He succeeded Hazlitt,
(which was no insignificant honor,) and for some time contributed the
critiques upon the theatres, but ended by being the reporter of the
state of the money-market. He had long been accustomed to have the first
trial at his own house of the best-reputed new foreign instrumental
music, which he used to import from Germany.
Well, then, we were put in possession of the Homer of Chapman, and to
work we went, turning to some of the "famousest" passages, as we had
scrappily known them in Pope's version. There was, for instance, that
perfect scene of the conversation on Troy wall of the old Senators with
Helen, who is pointing out to them the several Greek captains, with that
wonderfully vivid portrait of an orator, in Ulysses, in the Third Book,
beginning at the 237th line,--
"But when the prudent Ithacus did to his counsels rise";
the helmet and shield of Diomed, in the opening of the Fifth Book; the
prodigious description of Neptune's passage in his chariot to the Achive
ships, in the opening of the Thirteenth Book,--
"The woods, and all the great hills near,
trembled beneath the weight
Of his immortal moving feet.
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