Note 29:2 — Chapter X

The title of the Epigoniad does not, unfortunately, convey any associations to the general English reader, who requires to be told that it is derived from Ἑπίγονοι, or descendants, in allusion to those of the warriors who had been slain at the first siege of Thebes; and the main incident of the poem is the subsequent sacking of that city. It is not difficult for the reader of the better parts of the Epigoniad to imagine, that he is perusing Pope's translation of Homer. When an approach was thus made to a model so famous, all was supposed to have been gained; and it was thought that a work had been produced which would stand beside the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is hardly necessary, at the present day, to ask, whether the highest genius will produce an immortal poem out of the machinery of another age and nation, and appealing to sentiments which have no response in the habits or feelings of the people to whom its author appeals? We read the great national poems of other countries in their own language, because we thus endow ourselves, as far as it is possible, with the feeling and ideas of those to whom the poem was addressed. We read spirited translations, because they are an attempt to represent to us, in our own tongue, that which is grand in another language; and our interest is like that with which we view the portrait of a great man. We thus encounter Ulysses, Agamemnon, and Menelaus in the Iliad, with the interest of excited curiosity; and those who cannot read the original, are content to make acquaintance with persons whom a great genius has made so famous, even through a rude translation. But few cared to meet them reappearing in Wilkie's imitation; nor, however forcible may be his expressions, or flowing his versification, do we feel very vividly the horrors of Cacus' den, and the destructive ire of the Cyclops, or sympathize in the torments of Hercules, from the Centaur's poisoned robe, when they are described in the Epigoniad.