No matter. You see how this connects with the scheme of the Poem—in which, prevalent or conspicuous by the amplitude of the space which it occupies, is the individual prowess of heroes in field—conspicuous, too, by its moment in action. This is another and loftier mode of the ἁυταρκεια. The human bosom is a seat or fountain of power. Power goes forth, emanates in all directions, high and low, right and left. The Man is a terrestrial God. He takes counsel with his own heart, and he acts. "He conversed with his own magnanimous spirit"—or as Milton says of Abdiel meeting Satan—"And thus his own undaunted heart explored."
SEWARD.
Yes, Mr North, the Man is as a terrestrial God; but—with continual recognition by the Poet and his heroes—as under the celestial Gods. And I apprehend, sir, that this two-fold way of representing man, in himself and towards them, is that which first separates the Homeric from and above all other Poetry, is its proper element of grandeur, in which we never bathe without coming out aggrandised.
NORTH.
Seward, you instruct me by——
SEWARD.
Oh, no, sir! You instruct me——
NORTH.
We instruct each other. For this the heroes are all Demigods—that is, the son of a God, or Goddess, or the Descendant at a few Generations. Sarpedon is the Son of Jupiter, and his death by Patroclus is perhaps the passage of the whole Iliad that most specially and energetically, and most profoundly and pathetically, makes the Gods intimate to the life and being of men—presents the conduct of divinity and humanity with condescension there, and for elevation here. I do not mean that there is not more pomp of glorification about Achilles, for whom Jupiter comes from Olympus to Ida, and Vulcan forges arms—whose Mother-Goddess is Messenger to and from Jupiter, and into whose lips, when he is faint with toil and want of nourishment—abstaining in his passion of sorrow and vengeance—Minerva, descending, instils Nectar. But I doubt if there be anything so touching—under this relation—and so intimately aggrandising as that other whole place—the hesitation of Jupiter whether he shall violate Fate, in order to save his own flesh and blood from its decreed stroke—the consolatory device of Juno (in remonstrating and dissuading) that he shall send Apollo to call Death and Sleep—a God-Messenger to God-Ministers—to bear the dead body from the battle-field to his own land and kin for due obsequies. And, lastly, those drops of blood which fall from the sky to the earth, as if the heart-tears of the Sire of all the worlds and their inhabitants.
BULLER.