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The poetical incident of most importance in Tickell's life was his publication of the first book of the "Iliad," as translated by himself, an apparent opposition to Pope's "Homer," of which the first part made its entrance into the world at the same time.
During the earlier part of the meal the talk went to and fro over the track of what George rashly called the Amarylliad. Randal told him the word was falsely constructed, Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid being, he said, syncopated adjectival forms derived from their respective substantive stems. "Ours," said George, "has been a rag-time Dunciad."
As for the epic, I confess myself a heretic as to Homer; I look upon the Iliad as a remnant of national songs; the wise ones agree that the Odyssey is the work of a later age. My instinct agrees with the result of their researches. I credit their conclusion. The Paradise Lost is, doubtless, a great production, but the subject is monkish.
Philosophy, when we are face to face with real men, is as powerless as over the Iliad or King Lear. The overmastering human interest transcends explanation. We do not sit in judgment on the right or the wrong; we do not seek out causes to account for what takes place, feeling too conscious of the inadequacy of our analysis.
The Baroness is still so devoted to her old Hector I always feel as if I were talking of the Iliad that these two old folks will contrive to patch up matters between you and Hortense. Only, if you want to avoid storms at home for the future, do not leave me for three weeks without coming to see your mistress I was dying of it.
It would be easy to go through the words for moral ideas in the Odyssey, and to show that they occur in the numerous moral situations which do not arise, or arise much less frequently, in the Iliad. There is not difference enough in the moral standard of the two poems to justify us in assuming that centuries of ethical progress had intervened between their dates of composition.
The last work of his best years was his "Translation of the Iliad;" of the Odyssey he translated only half. Both misrepresent the natural and simple majesty of manner which the ancient poet never lost; yet if we could forget Homer, we might be proud of them. In the "Dunciad" he threw away an infinity of wit upon writers who would not otherwise have been remembered.
Yet when I look at those works which we all hold to be the crowning glories of the world as, for example, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Hamlet, the Messiah, Rembrandt's portraits, or Holbein's, or Giovanni Bellini's, the connection between them and use is, to say the least of it, far from obvious.
"I daresay he is," said the youth; "but I can't help thinking him the greatest of all poets, not even excepting Homer. I would sooner have written that series of plays, founded on the fortunes of the House of Lancaster, than the Iliad itself. The events described are as lofty as those sung by Homer in his great work, and the characters brought upon the stage still more interesting.
Both the Iliad and the Odyssey were kept in a box of the finest gold, because Alexander thought nothing was too good for them. When only thirteen years of age, Alexander once saw some horsedealers bringing a beautiful steed before the king. The animal had a white spot on his nose shaped somewhat like the head of an ox, and on this account was named Bu-ceph´a-lus, which means "ox-head."
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