NEW THEORY OF ACHILLES 1 SHIELD. 301 



heart could not conceive nor name ' of his faithful fol- 

 lowers. Nor will the reader need to be reminded of 

 the frequent and effective use by Dickens of the con- 

 trast between the humorous and the pathetic. 



The laboured character of the description of the 

 shield is an argument though not, perhaps, a very 

 striking one of the independent origin of the poem. 



But the arguments on which I am disposed to lay 

 most stress lie nearer the surface. 



Scarcely any one, I think, can have read the de- 

 scription of the shield without a feeling of wonder that 

 Homer should describe the shield of a mortal hero as 

 adorned with so many and such important objects. We 

 find the sun and moon, the constellations, the waves of 

 ocean, and a variety of other objects, better suited to 

 adorn the temple of a great deity than the shield of a 

 warrior, however noble and heroic. The objects de- 

 picted even on the ^Egis of Zeus are much less impor- 

 tant. There is certainly no trace in the ' Iliad ' of a 

 wish on Homer's part to raise the dignity of mortal 

 heroes at the expense of Zeus, yet the ^Egis is thus 

 succinctly described : 



Fring'd round with ever-fighting snakes, though it was drawn to 



life 



The miseries and deaths of fight ; in it frown'd hloody Strife, 

 In it shone sacred Fortitude, in it fell Pursuit flew, 

 In it the monster Gorgon's head, in which held out to view 

 Were all the dire ostents of Jove. Chapman 's Translation. 



Five b'nes here, as in the original, suffice for the 

 description of Jove's -ZEgis, while one hundred and 

 thirty lines are employed in the description of the 



