Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/275

Rh celebrating them, and could not resist his natural disposition to give mankind offence. Every one was now intently fastened upon him, while he undertook to prove, that those games signified nothing to the taking of Troy, and therefore only furnished an impertinent episode: that the fall of the lesser Ajax in cow-dung, the squabble of the chariot race, and other accidents which attend such sports, are mean or trifling; and a world of other remarks, for which he still affirmed Homer to be a fool, and which they that heard him took for studied invectives against those exercises they were then employed in. Men who frequent sports, as they are of a cheerful disposition, so are they lovers of poetry: this, together with the opinion they were affronted, wrought them up to impatience and further licenses; there was particularly a young Athenian gentleman, who was to run three chariots in those games, who being an admirer of Homer, could no longer contain himself, but cried out, "What in the name of Castor have we here, Zoilus from Thrace?" and as he said it, struck him with a chariot whip. Immediately then a hundred whips were seen curling round his head; so that his face, naturally deformed, and heightened by pain to its utmost caricatura, appeared in the midst of them, as we may fancy the visage of envy, if at any time her snakes rise in rebellion to lash their mistress. Nor was this all the punishment they decreed him,