LETTER XII.
I Sometimes provoke you by sporting with what you deem sacred matters. Homer I know is one of your divinities—may I venture to tell you that I never could find that scale of heroes in the Iliad which critics admire as such a beauty?
Hector is supposed in valour superior to all but Achilles—upon what authority? Ajax certainly beat him in the single combat between them; and there are some instances, tho’ I cannot recollect the passages, of his inferiority to others of the Greeks.
It is surely a blindness worse than Homerican, not to see many inconsistencies in the Iliad, and it is ridiculous to attempt to make beauties of them. From many which might easily be pointed out, take one or two as they occur to my memory. After describing Mars as the most terrible of beings, and to whom whole armies are as nothing; what poetical belief is strong enough to suppose he could be made to retire by Diomed? If Minerva’s shield is so vast (the shell of a Kraken, I suppose), can one help wondering why she does not use it as the King of Laputa does his island, when his subjects on Terra-firma rebel? I do not recollect parallel instances in Milton.