root. I confess I have not been able to find the verb in an old writer, though it is so common now. Old writers do not say 'to plumb down', but 'to drop plumb down'. Perhaps in a second edition (if I reach to it), I may alter the words to 'plumb . . . droppeth', on this ground; but I do turn sick at the mawkishness of critics, one of whom, who ought to know better, tells me that the word plump reminds him 'of the crinolined hoyden of a boarding-school'!! If he had said, 'It is too like the phrase of a sailor, of a peasant, of a schoolboy', this objection would be at least intelligible. However: the word is intended to express the violent impact of a body descending from aloft, and it does express it.
Mr Arnold censures me for representing Achilles as yelling. He is depicted by the poet as in the most violent physical rage, boiling over with passion and wholly uncontrouled. He smacks his two thighs at once; he rolls on the ground, μέγας μεγαλωστὶ; he defiles his hair with dust; he rends it; he grinds his teeth; fire flashes from his eyes; but—he may not 'yell', that would not be comme il faut! We shall agree, that in peace nothing so becomes a hero as modest stillness; but that 'Peleus' son, insatiate of combat', full of the fiercest pent-up passion, should vent a little of it in a yell, seems to me quite in place. That the Greek ἰάχων is not necessarily to be so
