to nos. 156–61). On 12July 1820 he wrote to Peacock ‘I am translating in ottava Rima the Hymn to Mercury of Homer. Of course my stanza precludes a literal translation. My next effort will be that it should be legible [i.e. readable]—a quality much to be desired in translations’ (L ii 213; SC viii 1099). Mary records (Mary Jnl i 326) that S. completed his translation on 14 July at Casa Ricci, the Gisbornes’ house at Leghorn, and both he (L ii 218) and Mary informed Maria Gisborne on 19 July that he had (‘just’ Mary L i 156) finished it. S.’s postscript to Mary's letter to Maria Gisborne explains ‘I have been translating the hymns of Homer, for want of spirit to invent—I have only finished one, the Hymn to Mercury, in ottava rima, which is infinitely comical—’ (L ii 218). The position of S.’s draft translation in Nbk 15 immediately following his draft of LMG, a copy of which S. posted to England in a letter dated 30 June—2 July (L ii 207–9), strongly suggests that the translation was composed in the period from the end of June to mid-July. The draft occupies pp. 118–75 and 177–78 of Nbk 15 and is almost entirely free of other draft material or extraneous jotting, indicating a single effort of sustained concentration. As one might expect for an attempt to turn unrhymed Greek hexameters into eight-line stanzas comprising three different rhymes, the draft exhibits considerable deletion and rewriting but on the whole is remarkably fluent and sure. S.’s translation is characterised by expansion of and addition to the original in a systematic fashion which extends evenly across the whole text. His method of working seems to have involved the fixing in mind of a passage of some length (on average six lines) in the original and then composing an equivalent eight-line English stanza. The ninety-seven stanzas and 772 lines into which S. transformed the 580 lines of the original he then transcribed into Harvard Nbk 1, in all likelihood immediately, or at least soon, after completion. In transcribing S. polished his draft, making many minor changes of phrasing but few alterations of substance, and leaving four stanzas (8, 14, 54) with only seven of the required eight lines (in every case omitting the required sixth line within the rhyme scheme). Each of these incomplete ottava rima stanzas is, however, finished as a translation of the relevant passage in the Greek 509and does not suggest any unresolved difficulty. Mary published in 1824 a text based to all appearances on a transcription of the Harvard Nbk 1 holograph fair copy, and in the Preface described her MS source as ‘having received the author's ultimate corrections’. The Harvard fair copy is certainly complete and ready to be transcribed for publication, though it was not itself prepared for the press and so lacks the careful attention to punctuation of the press copy of PB3 (no. 239) and MA (no. 231), for example, which were copied by Mary and corrected by S. before being sent to England to be printed. The 1824 text contains a small number of mistranscriptions as well as what appear to be minor instances of ‘improvement’; some of both sorts are corrected in 1839, a few with reference to the draft in Nbk 15. These mistrancriptions, ‘improvements’ and corrections are recorded in the notes below.
