Note 2 — Chapter XII · LEUKABAD—AIGLE

As when in heaven the stars

Are shining round about the lustrous moon,

Exceeding bright; and all the air is still;

And every jutting peak, and beacon point

Stands clear, e’en to the wooded slopes below;

And the whole field of ether, opened out

Unfathomable, shows each particular star;

And at the sight the shepherd to his heart

Is fill’d with gladness.—Iliad viii. 551.

I have essayed a rendering of this famous simile, not because I hope to succeed where so many are supposed to have failed, but because, as may be believed of a country parsonage, I have not a single translation of it at hand. It may be objected to the one I am driven to offer that the unfathomableness of the field of ether is a modern idea; and that Homer meant immensity in the direction, not of the profundity of the celestial space, but in the direction of its expansion. Our idea, however, embraces the whole of Homer’s, and goes beyond it.

The double mention of the stars is hardly tautological; for the first mention of them is an indispensable stroke in the sketch, which was intended to convey to our minds the idea of a fine bright night; while the shining of so many particular stars in the immeasurable field of heaven is the point of the simile. As many as are the stars visible in such a sky, so many were the camp fires of the Trojan bivouac on the broad plain.