[Ll. 263-265.] Cf. Homer, Hymn to Apollo, 514.
[L. 268.] Convive du nectar (table-companion of the gods—Horace's 'Conviva Deorom,' Od. i. 28—at their nectar) is a novel collocation of words, and, though of difficult analysis, grammatically speaking, is perfectly satisfactory as being easily understood, 'Partaker of nectar' would be an easy English rendering.
[L. 269.] prospère renders the laetus of Virgil, Aen. i. 732. The English equivalent might be 'blest.' Chénier liked the word, as appears from his Commentary on Malherbe.
[L. 270.] Homère. The name of the blind bard, which, ever since the first lines of the poem, has been a mystery for no reader, has been kept for the last word of the poem.
[II. LE MENDIANT.]
In this piece, illustrative of the rites of hospitality in ancient Greece, Chénier has drawn much of his inspiration from the arrival of Ulysses in Phaeacia; as it is described in the sixth book of the Odyssey. The reader will also notice, from the gaps in the text and unfinished lines, that the poem had not reached the stage of completion. Chénier, who himself published none but two of his poems, was prevented by death from giving the finishing touch to this and many other pieces.
[L. 8.] Od. 127, 137; Aen. iii. 590.
[L. 15.] Aspect, in the sense of 'apparition, ghost,' is a Latinism. Yet it is quite an allowable concretisation of the word, as in French and English 'apparition, vision,' in English 'sight' and in English 'aspect' itself, which we find used with the meaning of 'a thing seen' in the N.E.D.
[L. 21.] Od. vi. 150.
[Ll. 23, 24.] les voeux des... humains Ouvrent des immortels les bienfaisantes mains. If the maid is a goddess indeed, the beggar entertains some hopes of her mercy, for, says he, 'oftentimes have the prayers of the unfortunate opened the bountiful hands of the immortals—obtained of those hands that they should "open their bounty" (Henry VIII, iii. 2. 184) to them.'