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we need not stay to discuss : the result at all events is the standard 

 for all epics, and therefore the poem, which every-one who has 

 aimed at this highest species of excellence in poetry, has taken for 

 his model. The series of actions upon which the early poet or 

 poets, known by the name of Homer, have founded the poem is 

 the fighting about Troy : this was an event of supreme import- 

 ance to the nations of Greece : it was an attempt to combine 

 the different tribes in their little country to united action : it was 

 a first contest of Europe against Asia ; it recalled in its story 

 the traditions of the leading families of Greece, for the sovereigns 

 of each petty state could find in their ancestry one who fought 

 under Agamemnon on the plains of windy Troy. So to the 

 Greek nothing was so suitable for an epic or heroic poem as this 

 Trojan war, and with one special phase of it the Iliad deals : it 

 recounts the disasters occasioned by disunion among the Grecian 

 chieftains and how reconciliation brought about success : the 

 invocation of the poem 



" Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring 

 Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing," 



is the keynote of the whole, and while the story is the story of 

 an action, important in its causes and effects, the mode in which 

 it is told, the stateliness of style, the vigorous movement, the variety 

 of incident, the simplicity of language, the delineation of character, 

 the management of rhythm, all combine to make a perfect picture 

 of wbat an epic should be. The Odyssey is a fitting sequel to 

 the Iliad : here the story is of the final wanderings of Ulysses, 

 a hero among the warriors about Troy, who having offended the 

 gods, is condemned to be kept away from his native island : for 

 ten years he has wandered, and at last his return is decided 

 upon, and the man who has seen the cities of many nations, and 

 known their manners, after suffering shipwreck, and after being 

 miraculously preserved, arrives at his palace, and dispossesses 

 those who had occupied his estates. Though partaking more of 

 the nature of a romance than the first poem does, it cannot be 

 denied that the name of epic must be assigned to this ; in all 

 qualities, except the importance of the action, it is fitly to be 

 compared with the Iliad, and the moral is as excellent. The 

 Iliad is the lesson or warning to states, the Odyssey is the lesson 

 to the individual, that im^jiety meets with punishment, that 

 repentance is acceptable, and that " he that endureth to the end the 

 same shall be saved." It gives the most charming pictures of home 

 life in those distant ages and far-off climes, "love poetry of the 

 heart and of the hearth, and the beauties of every- day human 

 life." Such are the two chief poems of antiquity which are 

 given to our epic poets for imitation. The Latin poem, to which 

 these two give the inspiration, is the ^neid, or the adventm-es 

 of ^neas : reversing the procedure of the Greek poems, the 



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