The chief trespass of our translator's style,--and it will be found to imply a trespass against his fidelity and simplicity,--is no doubt the intemperate use of inversion, ungraceful in itself, contrary to the idiom of his language, and, what is still worse, subversive of perspicuity, than which no quality distinguishes Homer more from all other writers: for Homer, though fraught with every element of wisdom, even in the opinion of a critic[16] to no heresy more adverse than that of acknowledging faultless merit, whether ancient or modern,--Homer, with all this fund of useful doctrine, remains to this day the most perspicuous of poets, the writer least perplexed with ambiguity of style. His tale is so clearly told, that even now, as of yore, he is or may be the companion of every age, and almost every capacity, at almost every hour. This perspicuity is perhaps not to be attained by the scantiness of modern grammar; it is perhaps not to be fully expected from the inferior powers of the most attentive translator, wearied with labour, and fancying that to be clear to others which is luminous to him: but this we cannot allow to be pleaded every where in excuse of our translator's ambiguities, after the ample testimony he bore in his preface to the perspicuity of his author. Such palliation, indeed, will not be offered by him who tells us, that not one line before us escaped his attention. We decline entering into particulars on this head, partly because Mr. C. cannot be ignorant of the passages alluded to, partly because sufficient, and even exuberant, pains have been taken by others to point them out to the public.