But the best often forget it. They seem to hold to this knowledge better now, Mr North; and they do not make Homer answerable as a Poet, for the facts of which he is the Historian--Why not rather accept than criticise? NORTH. I am sorry, Seward, for the Achæan Chiefs who had to drink @daitron@--that is all. I had hoped that they helped themselves. SEWARD. Perhaps, sir, the Stint was a custom of only the @oinon gerousion@--a ceremonious Bowl--and if so, undoubtedly with religious institution. The Feast is not honorary--only the Bowl: for anything that appears, Agamemnon, feasting his Princes, might say, "Now, for the Bowl of Honour"--and Idomeneus alone drinks. Or let the whole Feast be honorific, and the Bowl the sealing, and crowning, and characterising solemnity. Now, the distinction of the Stint, and the Full Bowl, selected for a signal of different honouring, has to me no longer anything irksome. It is no longer a grudged and scanted cheer--but lawful Assignment of Place. TALBOYS. The moment you take it for Ceremonial, sir, you don't know what profound meaning may, or may not be in it. The phrase is very remarkable. NORTH. When the "Best of the Argives" mix in the Bowl "the honorific dark-glowing wine," or the dark-glowing wine of honour--when @hote@--quite a specific and peculiar occasion, and confined to the wine--you would almost think that the Chiefs themselves are the wine-mixers, and not the usual ministrants--which would perhaps express the descent of an antique use from a time and manners of still greater simplicity than those which Homer describes. Or take it merely, that in great solemnities, high persons do the functions proper to Servants. This we do know, that usually a servant, the @Tamieus@, or the @oinochoos@, does mix the Bowl. By the way, Talboys, I think you will be not a little amused with old Chapman's translation of the passage. TALBOYS. A fiery old Chap was George. NORTH. It runs thus-- "O Idomen, I ever loved thyself past all the Greeks, In war, or any work of peace, at table, everywhere; For when the best of Greeks, besides, mix ever at our cheer My good old ardent wine with small, and our inferior mates Drink ever that mixt wine measured too, thou drink'st without those rates Our old wine _neat_; and ever more thy bowl stands like to mine; To drink still when and what thou wilt; then rouse that heart of thine; And whatsoever heretofore thou hast assumed to be, This day be greater." TALBOYS. Well done, Old Buck! This fervour and particularity are admirable. But, methinks, if I caught the words rightly, that George mistakes the meaning of @gerousôn@--honorary; he has @gerôn gerontos@, an _old man_, singing in his ears; but old for wine would be quite a different word. NORTH.