Sitting islanded on some gray peak above the encompassing wood, the soul is lifted up to sing the Iliad of the pines.

The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (Ward, III., 103-105) will illustrate his satire, and the lines from the Iliad in Ward, III., 82, will show the characteristics of his translation.

The particulars of such poetry could be enumerated for pages; and this is the poetry which is filled, more than any other literature, in the Iliad with the nobility of men and women, in the Odyssey with the light of natural magic.

While some asserted that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the cisterns of water, others referred the visitation to the wrath of the gods, and especially to Apollo, known by hearers of the Iliad as author of pestilence in the Greek host before Troy.

And although he himself more fiery, and therefore better suited to his own than that of the Roman poet, there may be room to question, whether in this case he rightly estimated his own talents, or rather, whether, being fully conscious of their extent, he was aware of labouring under certain deficiencies of taste, which must have been more apparent in a version of the Iliad than of the Æneid.

The picture of Shelley at Oxford, asleep before the fire, toasting his little curly head in the heat, or reading the Iliad by the glow of the embers, seems to bring one nearer to the poet than anything else that is recorded of him.

Dr. Johnson denied this; observing, that it had been one work originally, and that you could not put a book of the Iliad out of its place; and he believed the same might be said of the Odyssey.

" Pope used to translate thirty or forty verses of the Iliad before rising, and then to spend a considerable time in polishing them.

While he remained at this school, being permitted to go to the play-house, with some of his school fellows of a more advanced age, he was so charmed with dramatic representations, that he formed the translation of the Iliad into a play, from several of the speeches in Ogilby's translation, connected with verses of his own; and the several parts were performed by the upper boys of the school, except that of Ajax by the master's gardener.