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, 590 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, 595 A son and grandson of the 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, 600
Then, whirling high, discharge thy lance in air."
She said, infusing courage with the word.
Jove and Jove's daughter then the chief implored,
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.

605

Before the father and the conquering son Heaps rush on heaps, they fight, they drop, they

run.

610

Now by the sword, and now the javelin fall
The rebel race, and death had swallow'd all;
But from on high the blue-eyed virgin cried;
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 confusedly fly.
With dreadful shouts Ulysses pour'd along,
Swift as an eagle, as an eagle strong.

616

620

But Jove's red arm the burning thunder aims;
Before Minerva shot the livid flames;

Blazing they fell, and at her feet expired;

Then stopp'd the goddess, trembled, and retired. 625 "Descended from the gods! Ulysses, cease; Offend not Jove: 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 nations knew their lawful lord.

630

END OF THE ODYSSEY.

POSTSCRIPT.

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,

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Qui didicit, patriæ quid debeat, et quid amicis,

Quo sit amore parens, quo frater amandus, et hospes :
Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
Pleníus et melius Chrysippo et 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 connection many have been misled to regard 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 seems not wholly free from it; although what he has said has been generally understood to import a severer censure of the Odyssey than it 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 begins to grow old and decline, to delight itself in narrations 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, whic. is the taste of old age: so that in this latter piece we may com

pare 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 descriptions of tempests, the adventures of Ulysses with the Cyclops, and many 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, if you will, the dreams of Jupiter himself. I 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 employ themselves in painting the manners. This Homer has done in characterizing the suitors, and describing their way of life; which is properly a branch of comedy, whose peculiar business it 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 sublimity and fire 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.

Secondly, that fire and fury of which he is speaking cannot well be meant of the general 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.

On 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 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 sublime, 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 Madame 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, tranquillity, 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 painter or poet be young or old who designs or 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 discretion.

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 Iliad; 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 Æneid, 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

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