No More Learning

399.

294 Milton has rivalled this passage describing the descent of Gabriel,
"Paradise Lost," bk. v. 266, seq.

"Down thither prone in flight
He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky
Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing,
Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan
Winnows the buxom air. * * * *
* * * *
At once on th' eastern cliff of Paradise
He lights, and to his proper shape returns
A seraph wing'd. * * * *
Like Maia's son he stood,
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance fill'd
The circuit wide. "

Virgil, ? n. iv. 350:--

"Hermes obeys; with golden pinions binds
His flying feet, and mounts the western winds:
And whether o'er the seas or earth he flies,
With rapid force they bear him down the skies
But first he grasps within his awful hand
The mark of sovereign power, his magic wand;
With this he draws the ghost from hollow graves;
With this he drives them from the Stygian waves:
* * * *
Thus arm'd, the god begins his airy race,
And drives the racking clouds along the liquid space. "

Dryden.

295 In reference to the whole scene that follows, the remarks of
Coleridge are well worth reading:--

"By a close study of life, and by a true and natural mode of
expressing everything, Homer was enabled to venture upon the most
peculiar and difficult situations, and to extricate himself from
them with the completest success. The whole scene between Achilles
and Priam, when the latter comes to the Greek camp for the purpose
of redeeming the body of Hector, is at once the most profoundly
skilful, and yet the simplest and most affecting passage in the
Iliad. Quinctilian has taken notice of the following speech of
Priam, the rhetorical artifice of which is so transcendent, that if
genius did not often, especially in oratory, unconsciously fulfil
the most subtle precepts of criticism, we might be induced, on this
account alone, to consider the last book of the Iliad as what is
called spurious, in other words, of later date than the rest of the
poem.
Observe the exquisite taste of Priam in occupying the mind of
Achilles, from the outset, with the image of his father; in
gradually introducing the parallel of his own situation; and,
lastly, mentioning Hector's name when he perceives that the hero is
softened, and then only in such a manner as to flatter the pride of
the conqueror. The ego d'eleeinoteros per, and the apusato aecha
geronta, are not exactly like the tone of the earlier parts of the
Iliad. They are almost too fine and pathetic. The whole passage
defies translation, for there is that about the Greek which has no
name, but which is of so fine and ethereal a subtlety that it can
only be felt in the original, and is lost in an attempt to transfuse
it into another language. "--Coleridge, p. 195.

296 "Achilles' ferocious treatment of the corpse of Hector cannot but
offend as referred to the modern standard of humanity. The heroic
age, however, must be judged by its own moral laws. Retributive
vengeance on the dead, as well as the living, was a duty inculcated
by the religion of those barbarous times which not only taught that
evil inflicted on the author of evil was a solace to the injured
man; but made the welfare of the soul after death dependent on the
fate of the body from which it had separated. Hence a denial of the
rites essential to the soul's admission into the more favoured
regions of the lower world was a cruel punishment to the wanderer on
the dreary shores of the infernal river. The complaint of the ghost
of Patroclus to Achilles, of but a brief postponement of his own
obsequies, shows how efficacious their refusal to the remains of his
destroyer must have been in satiating the thirst of revenge, which,
even after death, was supposed to torment the dwellers in Hades.
Hence before yielding up the body of Hector to Priam, Achilles asks
pardon of Patroclus for even this partial cession of his just rights
of retribution. "--Mure, vol. i. 289.

297 Such was the fate of Astyanax, when Troy was taken.