6
CAESAR'S COMMENTARIES.
passions should have no place. Hence, perhaps, his doctrine of the final absorption of all souls in one great Spirit gathered strength; for the souls of the heroes who were slain go, we are here told, to the shades below, while the heroes themselves lie bleaching on the shore. This book Alexander studied and admired while meditating fiercer struggles and wider conquest. Hence Virgil borrowed his measure and history. Milton mastered its mythology and rhythm while preparing his "Paradise Lost." Pope has rivalled the music of its numbers in a translation that has all the merit and (what in a translation must be called) the faults of an original work. In studying these pages, Cowper has found relief from the burden of well-nigh intolerable despondency, has caught the simplicity of his author, and has even thanked God that Homer lived. Millions of men, probably, have read or listened to those lines; and many have gathered impressions from them for good or for evil which have never been effaced.
Or let us open a very different volume. These Commentaries of Cæsar were written amidst the turmoil of conflict. These are lines penned, one might suppose, in the fastnesses of ancient Germany, or during the harassing attacks of the fickle Gauls, or in the fogs and privations of our own Britain. The whole was evidently composed by snatches, and is the work of a man of action, who could as easily conquer a country as describe it. But little