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But such things as these are fitter to be left to the examination of grammarians; and we are rather to insist upon such passages as are both profitable and persuasive. Such, for instance, as these:— My early youth was bred to martial pains, My soul impels me to the embattled plains! How skill’d he was in each obliging art; The mildest manners, and the gentlest heart. Il. VI. 444; XVII. 671. For while the author tells us that fortitude may be taught, and that an obliging and graceful way of conversing with others is to be gotten by art and the use of reason, he exhorts us not to neglect the improvement of ourselves, but by observing our teachers’ instructions to learn a becoming carriage, as knowing that clownishness and cowardice argue ill-breeding and ignorance. And very suitable to what hath been said is that which is said of Jupiter and Neptune:— Gods of one source, of one ethereal race, Alike divine, and heaven their native place; But Jove the greater; first born of the skies, And more than men or Gods supremely wise. Il. XIII. 354. For the poet therein pronounceth wisdom to be the most divine and royal quality of all; as placing therein the greatest excellency of Jupiter himself, and judging all virtues else to be necessarily consequent thereunto. We are also to accustom a young man attentively to hear such things as these:— Urge him with truth to frame his fair replies: And sure he will, for wisdom never lies: The praise of wisdom, in thy youth obtain’d, An act so rash, Antilochus, has stain’d: Say, is it just, my friend, that Hector’s ear From such a warrior such a speech should hear? I deemed thee once the wisest of thy kind, But ill this insult suits a prudent mind. Odyss. III. 20; Il. XXIII. 570; XVII. 170. These speeches teach us that it is beneath wise men to lie or to deal otherwise than fairly, even in games, or to blame other men without just cause. And when the poet attributes Pindarus’s violation of the truce to his folly, he withal declares his judgment that a wise man will not be guilty of an unjust action. The like may we also infer concerning continence, taking our ground for it from these passages:— For him Antaea burn’d with lawless flame, And strove to tempt him from the paths of fame: In vain she tempted the relentless youth, Endued with wisdom, sacred fear, and truth: At first, with worthy shame and decent pride, The royal dame his lawless suit denied ! For virtue’s image yet possessed her mind: Il. VI. 160; Odyss. III. 265. in which speeches the poet assigns wisdom to be the cause of continence. And when in exhortations made to encourage soldiers to fight, he speaks in this manner:— What mean you, Lycians? Stand! O stand, for shame ! Yet each reflect who prizes fame or breath, On endless infamy, on instant death; For, lo ! the fated time, the appointed shore; Hark ! the gates burst, the brazen barriers roar ! Il. XVI. 422; XIII. 121. he seems to intimate that continent men are valiant men; because they fear the shame of base actions, and can trample on pleasures and stand their ground in the greatest hazards. Whence Timotheus, in the play called Persae, takes occasion handsomely to exhort the Grecians thus:— Brave soldiers of just shame in awe should stand; For the blushing face oft helps the fighting hand. And Aeschylus also makes it a point of wisdom not to be blown up with pride when a man is honored, nor to be moved or elevated with the acclamations of a multitude, writing thus of Amphiaraus:— His shield no emblem bears; his generous soul Wishes to be, not to appear, the best; While the deep furrows of his noble mind Harvests of wise and prudent counsel bear. See note on the same passage of Aeschylus (Sept. 591), vol. I. p. 210. (G.) For it is the part of a wise man to value himself upon the consciousness of his own true worth and excellency.
