1604.} 
‘ Innumerable are the indirect influences 
of the Homeric Mule on the compofitions 
of Milton! Would that the Iliad had 
been Englifhed by him; then would’ the 
*¢ Tale of Troy divine’ have been our’s 
as well as the Songs of Eden! Cowper’s 
Tranflation of Homer will grow mellow 
with age, and venerable with antiquity. 
He breathes the {pirit of the Greek, with- 
out his fire and energy: it is’ Patroclus, 
clid in’ the armour, but without the fpear, 
of Pelides. Occafionally he is inftiné 
with the flame of the original, as in the 
tranflation of the celebrated defeription of 
upiter’s nod: 
J i ¢¢ Ali around 
The fovereign’s everlafting head, his curls 
Ambrofial {hook, and the huge mountain 
reeled.?? .. Cowper. 
Sublimity is here depicted in the agita- 
tion of inanimate nature, under the power 
of the divinity. In Milton, the fenfation 
of the celefials-is defcribed, on the like 
o¢cafion—3 6. Par. L. v. 344. 
No fooner had th’ Almighty ceas’d, but all 
The multitude of angeis, with a fhout, 
Loud as from numbers without number, 
{weet 
As from blefs’d voices, uttering joy, heaven 
rang 
With jubilee, and loud Hofannahs fill’d 
Th’ eternal regions. 
The fpirit with which Achilles refign- 
ed Briséis is full of refentment and pride. 
A gift which his antagonilt reclained 
was unworthy his detention : 
‘¢ T fcorn to fight 
For her, whom having giv’n, ye take away.” 
Iliad, 1 &. (CowP ER’S). 
In fike manner, in Paradife Loft, Satan 
exclaims, 
‘* None left but by fubmiffion ; and that 
word 
Difdain forbids me.” Parad. Loft b. 4. 
From Homer Milton has alfo derived 
the air of the remonftrance of Abdiel with 
Satan, on regal authority : 
Ulyfies faith to the multitude, 
*¢ One fuffices, one to whom 
The fon of Saturn hath affign’d 
{ceptre, and enforcement of the laws.’ 
Iliad, 2b. v. 240, &C. 
Aad Abdiel replies to Satan : 
«* Shalt thou give laws to God? 
from thought 
To make ug lefs; bent rather to exalt 
Our happy ftate, under one heed more near 
United. Parad, Loft. 
T conclude with a reference to the una- 
nimity of the Britifh nation, in the war 
in’ which, finglée-handed, we are involved 
with the French. Our’s be hereafter the 
praife of Abdiel: 
How far 
Homer and Mailton—~ Alexander’ s Tombs 
107 
Among innumerable falfe, unmoved, 
Unfhaken, unfeduced, unterrifv’d, 
His loyalty he-kept, his love, his zeal 5 
Nor number, nor example, with him wrought 
To fwerve from truth,.or change his conftant 
mind, 
Tho’ fingle! bi 
Brook, Fan. 1804. W. EVANS. 
Sea t 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
ROM the prevailing opinion that 
the Alexandrian monument, now at 
the Britith Mufeum, was the actual tomb 
of the hero of Macedon, the valuabie 
communication of Gsdipus in your latt 
Magazme, would,no doubt, be extremely 
acceptab’e to your Readers. The claflical 
authorities there adduced, are, perhaps, 
nearly the whole; to thofe of a later pe- 
riod, I beg leave to make the following 
addition. 
The earlieft traveller who has neticed . 
the monument in queftion is Benjamin 
of Tudela, a Jewith Rabbi, who travelled 
to the Eaft in the middle of the twelfth 
century, and has left behind bim acurious 
narrative of his peregrinations, the vera- 
city of which having been impugned, has 
been ably defended by the learned Renan- 
dot. This traveiler, {peaking of Alesx=- 
andria, ftates, that on the fea-fhore there 
lay a monument, on which the figures of 
birds and other animals ‘were feulptured, 
with an infcription of ancient times that 
no one could read. -The inhabitants of 
the piace conjectured that fome king, who 
reigned before the flood, was buried in it. 
The length of the fepulchre was fifteen 
fpans, the breadth fix. It is not abfo- 
lutely certain that Rabbi Benjamin is de- 
{cribing the monument in queftion, be- 
caufe we have fill evidence to fhew thar 
there were others, and probably many. of . 
the fame kind ; a circumftance that, in my 
humble opinion, fhews the difficulty there 
muft be in appropriating to any one of 
them the honour, of containing Alexan- 
der’s body, even’ admitting that he was . 
buried according to Egyptian rites, which 
is another faét that requires verification. 
Leo Africanus, who wrote an account 
of Africa, many parts of which he had 
himlelf vifted in the fifteenth century, 
mentions, that, among the ruins of Alex- 
andria, the Turks have a chapel, in which, 
they fay, the body of Alexander is pre- 
ferved, as they read tn the Koran; and. 
that great numbers of piigrims come to. 
vifit it. 
Our countryman Sandys, who vifited 
Alexandria at the commencement of the 
fevcateenth 
