[15] Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome.
[16] Book iii. st. 12.
[17] There is a parallel, probably quite unconscious and therefore a higher testimony to the truth of Homer’s simile, in Kinglake’s vivid description of the charge of Scarlett’s brigade on the Russian cavalry at Balaclava: “As heard on the edge of the Chersonese, a mile and a half towards the west, the collected roar which arose from this thicket of intermixed combatants had the unity of sound which belongs to the moan of a distant sea.”—Kinglake’s Crimea, iv. 174.
[18] The idea is borrowed by Milton in a well-known passage;—
“To nobler sights
Michael from Adam’s eyes the film removed
Which that false fruit, which promised clearer sight,
Had bred; then purged with euphrasy and rue
The visual nerve, for he had much to see.”
—Par. Lost, xi. 411.
[19] There is pretty good authority for considering the whole of this night expedition, which forms a separate book (the tenth) in the division of the poem, as an interpolation. It is a separate lay of an exploit performed by Ulysses and Diomed, and certainly does not in any way affect the action of the poem.
[20] Eustathius, as quoted by Pope.
[21] Madame Dacier’s remarks on this valuation, and Pope’s note upon them, are amusing:—
“I cannot in civility neglect a remark made upon this passage by Madame Dacier, who highly resents the affront put upon her sex by the ancients, who set (it seems) thrice the value upon a tripod as upon a beautiful female slave. Nay, she is afraid, the value of women is not raised even in our days; for she says there are curious persons now living who had rather have a true antique kettle than the finest woman alive. I confess I entirely agree with the lady, and must impute such opinions of the fair sex to want of taste in both ancients and moderns. The reader may remember that these tripods were of no use, but made entirely for show; and consequently the most satirical critick could only say, the woman and tripod ought to have borne an equal value.”
[22] Liter. of Anc. Greece, i. 349.