or as
ὥς γὰρ ἐπεκλώσαντο θεοὶ δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσιν,
ζώειν ἀχνυμένους· αὐτοὶ δὲ τ' ἀκηδέες εἰσίν[1],
and of these the tone is given, far better than by anything of the balladists, by such things as the
Io no piangeva: sì dentro impietrai:
Piangevan elli . . .[2]
of Dante; or the
Fall'n Cherub! to be weak is miserable
of Milton.
I suppose I must, before I conclude, say a word or two about my own hexameters; and yet really, on such a topic, I am almost ashamed to trouble you. From those perishable objects I feel, I can truly say, a most Oriental detachment. You yourselves are witnesses how little importance, when I offered them to you, I claimed for them, how humble a function I designed them to fill. I offered them, not as specimens of a competing translation of Homer, but as illustrations of certain canons which I had been trying to establish for Homer's poetry. I said that these canons they might very well
