But these accomplishments, mental and bodily, are not vulgarly heaped upon his characters by Homer, as if they were detailed in a boarding-school catalogue. The Homeric king should have that which incorporates and harmonizes them all: he should be emphatically a gentleman, and that in a sense not far from the one familiar to the Christian civilization of Europe. Nestor, Diomed, Menelaus, are in a marked manner gentlemen. Agamemnon is less so; but here Homer shows his usual discrimination, for in Agamemnon there is a sordid vein, which most of all mars this peculiar tone of character. It is, however, in the two superlative heroes of the poems, that we see the strongest development of those habits of feeling and action, which belong to the gentleman. It will be admitted that one of these traits is the love of that which is straightforward, truthful, and above-board. According to the vulgar conception of the character of Ulysses, he has no credit for this quality. But whatever the Ulysses of Virgil or of Euripides may be, the Ulysses of Homer, though full of circumspection, reserve, and even stratagem in dealing with enemies and strangers, has nothing about him of what is selfish, tricky, or faithless. And, accordingly, it is into his mouth that Homer has put the few and simple words, which rebuke the character of the informer and the tale-bearer, with a severity greater perhaps even than, under the circumstances, was necessary. When he is recognised by Euryclea, he strictly enjoins upon her the silence, on which all their lives at the moment depended. Hurt by the supposition that she could (in our homely phrase) be likely to blab, she replies that she will hold herself in, hard as stone or as iron. She adds, that she will point out to him which of the women in the palace are faithful, and which are guilty. No, he replies; I will observe them for myself; that is not your business[88]: [88] Od. xix. 500-2. μαῖα, τίη δὲ σὺ τὰς μυθήσεαι; οὐδέ τί σε χρή· εὖ νυ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγὼ φράσομαι καὶ εἴσομ’ ἑκάστην· ἀλλ’ ἔχε σιγῇ μῦθον, ἐπίτρεψον δὲ θεοῖσιν. ~_Achilles as a Gentleman._~ As Homer has thus sharply exhibited Ulysses in the character of a gentleman with respect to truth[89], so he has made the same exhibition for Achilles with respect to courtesy: protesting, as it were, in this manner by anticipation against the degenerate conceptions of those characters, which were to reproduce and render current through the world Achilles as a brute, and Ulysses as a thorough knave. But let us see the residue of the proof. [89] In Od. xxii. 417, he applies to Euryclea for the information, which he had before declined. This is after the trial of the Bow: the other was before it was proposed, and when the Chief probably reckoned on having himself more time for observation than proved to be the case.