For this your names are call'd, before the reft,
To fhare the pleafures of the genial feaft
And can you, chiefs! without a blush survey
Whole troops before you lab'ring in the fray?:
Say, is it thus thofe honours you requite?
The first in banquets, but the laft in fight.

Ulyffes heard the hero's warmth o'erspread His cheek with blushes: and fevere, he faid: Take back th' unjust reproach! Behold we stand Sheath'd in bright arms, and but expect command, If glorious deeds afford thy foul delight,.. 1406 Behold me plunging in the thickest fight. Then give thy warrior-chief a warrior's due, n Who dares to act whate'er thou dar'st to view.

Struck with his gen'rous wrath, the King replies;410 Oh great in action, and in counsel wife!

With ours, thy care and ardour are the fame,
Nor need I to command, nor ought to blame.
Sage as thou art, and learn'd in human kind,
Forgive the transport of a martial mind.‹‹
Hafte to the fight, fecure of juft amends;
The Gods that make, fhall keep the worthy, friends.
He said, and pass'd where great Tydides lay,

His fteeds and chariots wedge'd in firm array:

415

(The warlike Sthenelus attends his fide)

420

To whom with ftern reproach the monarch cry'd;

425

Oh fon of Tydeus! (he, whofe ftrength could tame.
The bounding fteed, in arms a mighty name)
Canft thou, remote, the mingling hofts defcry,
With hands unactive, and a careless eye?
Not thus thy fire the fierce encounter fear'd;
Still firft in front the matchlefs prince appear'd:
What glorious toils, what wonders they recite,
Who view'd him lab'ring thro' the ranks of fight!

S 2

1

I faw

435

440

I faw him once, when gath'ring martial pow'rs 430
A peaceful gueft, he fought Mycena's tow'rs;
Armies he afk'd, and armies had been giv'n,
Not we deny'd, but Jove forbad from heav'n ;
While dreadful comets glaring from afar,
Forewarn'd the horrors of the Theban war.
Next, fent by Greece from where Afopus flows,
A fearless envoy, he approach'd the foes;
Thebe's hoftile walls, unguarded and alone,
Dauntless he enters, and demands the throne.
The tyrant feafting with his chiefs he found,
And dar'd to combate all those chiefs around;
Dar'd and fubdu'd, before their haughty lord;
For Pallas ftrung his arm, and edge'd his sword.
Stung with the shame, within the winding way,
To bar his passage fifty warriors lay ;.
Two heroes led the fecret fquadron on,
Moon the fierce, and hardy Lycophon;
Thofe fifty flaughter'd in the gloomy vale,
He spar'd but one to bear the dreadful tale.
Such Tydeus was, and fuch his martial fire;
Gods! how the fon degen'rates from the fire?
No words the Godlike Diomede return'd,
But heard refpectful, and in fecret burn'd:

445€

450

Not

Ver. 430. I saw bim once, when, etc.] This long narration concerning the hiftory of Tydeus, is not of the nature of thofe for which Homer has been blamed with fome colour of juftice: It is not a cold ftory, but a warm reproof, while the particularizing the actions of the father is made the highest incentive to the fon. Accordingly the air of this speech ought to be infpirited above the common narrative ftyle. As for the ftory itself, it is finely told by Statius in the fecond book of the Thebais.

Ver. 452. No words the Godlike Diomede return'd.] "When Di "omede is reproved by Agamemnon, he holds his peace in refpect to his general; but Sthenelus retorts upon him with boasting and infolence. It is here worth obferving in what manner Aga66 memnon

Not fo fierce Capaneus' undaunted fon,

Stern as his fire, the boafter thus begun.

455

What needs, O monarch! this invidious praise,

Ourselves to leffen, while our fires you raise

Dare to be juft, Atrides! and confess

Our valour equal, tho' our fury lefs.

With fewer troops we ftorm'd the Theban wall, 460
And happier faw the fev'nfold city fall.

In impious acts the guilty fathers dy'd;
The fons fubdu'd, for Heav'n was on their fide.
Far more than heirs of all our parents fame,
Our glories darken their diminish'd name.

To him Tydides thus. My friend forbear,
Supprefs thy paffion, and the king revere :
His high concern may well excufe this rage,
Whose cause we follow, and whose war we wage;

465

memnon behaves himself: he paffes by Sthenelus without af "fording any reply; whereas just before, when Ulyffes teftified his "refentment, he immediately returned him an anfwer. For as ic "is a mean and fervile thing, and unbecoming the majefty of a "prince, to make apologies to every man in juftification of what "he has faid or done; fo to treat all men with equal neglect is "mere pride and excefs of folly. We also fee of Diomede, that "though he refrains from speaking in this place, when the time ❝ demanded action; he afterwards expreffes himself in such a manK ner, as shews him not to have been infenfible of this unjust rebuke (in the ninth book) when he tells the king, he was the "first who had dared to reproach him with want of courage." Plutarch of reading the Poets.

Ver. 460. We ftorm'd the Theban wall.] The first Theban war, of which Agamemnon spoke in the preceding lines, was feven and twenty years before the war of Troy. Sthenelus here speaks of the fecond Theban war, which happened ten years after the first: when the fons of the feven captains conquered the city, before which their fathers were deftroyed. Tydeus expired gnawing the head of his enemy, and Capaneus was thunder-ftruck while he blafphemed Jupiter,

His the first praife, were Ilion's tow'rs o'erthrown, 470
And, if we fail, the chief difgrace his own.
Let him the Greeks to hardy toils excite,
'Tis ours to labour in the glorious fight.

480

He spoke, and ardent, on the trembling ground Sprung from his car; his ringing arms refound. 475 Dire was the clang, and dreadful from afar, Of arm'd Tydides rufhing to the war. As when the winds, afcending by degrees, First move the whitening furface of the feas, The billows float in order to the fhore, The wave behind rolls on the wave before; Till, with the growing storm, the deeps arife, Foam o'er the rocks, and thunder to the skies. So to the fight the thick battalions throng, Shields urge'd on shields, and men drove men along. Sedate and filent move the num'rous bands ; No found, no whisper but the chief's commands, Those only heard; with awe the reft obey, As if fome God had fnatch'd their voice away. Not fo the Trojans; from their hoft afcends A gen'ral fhout that all the region rends. As when the fleecy flocks unnumber'd stand In wealthy folds, and wait the milker's hand,

486

490

Ver. 478. As when the winds, etc.] This is the first battle in Homer; and it is worthy obfervation with what grandeur it is described, and raised by one circumftance above another, until all is involved in horror and tumult: the foregoing fimile of the winds, rifing by degrees into a general tempeft, is an image of the progress of his own fpirit in this defcription. We fee firft an innumerable army moving in order, and are amufed with the pomp and filence; then wakened with the noife and clamour; next they join, the adverfe Gods are let down among them; the imaginary perfons of Terror, Flight, Discord, fucceed to re-inforce them; then all is undistinguished fury, and a confufion of horrors, only that at different openings we behold the diftinét deaths of feveral heroes, and then are involved again in the fame confufion,

The

The hollow vales inceffant bleating fills,

The lambs reply from all the neigh'bring hills: 495
Such clamours rofe from various nations round,
Mix'd was the murmur, and confus'd the found.
Each hoft now joins, and each a God inspires,
Thefe Mars incites, and those Minerva fires.
Pale Flight around, and dreadful Terror reign; 500
And Discord raging bathes the purple plain :
Difcord! dire fifter of the flaught'ring pow'r,
Small at her birth, but rifing ev'ry hour,

While scarce the fkies her horrid head can bound,
She talks on earth, and shakes the world around; 505
The nations bleed, where'er her fteps the turns,
The groan ftill deepens, and the combat burns.

Now shield with fhield, with helmet helmet clos'd,
To armour armour, lance to lance oppos'd,
Hoft against hoft with fhadowy fquadrons drew, 510
The founding darts in iron-tempelts flew,
Victors and vanquish'd join promifcuous cries,
And fhrilling fhouts and dying groans arife;
With ftreaming blood the flipp'ry fields are dy'd,
And flaughter'd heroes fwell the dreadful tide.
As torrents roll, increas'd by num'rous rills,
With rage impetuous down their echoing hills;

515

Rush

Ver. 502. Difcord, dire fifter, etc.] This is the paffage so highly extolled by Longinus, as one of the most signal instances of the noble fublimity of this author: where it is faid, that the image here drawn of Difcord, whose bead touched the beavens, and whofe feet were on earth, may as juftly be applied to the vast reach and elevation of the genius of Homer.

Ver. 508. Now shield with fhield, etc.] The verfes which follow in the original are perhaps excelled by none in Homer; and that he had himself a particular fondness for them, may be imagin ed from his inferting them again in the fame words in the eighth book.

Ver. 516, As torrents roll.] This comparison of rivers meeting

and