this day, as I have heard him more than once before, Mr. Wordsworth,
in a way very earnest, and to me very impressive and remarkable,
disclaimed all value for, all concern about, posthumous fame.[252]

_(e)_ CONVERSATIONS AND REMINISCENCES RECORDED BY THE (NOW) BISHOP OF
LINCOLN, &c.

Remember, first read the ancient classical authors; _then_ come to
_us_; and you will be able to judge for yourself which of us is worth
reading.

The first book of Homer appears to be independent of the rest. The plan
of the _Odyssey_ is more methodical than that of the _Iliad_. The
character of Achilles seems to me one of the grandest ever conceived.
There is something awful in it, particularly in the circumstance of his
acting under an abiding foresight of his own death. One day, conversing
with Payne Knight and Uvedale Price concerning Homer, I expressed my
admiration of Nestor's speech, as eminently natural, where he tells the
Greek leaders that _they_ are mere children in comparison with the
heroes of _old_ whom _he_ had known[253]. 'But,' said Knight and Price,
'that passage is spurious.' However, I will not part with it. It is
interesting to compare the same characters (Ajax, for instance) as
treated by Homer, and then afterwards by the Greek dramatists, and to
mark the difference of handling. In the plays of Euripides, politics
come in as a disturbing force: Homer's characters act on physical
impulse. There is more _introversion_ in the dramatist: whence
Aristotle rightly calls him _tsagichhotatos_. The tower-scene, where
Helen comes into the presence of Priam and the old Trojans, displays one
of the most beautiful pictures anywhere to be seen. Priam's speech[254]
on that occasion is a striking proof of the courtesy and delicacy of the
Homeric age, or, at least, of Homer himself.

[251] On another occasion, I believe, he intimated a desire that his
works in Prose should be edited by his son-in-law, Mr. Quillinan.
(_Memoirs,_ ii. 466.)

[252] _Memoirs,_ ii. 437-66.

[253] _Iliad_, i. 260.

[254] _Ibid._ iii. 156.

Catullus translated literally from the Greek; succeeding Roman writers
did not so, because Greek had then become the fashionable, universal
language. They did not translate, but they paraphrased; the ideas
remaining the same, their dress different. Hence the attention of the
poets of the Augustan age was principally confined to the happy
selection of the most appropriate words and elaborate phrases; and hence