[79] Pope has selected from Homer only three subjects as the most interesting: Diomed wounding Venus, Hector slaying Patroclus, and the same Hector dragged along at the wheels of Achilles' chariot. Are these the most affecting and striking incidents of the Iliad? But it is highly worth remarking, that this very incident of dragging the body of Hector thrice round the walls of Troy, is absolutely not mentioned by Homer. Heyne thinks that Virgil, for he first mentioned it, adopted the circumstance from some Greek tragedy on the subject.—Warton.
There saw I stand on a pillere
That was of tinned iron cleere,
The Latin poete Virgyle,
That hath bore up of a great while
The fame of pious Æneas.
And next him on a pillere was
Of copper, Venus' clerk Ovide,
That hath y-sowen wondrous wide
The great God of Love's name—
Tho saw I on a pillere by
Of iron wrought full sternely,
The greate poet Dan Lucan,
That on his shoulders bore up than
As high as that I mighte see,
The fame of Julius and Pompee.
And next him on a pillere stoode
Of sulphur, like as he were woode,
Dan Claudian, sothe for to tell,
That bare up all the fame of hell, &c.—Pope.
Since Homer is placed by Chaucer upon a pillar of iron, he places Virgil upon iron tinned over, to indicate that the Æneis was based upon the Iliad and was both more polished and less vigorous. The sulphur upon which Claudian stands, is typical of the hell he described in his poem on the Rape of Proserpine. Ovid, the poet of love, is put upon a pillar of copper, because copper was the metal of Venus; and Lucan, like Homer, has a pillar of iron allotted to him because he celebrated in his Pharsalia the wars of Cæsar and Pompey, and, as Chaucer says,
Iron Martes metal is,
Which that god is of battaile.
[81] Wakefield supposes that "modest majesty" was suggested by Milton's phrase, "modest pride," in Par. Lost, iv. 310.
[82] For this expression Wakefield quotes Dryden, Æn. vi. 33.
There too in living sculpture might be seen
The mad affection of the Cretan queen.
[83] The rhyme is dearly purchased by such an inexcusable inversion as "silver blight."
[84] Pindar being seated in a chariot, alludes to the chariot races he celebrated in the Grecian games. The swans are emblems of poetry, their soaring posture intimates the sublimity and activity of his genius. Neptune presided over the Isthmian, and Jupiter over the Olympian games.—Pope.