Pope's Iliad, Book v.
"Pierced through the shoulder first Decopis fell,
Next Eunomus and Thoon sunk to Hell.
Chersidamas, beneath the navel thrust,
Falls prone to earth, and grasps the bloody dust;
Cherops, the son of Hipposus, was near;
Ulysses reach'd him with the fatal spear;
But to his aid his brother Socus flies,
Socus the brave, the generous, and the wise;
Near as he drew the warrior thus began," &c.
Ibid.
"Behind, unnumber'd multitudes attend
To flank the navy and the shores defend.
Full on the front the pressing Trojans bear,
And Hector first came towering to the war.
Phœbus himself the rushing battle led,
A veil of clouds involves his radiant head—
The Greeks expect the shock; the clamours rise
From different parts and mingle in the skies
Dire was the hiss of darts by heaven flung,
And arrows, leaping from the bowstring, sung:
These drink the life of generous warrior slain—
Those guiltless fall and thirst for blood in vain."
Pope's Odyssey.
In the last quotation, brief as it is, the tense changes six times.
I ask indulgence of the reader if I take this occasion to add a very short comment upon three objections to this poem which have been brought under my notice:—
1—that it contains too much learning; 2—that it abounds too much with classical allusions; 3—that it indulges in rare words or archaisms.
I wish I could plead guilty to the honourable charge that it contains too much learning. A distinguished critic has justly observed, that the greatest obstacle which the modern writer attempting an Epic would have to encounter, would be, in his utter impossibility to attain the requisite learning. For an Epic ought to embody the whole learning of the period in which it is composed; and in the present age that is beyond the aspiration of the most erudite scholar or the profoundest philosopher. Still, any attempt at an Heroic Poem must at least comprise all the knowledge which the nature of the subject will admit, and we cannot but observe that the greatest narrative poems are those in which the greatest amount of learning is contained. Beyond all comparison the most learned poems that exist, in reference to the age in which they are composed, are the "Iliad" and "Odyssey;" next to them, the "Paradise Lost;" next to that, the "Æneid," in which the chief charm of the six latter books is in that "exquisite erudition," which Müller so discriminately admires in Virgil; and after these, in point of learning, come perhaps the "Divine Comedy," and the "Fairy Queen." So that I have only to regret my deficiency of learning, rather than to apologize for the excess of it.
With regard to the classical allusions which I have permitted myself, I might shelter my practice under the mantles of our great masters in heroic song—Milton and Spenser; but in fact such admixture of the Classic with the Gothic muse is so essentially the characteristic of the minstrelsy of the middle ages, that without a liberal use of the same combination, I could not have preserved the colouring proper to my subject. And, indeed, I think the advice which one of the most elegant of modern critics has given to the painter, is equally applicable to the poet:—