And whether o'er the seas or earth he flies, With rapid force they bear him down the skies But first he grasps within his awful hand The mark of sovereign power, his magic wand; With this he draws the ghost from hollow graves; With this he drives them from the Stygian waves: * * * * Thus arm'd, the god begins his airy race, And drives the racking clouds along the liquid space." Dryden. 295 In reference to the whole scene that follows, the remarks of Coleridge are well worth reading:-- "By a close study of life, and by a true and natural mode of expressing everything, Homer was enabled to venture upon the most peculiar and difficult situations, and to extricate himself from them with the completest success. The whole scene between Achilles and Priam, when the latter comes to the Greek camp for the purpose of redeeming the body of Hector, is at once the most profoundly skilful, and yet the simplest and most affecting passage in the Iliad. Quinctilian has taken notice of the following speech of Priam, the rhetorical artifice of which is so transcendent, that if genius did not often, especially in oratory, unconsciously fulfil the most subtle precepts of criticism, we might be induced, on this account alone, to consider the last book of the Iliad as what is called spurious, in other words, of later date than the rest of the poem. Observe the exquisite taste of Priam in occupying the mind of Achilles, from the outset, with the image of his father; in gradually introducing the parallel of his own situation; and, lastly, mentioning Hector's name when he perceives that the hero is softened, and then only in such a manner as to flatter the pride of the conqueror. The ego d'eleeino