agitation on that very subject. (The reading, however, is doubtful.)
P. 73, l. 992, Great Achilles, gaze around thee]—"on the spear-tortured labours of the Achaeans, while thou within thy tent . . ."—From the Myrmidons of Aeschylus.
P. 76, l. 1026.—The Persae was, as a matter of fact, performed in 472, before the Seven against Thebes (467); nor does the exact exclamation "Yow-oy," ἰαυοῖ, occur in it. But various odd quasi-Persian forms do: οἶ, ὀᾶ, ἰωά.
P. 77, l. 1031, Those poets have all been of practical use, &c.]—This passage, dull and unintelligent as it seems (unless some jest in it escapes me), is not meant to be absurd. It implies an argument of this sort: "All poetry, to be good, must do something good;" a true statement as it stands. "Homer and the ancients do good to people." No one would dare to deny this, and no doubt it is true; he does them good by helping them to see the greatness and interestingness of things, by filling their minds with beauty, and so on; but the ordinary man, having a narrower idea of good, imagines that Homer must do him "good" in one of the recognised edifying or dogmatic ways, and is driven to concluding that Homer does him good by his military descriptions and exhortations!
Aeschylus proceeds, "I am like Homer because I describe battles and brave deeds, and similar things that are good for people. Euripides is unlike Homer, because he describes all sorts of other things, which are not in Homer, and are therefore probably trash; at any rate some of them are improper!"
