Such is the deadly wrong, that lights up the wrath of Achilles. And, as he broods over his injuries, according to the law of an honourable but therefore susceptible, and likewise a fierce and haughty nature, the flame waxes hotter and hotter, and requires more and more to quench it. Thus there is a terrible progression and expansion in his revenge: and by degrees he arrives at a height of fierce vindictiveness, that minutely calculates the modes in which the suffering of its object can be carried to a _maximum_, yet so as to leave his own renown untouched, and open the widest field for the exercise of his valour. It is not vice, nor is it virtue, which Homer is describing in his Achilles; it is that strange and wayward mixture of regard for right and justice with self-love on the one side, and wrath on the other, which are so common among us men of meaner scale. The difference is, that in Achilles all the parts of the compound are at once deepened to a superhuman intensity, and raised to a scale of magnificence which almost transcends our powers of vision. We must, indeed, no more look for a didactic and pedantic consistency in the movement of his mind, than in shocks from an earthquake, or bursts of flame from a volcano. But a real consistency there is; and doubtless it could be measured by the rules of every day, if only every day produced an Achilles. Let us now follow his course with close attention. ~_Restitution not the object of Achilles._~ It can hardly fail to draw remark, that the spirit of Achilles never from the first moment fastens on mere restitution, or on restitution at all, as its object. With his knowledge of his own might, which was enough to prompt him, had he not been restrained from heaven, to assail and slay Agamemnon on the spot, he nevertheless does not so much as entertain the thought of fighting to keep Briseis. His thought is far other than this: ‘I will not lift a finger against one of you for the girl, since you choose to take from me what you gave (298, 9). I will not hold what you think fit to grudge.’ While he adds, that they shall not touch an article of what is properly his own[699]. Not that he cares for mere possession or dispossession. Were that his thought, he would have lifted up the invincible arm for the retention of Briseis. But his thought is this, ‘One outrage you have done to justice and to me, and, encouraged as well as commanded by great deities, I bear it; but not even under their promises and injunctions will I endure that you shall sin again.’ The loss he had suffered now became quite a subordinate image in his mind; punishment of the offenders, and not restitution, was ever before his view. His first threat is that of withdrawal (Il. i. 169): which, he conceives, will put a stop to Agamemnon’s rapacious accumulations. Next (233) he swears the mighty oath that every Greek shall rue the day of his wrong, and look in vain to Agamemnon for protection against the sword of Hector. Again, in his