PLAIN OF TROY. 101 
representations of this nature in the early period chap. 
to which allusion is made, it would be expe- 
dient to dwell upon this particular part of 
Homers Poem, and, from the minuteness of 
the detail, derive, not only internal evidence of 
an exemplar whence the imagery was derived, 
but also of the perfection attained by the arts 
of Greece in the period when the description 
was given-. Later poets, particularly Firgil 
and Ovid, evidently borrowed the machinery of 
their poems from specimens of antient art which 
even their commentators are allowed to con- 
template^; and in the practice existing at this 
day among itinerant bards of Italy, who recite 
long poems upon the antiquities of the country, 
we may observ^e customs of which Homer 
himself afforded the prototype'. These 
(2) See also the remarkable description of Nestor's Cup^ in th« 
eleventh book of the Iliad i and the observations relating to it, in the 
Work by the author's Grandfather upon Roman and Saxon Coins. 
Cou'per acknowledged himself indebted to the learning and ingenuity 
of the author's Ancestor for the new version introduced by him of a 
long-mistaken passage in Homer's description of that cup. 
(3) Witness the discovery of the " cajmt acris equi" at the building 
of Carthage, and the death of Laocoon, as described by Virgil; as 
well as the Metamorphoses of Ovid, whose archetypes are still discer- 
nible upon the gems of Greece, 
(4) These men, called improvisatoii, are seen in the public streets 
of cities in Italy. A crowd collects around them, when they begin to 
recite a long poem upon a cameo or an intaglio put into their hands. 
The author saw one, in the principal square at Milan, who thus 
descanted for au hour upon the loves of Cupid and Psyche. 
