grasp his spear, as impatient to employ them
against the Trojans." He then informs his father of the great honour and
rewards which he had purchased before Troy, and of his return from it
without a wound. The shade of Achilles, says the poet, was so pleased
with the account he received of his son, that he inquired no further,
but stalked away with more than ordinary majesty over the green meadow
that lay before them.

This last circumstance of a deceased father's rejoicing in the behaviour
of his son is very finely contrived by Homer, as an incentive to virtue,
and made use of by none that I know besides himself.

The description of Ajax, which follows, and his refusing to speak to
Ulysses, who had won the armour of Achilles from him, and by that means
occasioned his death, is admired by every one that reads it. When
Ulysses relates the sullenness of his deportment, and considers the
greatness of the hero, he expresses himself with generous and noble
sentiments. "Oh! that I had never gained a prize which cost the life of
so brave a man as Ajax! Who, for the beauty of his person, and greatness
of his actions, was inferior to none but the divine Achilles." The same
noble condescension, which never dwells but in truly great minds, and
such as Homer would represent that of Ulysses to have been, discovers
itself likewise in the speech which he made to the ghost of Ajax on that
occasion. "O Ajax!" says he, "will you keep your resentments even after
death? What destructions hath this fatal armour brought upon the Greeks,
by robbing them of you, who were their bulwark and defence? Achilles is
not more bitterly lamented among us than you. Impute not then your death
to any one but Jupiter, who out of his anger to the Greeks, took you
away from among them: let me entreat you to approach me; restrain the
fierceness of your wrath, and the greatness of your soul, and hear what
I have to say to you." Ajax, without making a reply, turned his back
upon him, and retired into a crowd of ghosts.

Ulysses, after all these visions, took a view of those impious wretches
who lay in tortures for the crimes they had committed upon the earth,
whom he describes under the varieties of pain, as so many marks of
divine vengeance, to deter others from following their example. He then
tells us that notwithstanding he had a great curiosity to see the heroes
that lived in the ages before him, the ghosts began to gather about him
in such prodigious mult