Page images
PDF
EPUB

If glorious deeds afford thy foul delight,
Behold me plunging in the thickest fight.

Then give thy warrior-chief a warrior's due,

Who dares to act whate'er thou dar'st to view. 410 Struck with his gen'rous wrath, the King replies; Oh great in action, and in council 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, 415 Forgive the transport of a martial mind.

Hafte to the fight, fecure of just amends; The Gods that make, fhall keep the worthy, friends. He faid, and pass'd where great Tydides lay, His fteeds and chariots wedg'd in firm array: 420 (The warlike Sthenelus attends his fide)

To whom with ftern reproach the monarch cry'd. Oh fon of Tydeus'! (he, whofe ftrength could tame The bounding steed, in arms a mighty name) Can't thou, remote, the mingling hofts defcry, 425 With hands unactive, and a careless eye?

Not thus thy Sire 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!

[ocr errors]

430

I faw him once, when gath'ring martial pow'rs
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
435 Forewarn'd the horrors of the Theban war.

Next, fent by Greece from where Afopus flows,
A fearless envoy, he approach'd the foes;
Thebes hoftile walls, unguarded and alone,
Dauntless he enters, and demands the throne.
440 The tyrant feafting with his chiefs he found,
And dar'd to combate all thofe chiefs around;
Dar'd and fubdu'd, before their haughty Lord;
For Pallas ftrung his arm, and edg'd his fword.
Stung with the fhame, within the winding way,
445 To bar his paffage fifty warriors lay;
Two heroes led the fecret fquadron on,
Maon the fierce, and hardy Lycophon;

. 430. I faw him him once, when, &c.] This long narration concerning the hiftory of Tydens, is not of the nature of those for which Homer has been blam'd with fome colour of justice: It is not a cold ftory, but a warm reproof, while the particularifing the actions of the father is made the highest incentive to the fon. Accordingly the air of this fpeech ought to be infpirited above the common narrative ftyle. As for the ftory it felf, it is finely told by Statius in the fecond book of the Thebais.

Those fifty flaughter'd in the gloomy vale,

He fpar'd but one to bear the dreadful tale. 450 Such Tydens was, and fuch his martial fire;

Gods! how the fon degen'rates from the fire?
No words the Godlike Diomed return'd,

But heard respectful, and in fecret burn'd: Not fo fierce Capaneus' undaunted fon, 455 Stern as his fire, the boafter thus begun.

What needs, O monarch, this invidious praise, Our felves to leffen, while our fires you raife? Dare to be juft, Atrides! and confefs

Our valour equal, tho' our fury lefs.

452. No words the godlike Diomed return'd.] "When Dio"med is reproved by Agamemnon, he holds his peace in refpect "to his General; but Sthenelus retorts upon him with boafting "and infolence It is here worth obferving in what manner "Agamemnon behaves himself; he paffes by Sthenelus without "affording any reply; whereas juft before, when Ulysses tefti

fy'd his refentment, he immediately return'd him an an"fwer. For as it is a mean and fervile thing, and unbecoming the majefty of a Prnce to make apologies to every "man in juft fication of what he has faid or done; fo to treat all men with equal neglect is mere pride and excess "of folly. We alfo fee of Diomed, that the' he refrains from

fpeaking in this place, when the time demanded action; "he afterwards ex teftes himself in fuch a manner, as fhews "him not to have been intenfible of this unjuft rebuke: (in "the ninth book) when he tells the King, he was the first who "had dar'd to reproach him with want of courage. tarch of reading the Poets,

"Plu

460 With fewer troops we ftorm'd the Theban wall,

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 parent's fame, 465 Our glories darken their diminish'd name.

To him Tydides thus. My friend forbear,
Suppress thy paffion, and the King revere:
His high concern may well excuse this rage,

Whose cause we follow, and whose war we wage; 470 His the first praife, were Ilion's tow'rs o'erthrown, And, if we fail, the chief disgrace his own. Let him the Greeks to hardy toils excite,

'Tis ours, to labour in the glorious fight.

He spoke, and ardent, on the trembling ground 475 Sprung from his car; his ringing arms refound. Dire was the clang, and dreadful from afar, Of arm'd Tydides' rushing to the war..

.460. We ftorm'd the Theban wall.] The first Theban war, of which Agamemnon fpoke in the preceding lines, was feven and twenty years before the war of Troy. Sthenelus here speaks: of the fecond Theban war, which happen'd ten years after the firft: when the fons of the feven captains conquer'd the city, before which their fathers were deftroyed. Tydens expired. gnawing the head of his enemy, and Capaneus was thunderftruck while he blasphemed Jupiter. Vid. Stat. Thebaid,

As when the winds, afcending by degrees,
First move the whitening surface of the feas,

The

.478. As when the winds.] Madam Dacier thinks it may feem fomething odd, that an army going to conquer fhould be compared to the waves going to break themfelves against the fhore; and would folve the appearing abfurdity, by imagining the Poet laid not the ftrefs fo much upon this circumftance, as upon the fame waves affaulting a rock, lifting themselves over its head, and covering it with foam as the trophy of their victory (as the expreffes it.) But to this it may be anfwer'd, That neither did the Greeks get the better in this battel, nor will a comparison be allow'd intirely beautiful, which inftead of illuftrating its fubject, ftands itself in need of fo much illuftration and refinement, to be brought to agree with it. The paffage naturally bears this fenfe: As when, upon the rifing of the wind, the waves roll after one another to the shore; as first there is a diftant motion in the fea, then they approach to break with noife on the strand, and lastly rife swelling over the rocks, and tofs their foam above their heads: So the Greeks, at first, marched in order one after another filently to the fight - Where the Poet breaks off from profecuting the comparison, and by a prolepfis, leaves the reader to carry it on, and image to himself the future tumult, rage, and force of the battel, in oppofition to that filence in which he defcribes the troops at prefent, in the lines immediately enfuing. What confirms this expofition is, that Virgil has made ufe of the fimile in the fame fenfe in the feventh Eneid,

Fluctus uti primo cœpit cùm albefcere vento,
Paulatim fefe tollit mare, & altiùs undas
Erigit inde imo confurgit ad athera fundo.

4.478. As when the winds, &c.] This is the first battel in Homer, and it is worthy obfervation with what grandeur it is defcrib'd, and raised by one circumftance above another, 'till all is involv'd 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 description. We fee firft an innumerable army moving in order, and are amus'd with the pomp and filence; then waken'd with the

« PreviousContinue »