T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 510

To Isham 2/1/27 1. I should need two years in which to complete the translation, after I began work. It is a doing it as well as Homer would have liked; and shall feel happy if it turns out botched. 2. I could not sign it any one of my hitherto names. It must go out blank, or with a virgin name on it. 3. I mig... six months of work, one for on the publishers; and if they were not satisfied with the first would agree to let the contract go, upon their paying me the fraction of £500 which the first book bears to the whole. Notes on 1. Because it is long, and difficult. Probably I'd above write it twice or three times before it is right. I also 2. I can't begin clen... clear is must get several of the older translations by me, to compare with. 3. And they would have to promise to respect this privacy. I have never agai... to be the victim of the press. 4. Six months, because the writing of the first ten pages or so fixes the style for all the rest, and is the hardest part. And I do not want to do it for nothing. Fifteen or twenty pounds would see me nicely through it. My strongest advice to you is to get someone better to do you a more certain performance; I am nothing like good enough for so great a work of art as the Odyssey. Nor, incidentally, to be printed by B.H. Your kindness remains overwhelming. Do realise that I have no confidence in myself, and what I'd like is some little job, whi... ... unquestionably within my strength and leisure hours in the R.A.F. Yours ever T E Shaw.