worsted, he satisfies the exigencies of his plot; by exhibiting their superiority, he fulfils the conditions of his own office as a national poet. To speak of the ingenuity of Homer may sound strange, for we are accustomed to associate his name with ideas of greater nobleness; but still his ingenuity, in this adjustment of conflicting demands upon him, appears to be such as has never been surpassed. [729] Exc. ii. ad Il. xxiv. s. iv. vol. viii. p. 801. See, however, also p. 802. ~_Greeks superior even without Achilles._~ And here I, for one, cannot but admire the way in which Homer has made purposes, which others would have found conflicting, to serve as reciprocal auxiliaries. The Embassy of the Ninth Book certainly glorifies Achilles: but let us ask, does it not help also to glorify Greece? Let us consider what had happened. The withdrawal of Achilles was at once felt as a great blow; and it acted on the whole tone of the army. This appears in various ways. We read it in the home-sick impulses of the Second Assembly (b. ii.); in the advice of Nestor to take measures for securing the responsibility of officers and men (ii. 360-8); in the slackness of various chiefs during the Circuit of Agamemnon (b. iv.); in its being recorded to the honour of that leader (iv. 223) that he did not flinch from his duty; lastly, in the momentary reluctance of the Greek heroes to encounter Hector (vii. 93). All this is thoroughly natural. Having leant upon a prop, they were not at once aware of their remaining and intrinsic strength. They, like all persons who have not learned the habit of self-reliance, required to learn it with pain. Hence, after the very first touch of comparative weakness in the field, they conceive the idea of the rampart. They had not really been worsted: but their enemies had learned to face them; their position was now no longer what it had used to be, when Hector did not venture out in front of the Dardanian Gate. But the building of the rampart produced, as was natural, an increased weakness. Besides this, Jupiter, seeing that the tendency of events was not to give a sufficiently rapid and decisive triumph to Achilles, now inhibited those deities, who were friendly to Greece, from taking part, while he himself (viii. 75) alarmed and abashed the Greeks with his thunder. They thus feel themselves thrown one full stage further into weakness. What more natural, than that they should turn to Achilles, and try his disposition towards them? This is effected in the Ninth Book. They then become acquainted practically, for the first time, with the fierceness of the seven times heated furnace of the Wrath. This experience teaches them, that they must do or die. So at last, the bridge behind them being broken, Greece is put upon her mettle. The gallant Diomed becomes the spokesman at once of chivalry and of common sense. ‘You should not have asked him. By asking, you have emboldened and hardened him. Let him alone. Rely upon yourselves.