And they two went farther ben, (Scotice,) and the illustrious Ulysses led the way, And they stood before him : amazed, Achilles started up, Leaving his seat, along with his harp, where he was sitting. In the same manner also Patroclus, when he saw the men, stood up: Them both receiving kindly, addressed the swift-footed Achilles. CHAPMAN. The quarter of the Myrmidons they reacht, and found him set, With works conceited, through the verge: the bawdricke that embrac't Aetion's citie) he did chuse, as his especiall prise, And (louing sacred music well) made it his exercise: To it he sung the glorious deeds of great heroes dead, And his true mind, that practice failed, sweet contemplation fed. POPE. Through the still night they march, and hear the roar To Neptune, ruler of the seas profound, And calm the rage of stern Aeacides. And now arriv'd, where on the sandy bay The Myrmidonian tents and vessels lay, Amused at ease, the godlike man they found, Pleased with the solemn harp's harmonious sound. (The well wrought harp from conquer'd Theba came, Of polish'd silver was its costly frame.) With this he soothes his angry soul, and sings Th' immortal deeds of heroes and of kings. Patroclus only, of the royal train, Placed in his tent, attends the lofty strain: Along the margin of the sounding deep He sooth'd, and glorious heroes was his theme. Expecting still when he should cease to sing. Achilles seiz'd their hands, and thus he spake. SOTHEBY. On their high charge the delegated train But when they came, where, camp'd along the bay, They found him kindling his heroic fire With high-toned strains, that shook the sounding lyre; We have always thought this one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry in the whole world. It seems to us indeed to be perfect. How solemn the Mission moving along the margin of the sounding deep, preferring prayers to Neptune that its issue might be fortunate, for well they knew the character of fierce acides! Not a word is said about the night; and that shews that Homer never repeats himself, except when he has some purpose to serve by the repetition. A thousand Trojan watchfires were blazing; but Phoenix, Ulysses, and Ajax, all absorbed in their prayers to Neptune, saw them notand Homer himself had forgotten now the vision of the moon and stars. No time is lost, and we see them already among the Myrmidons. Had it been put beforehand to any person of loftiest temper, who,knowing the character of Achilles, had yet no knowledge of this interview, how he might imagine the goddess-born would be found employed, think ye that he could ever have made such a noble guess as the truth? Never. Homer alone could have thus exalted his hero. Not many suns have yet gone down on his wrath, and you remember how at its first outburst it flamed like a volcano. It smoulders now in that mighty bosom-but the son of Thetis is not sitting sullen in his tent-he has forgotten the ungrateful, injurious, and insulting Agamemnon, and all his slaves. His soul is with the heroes. Achilles is a savage-a bar barian, forsooth-but half-civilized, though Nereus himself was his grandsire! There he sits, the bravest and most beautiful of mortal men, a musician, perhaps a poet, for Homer tells us not whether the Implacable is singing his own songs, or those of the A. Yes, the Swift-footed is a man of genius; and among all the spoils he won when he sacked the city of Eëtion, most he prized that harp on which he is now playing-the harp with the silver cross-bar, and beautiful in its workmanship, as if formed by Dædalus, and fine-toned its strings, as if smitten by the Sun-god's hand. His proud soul would disdain to harp even to princes. Patroclus alone, still and mute, is listening, hero to hero. But how have our translators acquitted themselves here-let us see. Chapman drops the epithet πολυφλοίσε Core, and merely says the shore, which was wrong, the noise of the sea being essential to a maritime night. "The god that earth doth bind in brackish chains," are poor words-sorry substitutes for those two extraordinary ones γαλοχω Εννοσιγαίω, Better have said simply, Neptune. All the rest is very nobly done. The two lines about Patroclus are perfect, except the words," who now his song did end." He waited till the song should end. And he would have been willing to wait till midnight, had Achilles not started up on entrance of the ambassadors." Who with his harp and all arose," is very majestic. We have just been reading over Pope for the tenth time this evening, and though we might not unjustly find some faint fault with a few particular words, yet we should be ashamed of ourselves were we to do so; for he is Alexander the Great here, -" and is attired With sudden brightness, like a man inspired." The versification is most harmonious; and the lines might themselves be chanted to the harp. Pope, when happy, had a heroic genius; and though true it is that he too too often miserably misrepresents Homer, it is, as we have said, wilfully, and with malice aforethought-seldom in ignorance, and never in stupidity; but knowing that his strength lay in a style essentially different from the old bard's, it was not to be expected, perhaps not to be desired, that he should lay it aside, and endeavour to adopt Homer's, or imitate it, which, to a poet who had attained consummate excellence of another kind, would have been accompanied with the perpetual constraint of difficulty, nay, impossible. We must take it, then, as it is, and be thankful for another Iliad. Only a great master could safely come after Pope in this passage, and Cowper is a great master. How differently the two speak of the sea, yet both how finely! Pope brings the voice of the sea to our ears, by almost an accumulation of epithets -means legitimate, and dear to many delightful poets. We in the depths, that mention of them does not throw much new or old light on the character of Neptune. All the lines about the heroic Harper are very fine-the pauses solemn the repetition of the word "soothe," shews how deeply Cowper felt for the sufferer; the close is full of elevation-" and glorious heroes were his theme." The only line we do not entirely like, is, Expecting still when he should cease to sing." It seems to intimate that Patroclus was impatient of the strain-a sad mistake. But perhaps Cowper uses the word "expecting" for waiting; and if so, it is all right. "At the sight, His harp still in his hand," &c. is a picture. It is better than Pope's "Achilles, starting as the chiefs he spied, Leapt from his seat, and laid the harp aside." "Leapt" is undignified-Achilles started," but Homer says "leaving his seat." The start was momentary, he walked towards Ulysses with the calm air and stately step of the Hero of Heroes. beauties are pre-eminent. His verSotheby is not faultless-but his sification, if inferior to Pope's, is flowing and sonorous-and the diction glows like gold. Perhaps wisely, he forbears to touch the "earth-encircling earth-shaker," and calls him the ocean-monarch." Kindling his "heroic fire," is fine and true. So is, "There as the hero feats of heroes sang." Equally excellent is, " Alone Of murmuring billows on the sounding Patroclus listening to the lay," and shore." "hear the roar Cowper fills our ear with the same voice at once, Achilles, wondering, started from his seat." But we said the version is not faultless. Perhaps nothing in this world is-except à lily. “De"Along the margin of the sounding deep." legated train," is not to our mind. Pope calls Neptune "Ruler of the seas profound, Whose liquid arms the mighty globe sur round," which, though far from being intensely Homeric, is not without grandeur. Cowper calls him, more simply and Greekishly, "compasser of earth," nor dreams of telling us that his "arms are liquid," or his "chains brackish," liquidity and brackishness being qualities lying so much on the surface, as well as " Im It is true but formal. Sounding strain," and "sounding lyre," should not have been in one passage. "Eëtion's store," smells of Boston. We are sorry for it, but we cannot admire, "Watched till the impassioned rapture died away." passioned rapture, if we are not much mistaken, is a very unhomeric form and spirit of speech. But that is not our chief objection to the line. The impassioned rapture did not die away. We do not believe it would, even had Achilles not been inter rupted. His lyrical poem and music would have gone off in a tremendous burst-it would have rolled away in very thunder. Such is our belief; but it was interrupted-on the appearance of Ulysses, Achilles stopt suddenly, even as we have seen an eagle do in the sky, when flying at the rate of a hundred miles an hour. Sped forth," gives us the notion of covering more ground than Achilles had to do ere he seized the hands of the chiefs. That is a trifle a speck-but the others are flaws. So rare without them is "a gem of purest ray serene." What a glorious volume of odes, elegies, and hymns, would be "The Lays of Achilles!" But who could write it? Let all our poets form themselves into an association, to be called the Achillean, and distribute among themselves the subjects of song that bestrewed Greece, and the Isles of Greece, before the Trojan war. To prevent all wrangling, let us who do not belong to the Irritable, be appointed Perpetual Prose-President. The Achillean Association, at each celebration of the anniversay of its own birth, shall put into our hands the poetry of the preceding year, and we, like an old Grecian, ore rotundo, shall chant the Lays of Achilles to the harp, an instrument on which the world acknowledges we excel. The ladies in the galleryour Festival being in Freemasons' Hall-will "rain influence and dispense the prize." The prize-poems shall all be engrossed in the Album of the Achillean Association, and at the end of ten years, a period taken from the Trojan War, the Album shall be printed by Ballantyne, and published by Blackwood, under such auspices as never before launched into light immortal songs. From the Achillean Association, we prophesy the revival of Lyrical Poetry. "The ancient spirit is not dead;"it but sleepeth, and will awake as if startled by the sound of a trumpet. Pindars will appear-and Corinnas too-for the Hemans, and the Mitford, and the Landon must be members-and the immortal Joanna. Sir Walter-more magnificent than in Marmion-will invent moving minstrelsies for the Mythic tales of Old Achaia; Wordsworth-nobler even than in the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle-will sanctify in dim religious light the roamings of that sad Aleian field, and awaken the whole world to ruth for furyhaunted Bellerophon; Southey—in even loftier inspiration than that which sang "Fill high the horn to Hirlas"-will celebrate Meleager and the Boar of Caledon; Coleridgewilder than in the Ancient Marinerwill rave gloriously of Jason and the Golden Fleece, and fling forth fiery fragments of argonautics; Mooreeclipsing the light of his own Loves of the Angels, will breath Epithalamia for Venus and Juno, and sighcharged roundelays sung to his celestial Leman by Endymion on Mount Latmos; Crabbe-in vision more terrible than the madness of Sir Eustace Grey-will paint Hercules Furens, and call his picturepoem the Poison'd Shirt; Bowles pathetic more than on the Grave of the Last Saxon-will murmur melody over Hyacinthus or Adonis ; Montgomery-already familiar with the world before the flood-will darken the despair of Deucalionand, illustrious above all, Campbell —but there is absolutely no end to the members of the Achillean Association! To, eugete and valete, all ye bright sons of song, and starlike may you shine in the "high heaven of invention !" Was the tent of Achilles, think ye, lighted with gas? Unquestionably. The of old were wonderful old ages ages. Not in blind caves sat Thetis below the sea-depths. Lustrous were all her haunts in the groves of coral; and as she could never have stooped to burn oil-indeed too well did she love the phoca-she must have lighted her marine palaces with aerial fire; nor can you doubt for a moment that she provided her son with the unmetered radiance. As the ambassadors entered, the night-tent of Achilles was bright as day, and he himself, harp in hand, rising from his seat, and advancing towards them, stately as the beautiful Apollo. How courteous that princely greeting! No manners like those of the heroic age. Χαίρετον· ἡ φίλοι ἄνδρες ἐκάνετον ἤ τι μάλα χρεώ, Ὣς άρα φωνήσας προτέρω ἄγε δῖος Αχιλλεύς. Μείζονα δὴ κρητῆρα, Μενοιτίς υἱὲ, καθίσα, Ζωρότερον δὲ κέραιος, δέπας δ ̓ ἔντυνον ἑκάσῳ· Οἱ γὰρ φίλτατοι ἄνδρες ἐμῷ ὑπέασι μελάθρω. Achilles thus addresses the heroes. We adopt Heyne's punctuation in the first line, which is different from others, and best, because most in cha racter with the “ imperatoria brevitas" of Achilles. NORTH, (literal prose.) Hail: you are indeed friends who have come: verily some necessity strongly (presses on you,) Who to me, angry though I be, are of the Greeks the most beloved. Thus indeed having spoken, the illustrious Achilles led them farther ben, (Scotice ut supra,) And made them sit down on reclining seats, on purple cushions: And Patroclus, who was near him, he then quickly addressed. "A larger goblet, oh son of Menætius, set down, And more generous mix it: and for each provide a drinking cup : CHAPMAN. Health to my lords! right welcome men assure yourselves to be; Incenst with just cause 'gainst the Greeks. This said, a covered seat And said-Now, friend, our greatest bowle with wine unmixt, and meat, POPE. Princes, all hail! whatever brought you here, Or strong necessity, or urgent fear; Welcome, though Greeks! for not as foes ye came; To me more dear than all that bear the name. Of all the warriors yonder host can send, Thy friend most honours these, and these thy friend. COWPER. Hail friends! Ye all are welcome. Urgent cause So saying, he introduced and seated them GILBERT WAKEFIELD. Whether a friendly visit lead your steps, Or some necessity impels, all hail! To me, though sad, most dear of all the Greeks. SOTHEBY. Hail friends! ye come by strong compulsion moved |