The good shame, which deters men from mean actions, as the evil one depresses them from honest enterprise.
In my dissertation I had ventured to call in question the judgment of commentators in exalting their favourite author: and had doubted whether the meek forgiving temper of Hesiod towards his brother, whom he seldom honours with any better title than “fool,” was very happily chosen as a theme for admiration. On this the old Critical Reviewer exclaimed “as if that, and various other gentle expressions, for example blockhead, goose-cap, dunderhead, were not frequently terms of endearment:” and he added his suspicion that “like poor old Lear, I did not know the difference between a bitter fool and a sweet one.”
But, as the clown in Hamlet says, “’twill away from me to you.” The critic is bound to prove, 1st, that νηπις is ever used in this playful sense; which he has not attempted to do: 2dly, that it is so used with the aggravating prefix of ΜΕΓΑ νηπιε: 3dly, that it is so used by Hesiod.
Hector’s babe on the nurse’s bosom is described as νηπιος; and Patroclus weeping is compared by Achilles to κουρη νηπιη. These words may bear the senses of “poor innocent;” and of “fond girl;” the former is tender, the latter playful; but in both places the word is usually understood in its primitive sense of “infant.” Homer says of Andromache preparing a bath for Hector,
Νηπιη! ουδ’ ενοησεν ο μιν μαλα τηλε λοετων
Χερσιν Αχιλληος δαμασεν γλαυκωπις Αθηνη:
Il. xxii.
Fond one! she knew not that the blue-eyed maid
Had quell’d him, far from the refreshing bath,
Beneath Achilles’ hand.