“Down he fell, As by the woodman’s axe, on some high peak Falls a proud ash, conspicuous from afar, Leveling its tender leaves upon the ground.” It is thus the charge of Hector is described when he beat back the Greeks and penned them at their ships:— “On poured the Trojan masses; in the van Hector straight forward drove in full career. As some huge bowlder, from its rocky bed Detached, and by the wintry torrent’s force Hurled down the steep cliff’s face, when constant rains The massive rock’s firm hold have undermined; With giant bounds it flies; the crashing wood Resounds beneath it; still it hurries on, Until, arriving at the level plain, Its headlong impulse checked, it rolls no more.” Or take another similitude drawn from the sea. When the poet wishes to describe how the Achæan phalanxes come on to battle, this is the image he employs:— “And as a goatherd from his watch-tower crag Beholds a cloud advancing o’er the sea Beneath the west wind’s breath; as from afar He gazes, black as pitch, it sweeps along O’er the dark face of ocean, bearing on A hurricane of rain; he, shuddering, sees And drives his flock beneath the sheltering cave. So thick and dark about the Argives stirred, Impatient for the war, the stalwart youths, Black masses, bristling close with spear and shield.” Or again, when, after Agamemnon has retired wounded from the battle, Hector comes forth and slips his Trojans on the Achæan host, as some hunter slips his white-teethed hounds on a wild boar or a lion, and himself “Fell on their battle, as some roaring storm Leaps down and heaves the sleeping violet sea.” One after another he lays low the chiefs, and their names fill three hexameters. “Of the leaders these He slew, then on the nameless people fell As when with hurricane deep the west wind smites White summer clouds high piled by the clear south, And volumed wave on wave comes shoreward rolled, And the white flying foam is scattered high Before the loud blast of far-wandering wind.” Let me now give one instance of Homer’s feeling for the aspect of the nightly heavens. It shall be taken from the place of the Iliad where the Trojans, after a day of successful battle, having driven back the Greeks, rest for the night. And here I shall quote, not, as in the above passage, from Lord Derby’s translation, but from a rendering of the passage by the Poet-Laureate. It is the only passage of Homer in which we have the Laureate’s handiwork:—