But since we _must_ go, though not here, and that besides the chance.
The moment the word _chance_ strikes our ear, we are irresistibly carried back to _advance_ and to the whole previous line, which, according to Homer’s own feeling, we ought to have left behind us entirely, and to be moving farther and farther away from.
Rhyme certainly, by intensifying antithesis, can intensify separation, and this is precisely what Pope does; but this balanced rhetorical antithesis, though very effective, is entirely un-Homeric. And this is what I mean by saying that Pope fails to render Homer, because he does not render his plainness and directness of style and diction. Where Homer marks separation by moving away, Pope marks it by antithesis. No passage could show this better than the passage I have just quoted, on which I will pause for a moment.
Robert Wood, whose _Essay on the Genius of Homer_ is mentioned by Goethe as one of the books which fell into his hands when his powers were first developing themselves, and strongly interested him, relates of this passage a striking story. He says that in 1762, at the end of the Seven Years’ War, being then Under-Secretary of State, he was directed to wait upon the President of the Council, Lord Granville, a few days before he died, with the preliminary articles of the Treaty of Paris. ‘I found him’, he continues, ‘so languid, that I proposed postponing my business for another time; but he insisted that I should stay, saying, it could not prolong his life to neglect his duty; and repeating the following passage out of Sarpedon’s speech, he dwelled with particular emphasis on the third line, which recalled to his mind the distinguishing part he had taken in public affairs:
ὦ πέπον, εἰ μὲν γὰρ, πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε, αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε ἔσσεσθ’, οὔτε κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην,[5] οὔτε κέ σε στέλλοιμι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν· νῦν δ’—ἔμπης γὰρ Κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν βρότον, οὐδ’ ὑπαλύξαι— ἴομεν.
His Lordship repeated the last word several times with a calm and determinate resignation; and, after a serious pause of some minutes, he desired to hear the Treaty read, to which he listened with great attention, and recovered spirits enough to declare the approbation of a dying statesman (I use his own words) “on the most glorious war, and most honourable peace, this nation ever saw”’[6].