They cuff, they tear, their cheeks and necks they rend, COWPER. So spake Telemachus, and while he spake, They wheel'd around, clang'd all their numerous plumes, SOTHEBY. Thus spake Telemachus; and thundering Jove Fierce clanging their dense plumes, in circles wheel'd, M. J. CHAPMAN. (TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.) Which from a mountain-brow far and aloft Came flying down; whiles with th' impulsive wind Over the crowded Session once attain'd, They wheel'd, and their thick-feather'd pinions shook, A boding death; then with their talons tore Which is best? Brome is bad. Dr Johnson said no man could distinguish Brome or Fenton from Pope. All men may-most women, and some children. A wishy-washy imitation of the style of Pope cannot be very like Homer. Our belief is, that though Pope may have brushed and burnished up a bit his coadjutors' versions, he was pleased to let them remain in their manifest inferiority to his own. They were two good foils. 66 Rapid" and "swift"-to say nothing of the tautology-are wretched epithets, applied here to eagles-and of course not in Homer. Nothing is said in the Greek about "descending." That they did descend, we see. "Stretch their broad wings," seems to imply that they had not stretched them from the first. "Float on the wind" is not quite right. "Wheel on high" is very poor indeed-nobody supposes they were very low-and yet they were lower than they had been by some thousand feet at least-for the people saw the sparkles of their eyes. "And clang their wings, and hovering beat the sky," is no great improvement on our truthful prosewhich, by the way, we perceive, is a verse, and a good one" There sweeping round, they shook their numerous plumes." The line that follows is a mean version of the magnificent. Not a syllable in Homer about" shrieking"-they yelled not. "They cuff-they tear"- Brome must have thought very fine-so fine that he must like a fool say something still finer. "And from their plumes huge drops of blood descend," which does not happen even when a tercel gentle strikes a heronshew into what seems a fortuitous congregation of atoms. The concluding lines are sonorous-but ambitious over much-and the whole the failure of a man who never saw even a buzzard. Cowper is almost as good as possible-and shows that a poet may keep tame hares, and yet admire wild eagles. In Sotheby we are sorry to miss the mountain; and there seems a "they" wanting for grammatical construction; but the flight coming and going is finely given, and so is the threatening and the portent. Sotheby has seen many eagles. Chapman (not old, but young Chapman) is admirably Homeric. But "Voiced a boding death," we promise a crown to any man who shall explain. Cowper and Chapman are" both best." "Of the rest of the passage, Brome makes very weak work- Cowper rather heavy work-and Sotheby rather imperfect work-so let their versions sleep. Hay has promised to try his hand on it-and we have suggested to him the right measure. At present there really seems to be nothing in English so like the Greek as our own prose. No merit that of ours-'tis all Homer's. A few words, with your leave, about this Portent. To know Fear, you must either live, or imagine you live, in an age of soothsaying and superstition. Prognostications of a direful event are sublime, seen shadowy on a strangeclouded sky-typical of retribution, in all ghastliest shapes-shifting to and fro, and of a bloody colour. Seers stand staring there, till they shudder to pronounce the doom declared by the troubled heavens, and wander, wild-eyed, up and down a mountainous country, mad and miserable, and wishing they were dead. You can think with what Fear they may inspire a lone Highland glen by a few woful words-of old withered maniacs, almost naked, cowing chieftains, even when "plaided and plumed in their tartan array." In the ancient world, seers, and soothsayers, and prophets, (surely they were not all deceivers,) for the revelation of the Fates were under obligations, which it was impossible they could ever repay, to birds. Yet they were no great ornithologists. The science of augury was high, but not apparently very complicated; and the flight-inspired man had in truth but to know his left hand from his right. Yet the people, with a firm faith in his inspiration, awfully heard his interpretation of the omen, to common sense seemingly as simple as sublime-as in those two eagles. Halitherses gave utterance but to the thoughts of the people, gazing on the birds-for amazement and fear had fallen on them--and they all felt that the rushing of wings and the glaring of eyes were ominous of death. But he, they believed, was "endowed with clear credentials from above"-and that utterance was to them not merely confirmation, but revelation. In his prophetic exultation he became unconsciously a Liar of the first magnitude, yet spoke Jove's truth. That Ulysses and Telemachus were to come flying wing to wing like eagles, he saw and said, as he heard aloft the whistling plumes; but that twenty years ago he had told Ulysses of his fated return to Ithaca, we no more believe than that he told Us, at the era of the French Revolution, that Christopher North was to be the Editor of Maga yet unconceived in the womb of Fate. But he held that strange tale devoutly true, and so did all who heard him; for he threw his feelings of the present on his feelings of the past, and they all so bandied themselves back and forward, that by collision they kindled into a new birth-the feeling of the Future. No wonder there were awe and amazement,-nor can there be a doubt that all felt Fear. But as a heroic character, in Burns' Halloween, under the influence of superstitious fear," whistled up Lord Lennox' march, to keep his courage cheery," so now did the bold Eurymachus burst out into abuse of Halitherses, and, with a quaking heart, resumed his countenance and speech-pale and faltering-for the nonce, to simulate scorn. Cowper felt that well "Hence, dotard! hence To thy own house; there, prophesying, warn Thy children of calamities to come. a prophet fit to speak before men. The whole harangue is fierce and furious, but Eurymachus keeps harping on one string, and the discordant twanging disturbs not the spirit of the young hero. He demands a twentyoared bark, that he may seek sandy Pylos, and thence hasten to Lacede mon, to obtain tidings of his sire. "If I hear he lives, one year I shall be patient for his return. If I hear he is dead, I will perform his funeral rites with such pomp as his great name demands, and raise at home his tomb, and then give my mother to-whom I choose." Then rose Mentor, illustrious Ulysses' friend, to whom, on his departure, he had consigned the care of his household, and speaks like a wise man. "Hear me, ye Ithacans, be never King, Alas! all was rotten in the state of Ithaca. Twenty years is a long minority-and misrule, during half that time, can sadly change the character of a people. So asks Liocritus; but the populace are palsied-dead is the quickening spirit of love and loyalty and so utterly have they forgotten Ulysses that they see nothing of him in his blooming son. 'Tis this that makes Telemachus feel his weakness; his native modesty induces him to think and speak humbly of his own immature powers; his native heroism inspires him with resolution to face all dangers; but the sight of his own people's degradation forces him to confess that in Ithaca he must succumb to the crew whom, were Ithaca what once it was, the Land of the Leal, he could mow and swathe like grass. Where was this assemblage held? In a building, or in the open air? If in a building the councilhall had no roof, for the eagles were seen coming and going in the sky. ner Meeting-and the sun saw the It was, therefore, no Hole-and-Corsin and shame of all the people, and of all the peers. The council-a pretty council indeed-breaks up-and where goes Telemachus? To lave his hands in the surf of the grey deep. They have refused to give him a twentyoar'd bark-and shall they thwart the designs of Minerva? He calls upon the goddess, and she appears in the form of Mentor. There, by the sounding sea, commune the seeming old man and the young-and ere nightfall they will embark. The Suitors' renewed showers of scorn now glance off the prince's mind like hail from sunbright armour; and Pallas fools that drunken multitude, dash ing the goblets from their hands, drenching their eyes in drowsiness, and driving them, blind and deaf, staggering through the streets. Mean while the sun had set, and twilight dimmed all the ways-the bark was in the bay impatient for the prince. M. T. CHAPMAN. (TR. COL. CAM.) This said, he led the way: they follow'd him, She sat down at the stern; he near to her. And first of all to Jove's own grey-eyed child. We perceive, from Pope, that Rapin is very severe on Minerva and Jupiter, who contrive the action of the Odyssey. That action, it seems, is very imperfect; because it begins with the voyages of Telemachus, and ends with those of Ulysses. Why, surely a son stands in a pretty close relation to his own father. A son voyaging to find his father, and even if possible bring hirn home, appears tous to be helping the action as much as can be reasonably expected of him, especially when the action is being helped on still more effectually by the father himself, whose whole soul is set on getting home to find his son. But of the two divinities, the old gentleman is inost crusty on Pallas. She knew that Ulysses was in Ogygia and that Jove had promised to let him return to Ithaca. Truebut what did that amount to? To much less than the old gentleman seems to supposse-for Pallas did not know that Neptune was to dash him, after ever so many miseries on a raft, on Phæacia-that Nausicaa was to fall in love with him-that he was to hear Demodocus harping and sing ing in the gardens of Alcinous-and that he was to be landed sound asleep on his own beloved shore. All she did know was, that Jove had promised he should return. Calypso, for aught Minerva knew, might send him to Pylos; or Neptune, on his return from Ethiopia, might drive the slayer of his son Polyphemus to the Hyperboreans. What if Ulysses had been sitting with old Nestor at a sea-shore feast? Rapin might have been dumbfoundered, and Minerva somewhat surprised; but nothing is impossible in poetry of which the machinery is not spinning-jennies but Gods. Old Rap likewise thought honour, duty, and nature ought to have moved Telemachus to seek tidings of his Father, without the instigation or guidance of a goddess. That acute remark cuts in pieces the whole poetry of Homer, and makes shreds and patches of the whole Greek religion. But it would be well if all youths would act like Telemachus, even at the bidding of a superior power, human or divine. Minerva takes him, quoth Rap, to all the most improbable places;-to the houses of Nestor and Menelaus! Would he have had her to take him to Ogygia? But we must be con 16 tented with Homer's Odyssey-however much we may regret that it was not rewritten by Rapin. We know and love Telemachus as well as if we had been for years with him in Ithaca. What he may end in, no man who has studied human nature may pretend to say-but now his character is as transparent as the purest well he ever stooped to drink at, with a dead deer, or boar, or wolf, lying at the young hunter's feet on the greensward among the rocks. Never, we may venture to say, will he be so fertile in expedients as his Father-nor so eloquent nor so wise-for in genius Ulysses was the greatest of all the Greeks-but as brave, as affectionate, and as faithful to all old loves, will be the son as the sire-and one king. day as good How delightful to land with him on the shore in sight of the old city of Peleus, and witness his delight on beholding-so Sotheby finely calls what we dully construed seatsthe Nine Green Theatres! In each five hundred men feasting on nine bulls. Four thousand five hundred men-good and true-in the act of devouring eighty-one bulls. All the fourscore and one bulls had been coal-black, without one single ashy spot, when alive in their hides, and now are all done brown on the sacrificial fire. All the thighs-one hundred and sixty-two-are laid on the altar of Neptune. All the other flesh-not sinking offal-for the entrails are especially mentioned-consumed-we are willing to believe by his worshippers. On the approach of the strangers, "all arose" to welcome them-not all the four thousand five hundred men-but all the gi, a noble band, conspicuous among them all the young Pisistratus, who has already embraced the Prince of Ithaca, and welcomed him -his birth and name unknown-to Pylos. And old Nestor is not only alive still, but as fresh-looking and hale as he was some ten years back before Troy! What a trump for a Tontine! and as garru-as eloquent as ever! Pisistratus sure must be his great grandson. By no means. And in the palace perhaps there is a rocking-cradle. Remember we are now flourishing in the heroic age, and in the presence of a Patriarch, In good time Telemachus tells his name and purpose-but Nestor, alas! knows nothing of Ulysses whom he loved, and pronounces matchless. Then, with what a fine sense of propriety does Telemachus, instead of mourning for the darkness that shrouds his father's fate, modestly put such questions to the Old in Days as may lead him to narrate events in his own history, and in that of other heroes-his friends-after the fall of Troy! The young Prince's own sentiments and sympathies suggested indeed the theme-and the aged king had by a few words awakened his desire to hear again the oft-repeated tale,— "Ye, too, far off have heard Atrides' death, By fell Egisthus' will, how closed his But rightly has the base adulterer paid shade ; 'Tis glorious when heroic sons remain sire; Such thou; so match by deeds thy stately frame, That ages yet to come extol thy name." The example of Orestes had been set before him by Minerva's self, ere they left Ithaca; and Menelaus— brother of the murdered King of Men again tells him the dreadful tale in the words of the ever-changing Proteus of the sea. Not a word any where (are we mistaken?) about Orestes killing his mother. Telemachus resembled the son of Agamemnon only in being called on by earth and heaven to avenge his parent's wrongs-but his father was blessed with a faithful wife-so said the shade of Atrides to Laertiades beside the trench of blood in that doleful region where he had not forgot the fatal bath-and called Ulysses happy in all his woes-for the Phantom thought of Penelope and then of Clytemnestra. Friendship is like love in young hearts-it rises at first sight and endures for ever. Echephron, Stratius, Perseus, Thrasymedes, Aretus-Nestor's sons-are all kind to the son of Ulysses; but Pisistratus is at once his brother, All the rest are married |