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Letter The First.
termed " modernization" of one of the most antient poems now inbeing . Pope somewhere observes , that Homer is rather too critically nice in these respects : as his translator , however , he has sufficiently obviated this objection by his own practice ; though , in his Essay on Homer ' s Battles , he very ingeniously remarks , " that Homer has varied these deaths by the several postures in which his heroes are
represented , either fighting or falling ; some of which he says ( as every other person must say ) are so exceedingly exact , that one may guess , from the very position of the combatants , whereabout the wound will light ; others , he says , are so peculiar and uncommon , that they could only be the effect of an imagination , which has searched through all the ideas of nature ; and such is the posture of Medon , in the 5 th
book , whose arm being numbed by a blow on the elbow , drops the reins that trail on the ground ; and then being suddenly struck on the temples , - falls headlong from the chariot , in a soft and deep place , where he sinks up . to the shoulders in the sands , and is a while fixed by the weight of his armour , with his legs quivering in the air , till he is trampled down by his horses . "
So much for sensible , elegant , and judicious Pope ! But respecting my humble self , the blaze of poetry , that every where shines and burns throughout the best poem in any language , like the « X » JIMS 1 GV W , or the unwearied fire on the helmet of Diomed , as described in the beginning of the 5 th book , dazzles my eyes in the prosaic research that 1 am now making : however , I can clearly seethe beautiful propriety of circumstances and consequences attending every wounded soldier . It
may not likewise be improper to consider a little the very imperfect -state of . medicine at the" time of the Trojan war ; no medical distinctions were then' established ; the same men were , both surgeons and physicians ; as we ' find exemplified in Podalirius and Machaon , ( the two sons of / Esculapius ) who acted as surgeons general to the Grecian army . . Their simple practice consisted chiefly in extracting darts or arrows , in staunching the blood by some infusion of bitter herbs , and sometimes they added charms or incantations ; which seemed to be
a poetical way of hinting , that frequently wounds or diseases were cured in a manner unaccountable by any known properties they could discover either in the effects of their rude remedies , or in the then known powers of the human body to relieve itself . On perusing the Odyssey ( which , though it does not contain the terrible graces , sublime images , and animation of the Iliad , is perhaps equally or m
simplicity of the heroic age , and the pleasant scenes of rural arid domestic life , which it copiously exhibits ) I perceive in Homer ' s description of the wound which Ulysses , when young , received in his thigh from the tulk of an enraged wild boar , that the effusion of blood was stopped by incantations or divine songs , and some sort of bandage which must have acted by pressure . If any verse could have acted as a charm , the very verse that describes the wound mi g ht have as good a right to such a claim as any other ; but , in what manner the surgeons of antient Greece , before the discovery of the cir-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Letter The First.
termed " modernization" of one of the most antient poems now inbeing . Pope somewhere observes , that Homer is rather too critically nice in these respects : as his translator , however , he has sufficiently obviated this objection by his own practice ; though , in his Essay on Homer ' s Battles , he very ingeniously remarks , " that Homer has varied these deaths by the several postures in which his heroes are
represented , either fighting or falling ; some of which he says ( as every other person must say ) are so exceedingly exact , that one may guess , from the very position of the combatants , whereabout the wound will light ; others , he says , are so peculiar and uncommon , that they could only be the effect of an imagination , which has searched through all the ideas of nature ; and such is the posture of Medon , in the 5 th
book , whose arm being numbed by a blow on the elbow , drops the reins that trail on the ground ; and then being suddenly struck on the temples , - falls headlong from the chariot , in a soft and deep place , where he sinks up . to the shoulders in the sands , and is a while fixed by the weight of his armour , with his legs quivering in the air , till he is trampled down by his horses . "
So much for sensible , elegant , and judicious Pope ! But respecting my humble self , the blaze of poetry , that every where shines and burns throughout the best poem in any language , like the « X » JIMS 1 GV W , or the unwearied fire on the helmet of Diomed , as described in the beginning of the 5 th book , dazzles my eyes in the prosaic research that 1 am now making : however , I can clearly seethe beautiful propriety of circumstances and consequences attending every wounded soldier . It
may not likewise be improper to consider a little the very imperfect -state of . medicine at the" time of the Trojan war ; no medical distinctions were then' established ; the same men were , both surgeons and physicians ; as we ' find exemplified in Podalirius and Machaon , ( the two sons of / Esculapius ) who acted as surgeons general to the Grecian army . . Their simple practice consisted chiefly in extracting darts or arrows , in staunching the blood by some infusion of bitter herbs , and sometimes they added charms or incantations ; which seemed to be
a poetical way of hinting , that frequently wounds or diseases were cured in a manner unaccountable by any known properties they could discover either in the effects of their rude remedies , or in the then known powers of the human body to relieve itself . On perusing the Odyssey ( which , though it does not contain the terrible graces , sublime images , and animation of the Iliad , is perhaps equally or m
simplicity of the heroic age , and the pleasant scenes of rural arid domestic life , which it copiously exhibits ) I perceive in Homer ' s description of the wound which Ulysses , when young , received in his thigh from the tulk of an enraged wild boar , that the effusion of blood was stopped by incantations or divine songs , and some sort of bandage which must have acted by pressure . If any verse could have acted as a charm , the very verse that describes the wound mi g ht have as good a right to such a claim as any other ; but , in what manner the surgeons of antient Greece , before the discovery of the cir-