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Practice and theory

348. The Peninsular War

35I.

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PASSAGES FOR

FOR TRANSLATION

Into Latin Prose

I. THE ILIAD.

Let us remember what it is that gives us such perpetual pleasure in reading the Iliad, that makes us start at the turns in the speeches, and fills us with anxiety and wonder. It is not the beautiful descriptions of places, nor even the rage and ardour of the battles; but those high strokes of character that everywhere occur, and are constantly presenting us with new sentiments of the human heart, such as we expect and from our own experience feel to be true. These can never miss their aim: they at once charm the fancy with images, and fill the understanding with reflection; they interest everything that is human about us, and go near to agitate us with the same passions as we see represented in the moving story. This reflection will bear to be turned on every side, and dreads no search be it ever so severe. In the choice we make of any measure in the conduct of our business or pleasures, we examine its justness and expediency, not only by considering what good end it serves; but likewise, what inconveniences are avoided, what pains or trouble spared, or what miscarriages prevented, to which another method might be liable. Take Homer's subject in the same light, and it will appear with a pre-eminency hardly to be expressed. Such a convention of princes, from different countries and soils, but all speaking the same language, furnished him with great materials, and hindered him from attempting an impossibility; I mean the feigning or forming new imaginary characters, without originals from which he might copy them. The flourishing condition of Greece at that time; the great number of principalities, free cities, and growing republics, sent forth an

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FOL. CENT.

I

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