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I fear that I must be a ridiculous teacher when I have so much

difficulty in making myself apprehended. Like a bad speaker,

therefore, I will not take the whole of the subject, but will

break a piece off in illustration of my meaning. You know the

first lines of the Iliad, in which the poet says that Chryses

prayed Agamemnon to release his daughter, and that Agamemnon flew

into a passion with him; whereupon Chryses, failing of his

object, invoked the anger of the God against the Achaeans. Now as

far as these lines,

'And he prayed all the Greeks, but especially the two sons of

Atreus, the chiefs of the people,'