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Quick thro' the father's heart these accents ran:
Grief seiz'd at once, and wrapt up all the man;
Deep from his soul he sigh'd, and sorrowing spread
A cloud of ashes on his hoary head.
Trembling with agonies of strong delight
Stood the great son, heart-wounded with the sight:
He ran, he seiz'd him with a strict embrace,
With thousand kisses wander'd o'er his face,
"I, I am he! O father, rise, behold
Thy son, with twenty winters now grown old!
Thy son, so long desir'd, so long detain'd,
Restor'd, and breathing in his native land:
These floods of sorrow, O my sire, restrain!
The vengeance is complete; the suitor-train,
Stretch'd in our palace, by these hands lie slain."
Amaz'd, Laertes: "Give some certain sign,
(If such thou art) to manifest thee mine."
"Lo here the wound," he cries, "receiv'd of yore,
The scar indented by the tusky boar,
When by thyself and by Anticlea sent,
To old Autolycus's realms I went.
Yet by another sign thy offspring know;
The several trees you gave me long ago,
While, yet a child, these fields I lov'd to trace,
And trod thy footsteps with unequal pace;
To every plant in order as we came,
Well-pleas'd you told its nature, and its name,
Whate'er my childish fancy ask'd, bestow'd';
Twelve pear-trees bowing with their pendent load,
And ten, that red with blushing apples glow'd;
Full fifty purple figs; and many a row
Of various vines that then began to blow,
A future vintage! when the Hours produce
Their latent buds, and Sol exalts the juice."
Smit with the signs, which all his doubts explain,
His heart within him melts; his knees sustain
Their feeble weight no more; his arms alone
Support him, round the lov'd Ulysses thrown;
He faints, he sinks, with mighty joys oppress'd:
Ulysses clasps him to his eager breast.
Soon as returning life regains its seat,

And his breath lengthens, and his pulses beat;
"Yes, I believe," he cries, "almighty Jove!
Heaven rules us yet, and gods there are above.
'Tis so the suitors for their wrongs have paid-
But what shall guard us, if the town invade?
If, while the news through every city flies,
All Ithaca and Cephalenia rise!"

To this Ulysses: "As the gods shall please
Be all the rest; and set thy soul at ease.
Haste to the cottage by this orchard side,
And take the banquet which our cares provide :
There wait thy faithful band of rural friends,
And there the young Telemachus attends."

Thus having said, they trac'd the garden o'er,
And, stooping, enter'd at a lowly door.
The swains and young Telemachus they found,
The victim portion'd, and the goblet crown'd.
The hoary king, his old Sicilian maid
Perfum'd and wash'd, and gorgeously array'd.
Pallas attending gives his frame to shine
With awful port, and majesty divine;
His gazing son admires the godlike grace,
And air celestial dawning o'er his face.
“What god," he cry'd, “my father's form im
How high he treads, and how enlarg'd he moves!"
"Oh! would to all the deathless powers on high,
Pallas and Jove, and him who gilds the sky!"
(Reply'd the king, elated with his praise)
"My strength were still, as once in better days:
VOL. XIX.

[proves?

When the bold Cephalens the leaguer form'd,
And proud Nericus trembled as I storm'd.
Such were I now, not absent from your deed
When the last Sun beheld the suitors bleed,
This arm had aided yours; this hand bestrown
Our floors with death, and push'd the slaughter on;
Nor had the sire been separate from the son."

They commun'd thus; while homeward bent
their way

The swains, fatigu'd with labours of the day;
Dolius the first, the venerable man :

And next his sons, a long succeeding train.
For due refection to the bower they came,
Call'd by the careful old Sicilian dame,
Who nurs'd the children, and now tends the sire;
They see their lord, they gaze, and they admire.
On chairs and beds in order seated round,
They share the gladsome board; the roofs resound.
While thus Ulysses to his ancient friend :
"Forbear your wonder, and the feast attend;
The rites have waited long." The chief commands
Their loves in vain; old Dolius spreads his hands,
Springs to his master with a warm embrace,
And fastens kisses on his hands and face;
Then thus broke out: "Oh long, oh daily mourn'd!
Beyond our hopes, and to our wish, return'd!
Conducted sure by Heaven! for Heaven alone
Could work this wonder: welcome to thy own!
And joys and happiness attend thy throne!
Who knows thy bless'd, thy wish'd return? Oh, say,
To the chaste queen, shall we the news convey?
Or hears she, and with blessings loads the day?"
"Dismiss that care, for to the royal bride
Already is it known," (the king reply'd,
Aud straight resum'd his seat) while round him bows
Each faithful youth, and breathes out ardent vows:
Then all beneath their father take their place,
Rank'd by their ages, and the banquet grace.

Now flying fame the swift report had spread
Through all the city, of the suitors dead.
In throngs they rise, and to the palace crowd;
Their sighs were many, and the tumult loud.
Weeping they bear the mangled heaps of slain,
Inhume the natives in their native plain,
The rest in ships are wafted o'er the main.
Then sad in council all the seniors sate,
Frequent and full, assembled to debate.
Amid the circle first Eupithes rose,

Big was his eye with tears, his heart with woes:
The bold Antinous was his age's pride,
The first who by Ulysses' arrow dy'd.
Down his wan cheek the trickling torrent ran,
As, mixing words with sighs, he thus began:
"Great deeds, O friends! this wonderous man

has wrought,

And mighty blessings to his country brought.
With ships he parted and a numerous train,
Those, and their ships, he bury'd in the main.
Now he returns, and first essays his hand
In the best blood of all his native land.
Haste then, and ere to neighbouring Pyle he flies,
Or sacred Elis, to procure supplies;
Arise, (or ye for ever fall) arise!
Shame to this age, and all that shall succeed!
If unreveng'd your sons and brothers bleed.
Prove that we live, by vengeance on his head,
Or sink at once forgotten with the dead.”

Here ceas'd he, but indignant tears let fall Spoke when he ceas'd: dumb sorrow touch'd them all.

T

When from the palace to the wondering throng
Sage Medon came, and Phemius came along,
(Restless and early sleep's soft bands they broke);
And Medon first th' assembled chiefs bespoke:

"Hear me, ye peers and elders of the land,
Who deem this act the work of mortal hand;
As o'er the heaps of death Ulysses strode,
These eyes, these eyes beheld a present god,
Who now before him, now beside him stood,
Fought as he fought, and mark'd his way with
In vain old Mentor's form the god bely'd; [blood:
'Twas Heaven that struck, and Heaven was on his
A sudden horrour all th' assembly shook, [side."
When, slowly rising, Halitherses spoke :
(Reverend and wise, whose comprehensive view
At once the present and the future knew)
"Me too, ye fathers, hear! from you proceed
The ills ye mourn; your own the guilty deed.
Ye gave your sons, your lawless sons, the rein
(Oft warn'd by Mentor and myself in vain);
An absent hero's bed they sought to soil,
An absent hero's wealth they made their spoil:
Immoderate riot, and intemperate lust!
Th' offence was great, the punishment was just.
Weigh then my counsels in an equal scale,
Nor rush to ruin-Justice will prevail."

His moderate words some better minds persuade: They part, and join him; but the number stay'd. They storm, they shout, with hasty frenzy fir'd, And second all Eupithes' rage inspir'd. They case their limbs in brass; to arms they run; The broad effulgence blazes in the Sun. Before the city, and in ample plain, They meet; Eupithes heads the frantic train. Fierce for his son, he breathes his threats in air; Fate hears them not, and Death attends him there. This pass'd on Earth, while in the realms above Minerva thus to cloud-compelling Jove:

64

May I presume to search thy secret soul? O power supreme! O ruler of the whole! Say, hast thou doom'd to this divided state, Or peaceful amity, or stern debate? Declare thy purpose; for thy will is fate."

"Is not thy thought my own?" (the god replies, Who rolls the thunder o'er the vaulted skies) "Hath not long since thy knowing soul decreed, The chief's return should make the guilty bleed? "Tis done, and at thy will the Fates succeed. Yet hear the issue: since Ulysses' hand

Has slain the suitors, Heaven shall bless the land.
None now the kindred of th' unjust shall own;
Forgot the slaughter'd brother, and the son :
Each future day increase of wealth shall bring,
And o'er the past, Oblivion stretch her wing.
Long shall Ulysses in his empire rest,
His people blessing, by his people bless'd.
Let all be peace."--He said, and gave the nod
That binds the Fates; the sanction of the god:
And, prompt to execute the eternal will,
Descended Pallas from th' Olympian hill.

Now sat Ulysses at the rural feast,
The rage of hunger and of thirst repress'd:
To watch the foe a trusty spy he sent;
A son of Dolius on the message went,
Stood in the way, and at a glance beheld
The foe approach, embattled on the field.
With backward step he hastens to the bower,
And tells the news. They arm with all their power.
Four friends alone Ulysses' cause embrace,
And six were all the sons of Dolius' race:

Old Dolius too his rusted arms put on ;
And, still more old, in arms Laertes shone.
Trembling with warmth, the hoary heroes stand,
And brazen panoply invests the band.
The opening gates at once their war display:
Fierce they rush forth: Ulysses leads the way.
That moment joins them with celestial aid,
In Mentor's form, the Jove-descended maid:
The suffering hero felt his patient breast
Swell with new joy, and thus his son address'd:

"Behold, Telemachus! (nor fear the sight)
The brave embattled; the grim front of fight!
The valiant with the valiant must contend:
Shame not the line whence glorious you descend,
Wide o'er the world their martial fame was spread;
Regard thyself, the living, and the dead."

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Thy eyes, great father! on this battle cast,
Shall learn from me Penelope was chaste."
So spoke Telemachus! the gallant boy
Good old Laertes heard with panting joy;
And, "Bless'd! thrice bless'd this happy day!"
he cries;

"The day that shows me, ere I close my eyes,
A son and grandson of th' Arcesian name
Strive for fair virtue, and contest for fame!"
Then thus Minerva in Laertes' ear:

"Son of Arcesius, reverend warrior, hear!
Jove and Jove's daughter first implore in prayer,
Then, whirling high, discharge thy lance in air,"
She said, infusing courage with the word:
Jove and Jove's daughter then the chief implor'd,
And, whirling high, dismiss'd the lance in air,
Full at Eupithes drove the deathful spear;
The brass-cheek'd helmet opens to the wound;
He falls, earth thunders, and his arms resound.

Before the father and the conquering son [run.
Heaps rush on heaps; they fight, they drop, they
Now by the sword, and now the javelin, fall
The rebel race, and death had swallow'd all;
But from on high the blue-ey'd virgin cry'd;
Her awful voice detain'd the headlong tide.
"Forbear, ye nations! your mad hands forbear
From mutual slaughter: Peace descends to spare."
Fear shook the nations: at the voice divine,
They drop their javelins, and their rage resign.
All scatter'd round their glittering weapons lie;
Some fall to earth, and some confus'dly fly.
With dreadful shouts Ulysses pour'd along,
Swift as an eagle, as an eagle strong.
But Jove's red arm the burning thunder aims;
Before Minerva shot the livid flames;
Blazing they fell, and at her feet expir'd:
Then stopp'd the goddess, trembled, and retir'd.

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Descended from the gods! Ulysses, cease; Offend not Jore; obey, and give the peace." So Pallas spoke: the mandate from above The king obey'd. The virgin-seed of Jove, In Mentor's form, confirm'd the full accord, "And willing natious knew their lawful lord."

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governable, that Jupiter is forced to restrain it | duced it to one character and colouring, gone with his thunder. It is usual for orators to reserve over the several parts, and given to each their the strongest arguments for the conclusion, that finishing. they may leave them fresh upon the reader's memory; Homer uses the same conduct: he represents his hero in all his terrour, he shows him to be irresistible, and by this method leaves us fully possessed with a noble idea of his mag. nanimity.

It has been already observed, that the end of the action of the Odyssey is the re-establishment of Ulysses in full peace and tranquillity; this is not effected, till the defeat of the suitors' friends: and, therefore, if the poet had concluded before this event, the Odyssey had been imperfect. It was necessary that the reader should not only be informed of the return of Ulysses to his country, and the punishment of the suitors, but of his reestablishment, by a peaceful possession of his regal authority; which is not executed, till these last disorders raised by Eupithes are settled by the victory of Ulysses; and, therefore, this is the natural conclusion of the action.

This book opens with the morning, and ends before night, so that the whole story of the Odyssey is comprehended in the compass of one and forty days. Monsieur Dacier upon Aristotle remarks, that an epic poem ought not to be too long: we should be able to retain all the several parts of it at once in our memory: if we lose the idea of the beginning when we come to the concluson, it is an argument that it is of too large an extent, and its length destroys its beauty. What seems to favour this decision is, that the Eneid, Iliad, and Odyssey, are conformable to this rule of Aristotle; and every one of those poems may be read in the compass of a single day.

I have now gone through the collections upon the Odyssey, and laid together what occurred most remarkable in this excellent poem. I am not so vain as to think these remarks free from faults, nor so disingenuous as not to confess them : all writers have occasion for indulgence, and those most who least acknowledge it. I have sometimes used Madam Dacier as she has done others, in transcribing some of her remarks without particularizing them; but, indeed, it was through inadvertency only that her name is sometimes omitted at the bottom of the note. If my performance has merit, either in these, or in my part of the translation, (namely, in the sixth, eleventh, and eighteenth books) it is but just to attribute it to the judgment and care of Mr. Pope, by whose band every sheet was corrected. His other, and much more able assistant, was Mr. Fenton, in the fourth and the twentieth books. It was our particular request, that our several parts might not be made known to the world till the end of it: and if they have had the good fortune not to be distinguished from his, we ought to be the less vain, since the resemblance proceeds much less from our diligence and study to copy his manner, than from his own daily revisal and correction. The most experienced painters will not wonder at this, who very well know, that no critic can pronounce even of the pieces of Raphael or Titian, which have, or which have not, been worked upon by those of their school; when the same master's hand has directed the execution of the whole, re

I must not conclude without declaring our mutual satisfaction in Mr. Pope's acceptance of our best endeavours, which have contributed at least to his more speedy execution of this great undertaking. If ever my name be numbered with the learned, I must ascribe it to his friendship, in transmitting it to posterity by a participation in his labours. May the sense I have of this, and other instances of that friendship, be known as long as his name will cause mine to last: and may 1 to this end be permitted, at the conclusion of a work, which is a kind of monument of his partiality to me, to place the following lines, as an inscription memorial of it:

ON THE ODYSSEY..

LET vulgar souls triumphal arches raise,
Or speaking marbles, to record their praise;
And picture (to the voice of Fame unknown)
The mimic feature on the breathing stone:
Mere mortals! subject to death's total sway,
Reptiles of Earth, and beings of a day!

A monument which worth alone can raise :
"Tis thine, on every heart to grave thy praise,
Sure to survive, when time shall whelm in dust
The arch, the marble, and the mimic bust:
Nor, till the volumes of th' expanded sky
Blaze in one flame, shalt thou and Homer die:
Then sink together, in the world's last fires,
What Heaven created, and what Heaven inspires.

If aught on Earth, when once this breath is fled,
With human transport touch the mighty dead:
Shakespeare, rejoice! his hand thy page refines;
Now every scene with native brightness shines;
Just to thy fame, he gives thy genuine thought;
So Tully publish'd what Lucretius wrote;
Prun'd by his care thy laurels loftier grow,
And bloom afresh on thy immortal brow.

Thus when thy draughts, O Raphael! time
[invades,

And the bold figure from the canvas fades,
A rival hand recalls from every part
Transported we survey the dubious strife,
Some latent grace, and equals art with art:
While each fair image starts again to life.
Jarr'd grating discord, all-extinct his fire!
How long, untun'd, had Homer's sacred lyre
This you beheld; and, taught by Heaven to sing,
Call'd the loud music from the sounding string.
Now wak'd from slumbers of three thousand years,
Once more Achilles in dread pomp appears,
Towers o'er the field of death; as fierce he turns,
Keen flash his arms, and all the hero burns;
With martial stalk, and more than mortal might,
Then the pale Titans, chain'd on burning floors,
He strides along, and meets the gods in fight:
Start at the din that rends th' infernal shores;
Tremble the towers of Heaven, Earth rocks her

coasts,

And gloomy Pluto shakes with all his ghosts,
To every theme responds thy various lay;
Here rolls a torrent, there meanders play;
Sonorous as the storm thy numbers rise,
Toss the wild waves, and thunder in the skies;
Or softer than a yielding virgin's sigh,
The gentle breezes breathe away and die.

Thus, like the radiant god who sheds the day,
You paint the vale, or gild the azure way;
And, while with every theme the verse complies,
Sink without groveling, without rashness rise.

Proceed, great bard! awake th' harmonious
Be ours all Homer! still Ulysses sing. [string.
How long that hero by unskilful hands,
Stripp'd of his robe, a beggar trod our lands:
Such as he wander'd o'er his native coast,
Shrunk by the wand, and all the warrior lost?
O'er his smooth skin a bark of wrinkles spread;
Old age disgrac'd the honours of his head:
Nor longer in his heavy eye-ball shin'd
The glance divine, forth-beaming from the mind,
But you, like Pallas, every limb infold
With royal robes, and bid him shine in gold;
Touch'd by your hand, his manly frame improves
With grace divine, and like a god he moves.

Even I, the meanest of the Muses' train, Inflam'd by thee, attempt a nobler strain; Adventurous waken the Mæonian lyre, Tun'd by your hand, and sing as you inspire: So, arm'd by great Achilles for the fight, Patroclus conquer'd in Achilles' right: Like their's, our friendship! and I boast my name To thine united-For thy FRIENDSHIP'S FAME.

This labour past, of heavenly subjects sing, While hovering angels listen on the wing, To hear from Earth, such heart-felt raptures rise, As, when they sing, suspended hold the skies: Or, nobly rising in fair virtue's cause, From thy own life transcribe th' unerring laws: Teach a bad world beneath thy sway to bend ;. To verse like thine fierce savages attend, And men more fierce: when Orpheus tunes the lay, Ev'n fiends relenting hear their rage away.

POSTSCRIPT.

BY MR. POPE.

W. BROOME

I CANNOT dismiss this work without a few observations on the character and style of it. Whoever reads the Odyssey with an eye to the Iliad, expecting to find it of the same character, or of the same sort of spirit, will be grievously deceived, and err against the first principle of criticism, which is, to consider the nature of the piece, and the intent of its author. The Odyssey is a moral and political work, instructive to all degrees of men, and filled with images, examples, and precepts of civil and domestic life. Homer is here a person,

Qui didicit, patriæ quid debeat, & quid amicis, [hospes: Quo sit amore parens, quo frater amandus, & Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,

Plenius & melius Chrysippo & Crantore dicit. The Odyssey is the reverse of the Iliad, in moral, subject, manner, and style; to which it has no sort of relation, but as the story happens to follow in order of time, and as some of the same persons

are actors in it. Yet from this incidental conOdyssey, Lib. XVI.

nection many have been misled tó régard it as a continuation or second part, and thence to expect a parity of character inconsistent with its

nature.

It is no wonder that the common reader should fall into this mistake, when so great a critic as Longinus scems not wholly free from it; although what he has said has been generally understood to import a severer censure of the Odyssey than it I really does, if we consider the occasion on which it is introduced, and the circumstances to which it is confined.

"The Odyssey" (says he)" is an instance, how natural it is to a great genius, when it begins to grow old and decline, to delight itself in narra tions and fables. For that Homer composed the Odyssey after the Iliad, many proofs may be given, &c. From hence, in my judgment, it proceeds, that as the Iliad was written while his spirit was in its greatest vigour, the whole structure of that work is dramatic and full of action; whereas the greater part of the Odyssey is employed in narration, which is the taste of old age: so that in this latter piece we may compare him to the setting Sun, which has still the same greatness, but not the same ardour, or force. He speaks not in the same strain: we see no more that sublime of the Iliad, which marches on with a constant pace, without ever being stopped, or retarded: there appears no more that hurry, and that strong tide of motions and passions, pouring one after another: there is no more the same fury, or the same volubility of diction, so suitable to action, and all along drawing in such innumerable images of nature. But Homer, like the ocean, is always great, even when he ebbs and retires; even when he is lowest, and loses himself most in narrations and incredible fictions: as instances of this, we cannot forget the description of tempests, the adventures of Ulysses with the Cyclops, and niany others. But, though all this be age, it is the age of Homer-And it may be said for the credit of these fictions, that they are beautiful dreams, or, I if you will, the dreams of Jupiter himself. spoke of the Odyssey only to show, that the greatest poets, when their genius wants strength and warmth for the pathetic, for the most part Homer has done in characterising the suitors, and employ themselves in painting the manners. This describing their way of life: which is properly branch of comedy, whose peculiar business is to represent the manners of men."

We must first observe, it is the sublime of which Longinus is writing: that, and not the nature of Homer's poem, is his subject. After having highly extolled the fire and sublimity of the Iliad, he justly observes the Odyssey to have less of those qualities, and to turn more on the side of moral, and reflections on human life. Nor is it his business here to determine, whether the elevated spirit of the one, or the just moral of the other, be the greater excellence in itself.

speaking, cannot well be meant of the general Secondly, that fire and fury, of which he is spirit and inspiration which is to run through a whole epic poem, but of that particular warmth and impetuosity necessary in some parts, to image or represent actions or passions, of haste, tumult, and violence. It is on occasion of citing some such particular passages in Homer, that Longinus

breaks into this reflection; which seems to determine his meaning chiefly to that sense.

Upon the whole, he affirms the Odyssey to have less sublimity and fire than the Iliad; but he does not say it wants the sublime, or wants fire. He affirms it to be narrative, but not that the narration is defective. He affirms it to abound in fictions, not that those fictions are ill invented, or ill executed. He affirms it to be nice and particular in painting the manners, but not that those manners are ill painted. If Homer has fully in these points accomplished his own design, and done all that the nature of his poem demanded or allowed, it still remains perfect in its kind, and as much a masterpiece as the Iliad.

The amount of the passage is this; that in his own particular taste, and with respect to the subTime, Longinus preferred the Iliad: and because the Odyssey was less active and lofty, he judged it the work of the old age of Homer.

If this opinion be true, it will only prove, that Homer's age might determine him in the choice of his subject, not that it affected him in the execution of it; and that which would be a very wrong instance to prove the decay of his imagination, is a very good one to evince the strength of his judgment. For had he (as Madam Dacier observes) composed the Odyssey in his youth and the Iliad in his age, both must in reason have been exactly the same as they now stand. To blame Homer for his choice of such a subject, as did not admit the same incidents and the same pomp of style as his former, is to take offence at too much variety, and to imagine, that when a man has written one good thing, he must ever after only copy himself.

The Battle of Constantine, and the School of Athens, are both pieces of Raphael: shall we censure the School of Athens as faulty, because it has not the fury and fire of the other? or shall we say, that Raphael was grown grave and old, because he chose to represent the manners of old men and philosophers? There is all the silence, tranquility, and composure in the one, and all the warmth, hurry, and tumult in the other, which the subject of either required: both of them had been imperfect, if they had not been as they are. And let the poet or painter be young or old, who designs and performs in this manner, it proves him to have made the piece at a time of life when he was master not only of his art, but of his dis

cretion.

Aristotle makes no such distinction between the two poems: he constantly cites them with equal praise, and draws the rules and examples of epic writing equally from both. But it is rather to the Odyssey that Horace gives the preference, in the Epistle to Lollius, and in the Art of Poetry. It is remarkable how opposite his opinion is to that of Longinus: and that the particulars he chooses to extol, are those very fictions, and pictures of the manners, which the other seems least to approve. Those fables and manners are of the very essence of the work: but even without that regard, the fables themselves have both more invention and more instruction, and the manners more moral and example, than those of the Iliad.

In some points (and those the most essential to the epic poem) the Odyssey is confessed to excel the liad; and principally in the great end of it,

the moral. The conduct, turn, and disposition of the fable is also what the critics allow to be the better model for epic writers to follow: accordingly we find much more of the cast of this poem than of the other in the Eneid, and (what next to that is perhaps the greatest example) in the Telemachus. In the manners it is no way inferior: Longinus is so far from finding any defect in these, that he rather taxes Homer with painting them too minutely. As to the narrations, although they are more numerous as the occasions are more frequent, yet they carry no more the marks of old age, and are neither more prolix, nor more circumstantial, than the conversations and dialogues of the Iliad. Not to mention the length of those of Phoenix in the ninth book, and of Nestor in the eleventh (which may be thought in compliance to their characters), those of Glaucus in the sixth, of

neas in the twentieth, and some others, must be allowed to exceed any in the whole Odyssey. And that the propriety of style, and the numbers, in the narrations of each are equal, will appear to any who compare them.

To form a right judgment, whether the genius of Homer had suffered any decay; we must consider, in both his poems, such parts as are of a similiar nature, and will bear comparison. And it is certain we shall find in each the same vivacity and fecundity of invention, the same life and strength of imaging and colouring, the particular descriptions as highly painted, the figures as bold, the metaphors as animated, and the numbers as harmonious, and as various.

The Odyssey is a perpetual source of poetry: the stream is not the less full, for being gentle; though it is true (when we speak only with regard to the sublime) that a river, foaming and thundering in cataracts from rocks and precipices, is what more strikes, amazes, and fills the mind, than the same body of water, flowing afterwards through peaceful vales and agreeable scenes of pasturage.

The Odyssey (as I have before said) ought to be considered according to its own nature and design, not with an eye to the Iliad. To censure Homer, because it is unlike what it was never meant to resemble, is as if a gardener, who had purposely cultivated two beautiful trees of contrary natures, as a specimen of his skill in the several kinds, should be blamed for not bringing them into pairs; when in root, stem, leaf, and flower, each was so entirely different, that one must have been spoiled in the endeavour to match the other.

Longinus, who saw this poem was "partly of the nature of comedy," ought not, for that very reason, to have considered it with a view to the Iliad. How little any such resemblance was the intention of Homer, may appear from hence, that, althrough the character of Ulysses was there already drawn, yet here he purposely turns to another side of it, and shows him not in that full light of glory, but in the shade of common life, with a mixture of such qualities as are requisite to all the lowest accidents of it, struggling with mis. fortunes, and on a level with the meanest of mankind. As for the other persons, none of them are above what we call the higher comedy: Calypso, though a goddess, is a character of intrigue; the suitors yet more approaching to it; the Phæaciam

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