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Haste, let us arm, and force with force oppose!"
She spoke; Minerva burns to meet the war:
And now heaven's empress calls her blazing car.
At her command rush forth the steeds divine;
Rich with immortal gold their trappings shine.
Bright Hebe waits; by Hebe, ever young,
The whirling wheels are to the chariot hung.
On the bright axle turns the bidden wheel
Of sounding brass; the polished axle steel.
Eight brazen spokes in radiant order flame;
The circles gold, of uncorrupt
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with purity and truth. His
poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature; on the
love of children, wife, and country; on that passion which
outweighs all others, the love of glory. His songs were poured
forth from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of
man; and therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every
breast which cherishes the same sympathies. If it is granted to
his immortal spirit, from another heaven than any of which he
dreamed on earth, to look down on his race, to see the nations
from the fields of Asia to the forests of Hercynia, performing
pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic wand caused to flow;
if it is permitted to him to view the vast assemblage of grand, of
elevated, of glorious productions, which had been called into
being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal spirit may
reside, this alone would suffice to complete his happiness."(35)
Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the "Apotheosis of
Homer"(36) is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing association,
how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to our minds, is
lost by the admittance of any theory but our old tradition? The more we
read, and the more we think--think as becomes the readers of Homer,--the
more rooted becomes the conviction that the Father of Poetry gave us this
rich inheritance, whole and entire. Whatever were the means of its
preservation, let us rather be thankful for the treasury of taste and
eloquence thus laid open to our use, than seek to make it a mere centre
around which to drive a series of theories, whose wildness is only
equalled by their inconsistency with each other.
As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not
included in Pope's translation, I will content myself with a brief account
of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer who has done
it full justice(37):--
"This poem," says