with the Scamander, where, for the first time, he finds his weapons useless, he seems unsusceptible of the emotion of fear. The courage of Hector is not constitutional- he is more sensitive with respect to danger than many of those around him -than Ajax, for instance, or than Diomed. In order to induce him to offer a general challenge to the Greeks, Polydamas thinks it necessary to tell him that it has been ascertained that he is not to fall. And while the contest is still undecided, Hector is the first to propose that it shall cease. He retreats more than once before a single enemy; though he awaits the approach of Achilles while still distant, his nerves fail when the at hand, and he flies after flight has become too late. And yet he is eminently brave; but his courage is founded on a sense of duty. It depends on self-control, and bears him up against all the dangers to which he is accustomed, though it gives way when Achilles advances. Ἶσος Ενυαλίῳ κορυθάκι πτολεμιστῇ, Σείων Πηλιάδα μελίην κατὰ δεξιὸν ὦμον, Δεινήν· ἀμφὶ δὲ χαλκὸς ἐλάμπετο είκελος αὐγῇ enemy is It is in obedience to this prevailing feeling of duty that Hector supports his country, though he knows that its fall is inevitable. His only wishes are, to retard that fall while he can, and to die when he can resist it no longer. With an inconsistency not uncommon among men of strong affections, he sacrifices his life, and, with his life, the cause of which that life was the support, rather than see the misery which the loss of a battle has occasioned. In vain, as he stands alone before the Scæan gate, do his parents implore him to take refuge within the town. The wailings of the Trojan wives, whose husbands have already fallen under his leadership, resound in his imagination, and the arguments of Priam, and the entreaties of Hecuba, are equally fruitless: οὐ δ' "Εκτορι θυμὸν ἔπειθε. Achilles has no feeling of duty or even of patriotism. The instant that he is insulted by Agamemnon he deserts the cause of the Greeks, rejoices in their defeat, rejects all proposals of reconciliation, and exults in the hope of their destruction. Even Thus pondering he stood; meantime approached Crest-tossing god, and brandished as he came when a well-grounded apprehension that Hector's fires may extend to his own ships leads him to send out the Myrmidons to beat him off, it is from no compassion for his companions in arms. He wishes to triumph over Troy, but he wishes that triumph to be solely his own. Patroclus, indeed, whom he considers a part of himself, he would retain as an associate; but, if it rested with him, not another Greek should survive to share or even to witness it. For oh, by all the powers of heaven, I would Cowper. His intense self-esteem, to use a phrenological term, shows itself not only in the outline but in the details of his character. Even Patroclus is rather a favourite than a friend. He stands in awe of his great patron; and, when sent as a messenger to Nestor, must hurry immediately back, for his chief is Δεινος ἀνήρ, τάχα κεν καὶ ἀναίτιον αἰτιόῳτο.* To Briseis herself, though the cause of the quarrel, he is almost indifferent. He He gives her up without a struggle. If any other part of his property is taken, it is at the peril of the taker; but he will not fight about a girl: - Χερσὶ μὲν οὔτι ἔγωγε μαχήσομαι εἵνεκα κούρης Οὔτε σοὶ οὔτε τῷ ἄλλῳ † And he immediately supplies her place by Diomede. Nothing is more finely imagined in his character than the union of a horror of death with indifference to immediate danger. The ordinary combination is just the reverse; most men see with terror the sudden approach of death, but look forward to it at some undetermined period without alarm. They hope still to live in their works, in their posterity, and perhaps in their fame. To Achilles, whose whole feelings are personal, death is pure unalleviated evil. He is willing, indeed, to encounter it for the sake of glory, because glory is essential to his happiness, and is to be obtained on no other terms. The gods have announced to him that if his life is long it will be obscure. But the glory ‹ Thou knowest Achilles fiery, and propense which he desires is present, not posthumous. He has no wish beyond the grave. He faces death with courage, because he is constitutionally intrepid: but he dislikes it as much as the veriest coward. Nothing, he says, is vɣês ȧvтá§iov.* It is remarkable that the author of the Odyssey ascribes to the shade of Achilles the feeling which the author of the Iliad gave to the living man. The shade repels almost contemptuously the compliments which Ulysses addresses to it on its posthumous fame: Renowned Ulysses, think not death a theme The servile hind for hire, and eat the bread It is a consequence of his utter selfishness that Achilles has no candour. He sees in Hector, not the defender of Troy, but the killer of Patroclus, the instrument through whom he has suffered the greatest-perhaps the only calamity of his life; and his hatred is unappeased even by death. For twelve successive days he ties the body to his chariot, and drags it through the dust. And when, at length, Jupiter sends word to him that his - conduct displeases the gods, that Priam is coming to redeem his son, and must not be refused, Achilles, though he receives his suppliant kindly, cannot command his temper through the interview, but bursts out ὑποδρα ίδων 'Move me no more, or I may set at nought Thee and thy prayer, and the command of Jove.'‡ What a contrast is this to the self-devotion of Hector, who lives only for his wife, his son, his parents, and his country; whose overflowing kindness can find excuses even for the cowardly frivolity of Paris; and who alone among her brothersin-law forgets the guilt and mischief of Helen in her misfortunes! Individual characters resemble the figures of Poussin, which delight, by the relief and the accuracy of the drawing, and the force, or dignity, or beauty of the expression. Scenic characters are like the cattle and figures of Claude of little merit taken separately, but collectively important parts of the landscape. Very few are the fictions which unite the merits of plot, character, and scenery. The Iliad, as we have already remarked, *In my opinion, life surpasses far In worth all treasures.' Cowper. † Cowper, Odyssey. is pre-eminent in character. There is scarcely a speech in that most dramatic of epics which could be transferred from one speaker to another. It is also magnificent in its scenery. The agents are those whom the hearers of Homer believed to be real gods; and men descended from those gods, and almost equalling them in force of body and of mind, in pride, in passion, and in self-reliance. Such beings, so grand in their general character, and so elaborately individualised, form a dramatis persona which has never been equalled. The period is one so distant, that chronology has at length given up the attempt to fix it. All that we know is, that it is separated by an enormous gulf from the times of which we have authentic records; and that the forms of government, the seats of empire, and the habits of acting and thinking, have little resemblance to any thing which we find in the historical period of Greece. All that surrounds the great actors is as remote from ordinary life as they are themselves. But the drama itself is deficient. Nothing can be more meagre than the plot. Achilles is insulted; he refuses to fight; the Greeks are beaten; Patroclus, while protecting the ships of Achilles from the common danger, is killed; and Achilles avenges him by killing Hector; the two chiefs are buried, and the curtain falls. Such a narrative has a beginning and a middle, but can scarcely be said to have an end. The end, says Aristotle, with his usual good sense, ought to be something which does not naturally lead to any thing more. It ought to satisfy our curiosity. But is the death of Hector such an event? Does not the reader wish to know what influence it had on the war? After having become intimate during twenty-four books with all the leaders on each side-after having sympathised with their hopes and their fears, and become in his heart a Greek or a Trojan, is he satisfied to leave them as he found them, engaged in mortal, but unterminated strife? And can we acquiesce in Aristotle's excuse, that the action of the Iliad is not the war of Troy, but the anger of Achilles, and is terminated by his reconciliation with Agamemnon? What do we care about that anger, except so far as it bears on the war? And, while the war remains undecided, what do we care about the reconciliation? We have admitted that the narrative has a middle; but it is a most inartificial one. If the books between the 1st and the 8th, and between the 8th and the 11th, were struck out, no gap would be perceptible, and some inconsistencies would be avoided. Mr. Grote has well remarked, that with all their beauties of scenery and of character, they are useless to the catastrophe and irreconcileable with some of the subsequent events. We cannot, however, adopt his theory, plausible as it is, that they are the work of a different author. He admits that its unity of action shows the Odyssey to be the production of a single mind. We draw the same inference from the consistency of character in the Iliad. We cannot believe that the boldly-drawn and finelydiscriminated characters of Agamemnon, Ulysses, Ajax, Diomed, Hector, Paris, Priam, and Helen, could have been preserved through the whole twenty-four books, if the original conceptions of one poet had been taken up and worked out by another. A more probable explanation is, that the whole work was executed by one author, but composed at different times, and with considerable intervals. The objection that we have made to the plot of the Iliad does not apply to that of the Odyssey. In the whole range of narrative fiction a plot more nearly approaching perfection is not to be found. At the opening of the poem, Ulysses, the sole survivor of his companions, is detained in the distant island of Calypso; while the suitors have usurped his authority, made themselves masters of his property, and are plotting against the life of his son and the fidelity of his wife. Through the middle of the story, the patience, courage, and prudence of Ulysses gradually remove the obstacles to his return. He sits at length by the side of Penelope before his own hearth, unknown to all except his nurse, his son, and two faithful slaves. For two days he lives among his enemies, ever on the point of detection, but ever evading it. At length all is prepared for the catastrophe; the suitors are assembled at the feast, Euryclea and Philætius have barred the doors of the hall, and, the fatal bow is in his hands. We know nothing in poetry so grand as the picture of Ulysses as he throws off his disguise, springs to the threshold, pours out the arrows at his feet, and announces to the suitors that the hour of retribution has arrived: Αὐτὰρ ὁ γυμνώθη ῥακέων πολύμητις Οδυσσεύς· Αὐτοῦ πρόσθε ποδῶν· μετὰ δὲ μνηστῆρσιν ἄϋσεν. * The only episode is the journey of Telemachus. The most probable explanation of the introduction of an incident, which has not even a remote influence on the progress or on the event of the story, is the anxiety of the author of the Odyssey to connect his narrative with the actors in the Iliad. For this * • Then girding up his rags, Ulysses sprang, With bow and full-charged quiver, to the door; |