Homer
Iliad
Translated by W. G. T. Baxter
(London 1864)

[Short sample taken from a review article]

So spake, and with his dark brows Kronos’ son
Did nod. The locks ambrosial of the king
Y-quivered from his head immortal down,
And huge Olympus shook.

REVIEW COMMENT

Baxter’s translation is, according to some contemporary accounts, decidedly odd.

Another singular performance is the “Iliad” by W. G. T. Baxter, literally transferred from the Greek into the English of the Chaucerian period, and all fettered in old-fashioned rhymes. (The Ladies’ Repository, Vol. 32 (1872)

One of the most singular productions that we are called upon to notice is a poem in whose composition the object seems to be quite as much to revive the old English as to furnish a version of Homer. Mr. W. G. T. Baxter is the author of this strange performance. (London 1854). He tells us that his Iliad “is offered as the most literal metrical English version of the Iliad hitherto published and certainly the most literal in rhyme. And in it the translator has aimed at giving all that is in the original, without regard to supposed redundancy or repetition, and from it as rigidly excluding every thought and expression which is not there to be found.” Leaving entirely out of consideration the utter absence of poetical fire, of which we look in vain for a spark in this dreary waste, we find ourselves confronted at the very outset with difficulties scarcely inferior to those of mastering a new language. A formidable glossary is thrust before our eyes, in which we discover a small part of the uncouth forms whose acquaintance we are expected to make. To our consternation we learn that we shall be called upon to interpret del as “portion,” yare as “nimbly,” y-fare as “together,” and y-wis as “verily;” that appeach is to “accuse,” brast, to “break,” and lin, to “give over” or “cease.” Unfortunately the list of obsolete words and expressions, although by no means a short one, covers but a very small part of those which the translator has laboriously culled from Chaucer and other sources of English pure and undefiled. The pages fairly bristle with unintelligible terms, for the explanation of which he kindly refers to a copious collection of notes. But worst of all, there is no compensation for the trouble to which we are thus coolly subjected, in any manly vigor—not to say enthusiasm—of the author. Even the dignity of the epic is lost . . . (The Methodist Review, Vol. 24 (1872).

I have been unable to find very much about else about the translation on the Internet, so I am not certain whether or not Baxter translated the entire Iliad (the search for more information, however, continues).

[List of Published Translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey]