not allowed to lessen our admiration of Shakspeare's grandeur. The Homer of the Iliad is morally pure and often very tender; but to expect refinement and universal delicacy of expression in that stage of civilization is quite anachronistic and unreasonable. As in earlier England, so in Homeric Greece, even high poetry partook of the coarseness of society. This was probably inevitable, precisely because Greek epic poetry was so natural.
Mr Arnold says that I make Homer's nobleness eminently ignoble. This suggests to me to quote a passage, not because I think myself particularly successful in it, but because the poet is evidently aiming to be grand, when his mightiest hero puts forth mighty boastings, offensive to some of the gods. It is the speech of Achilles over the dead body of Asteropæus (Iliad 21, 184). Whether I make it ignoble, by my diction or my metre, the reader must judge.
Lie as thou art. 'Tis hard for thee to strive against the children
Of overmatching Saturn's son, tho' offspring of a River.
Thou boastest, that thy origin is from a Stream broad-flówing;
I boast, from mighty Jupiter to trace my first beginning.
A man who o'er the Myrmidons holdeth wide rule, begat me,
Peleus; whose father Æacus by Jupiter was gotten.
