304 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



occasion serves, of expressions, sentences, often even 

 of complete passages, which have been already applied 

 in a corresponding, or occasionally even in a wholly 

 different relation. The same epithets are repeatedly 

 applied to the same deity or hero. A long message is 

 delivered in the very words which have been already 

 used by the sender of the message. In one well-known 

 instance (in Book II.), not only is a message de- 

 livered thus, but the person who has received it repeats 

 it to others in precisely the same terms. In the combat 

 between Hector and Ajax (Book VI.), the flight of 

 Ajax' spear and the movement by which Hector avoids 

 the missile, are described in six lines, differing only as 

 to proper names from those which had been already 

 used in describing the encounter between Paris and 

 Menelaus (Book III.). 



This peculiarity would be a decided blemish in a 

 written poem. Tennyson, indeed, occasionally copies 

 Homer's manner for instance, in f Enid,' he twice 

 repeats the line 



As careful robins eye the delver's toil ; 



but with a good taste which prevents the repetition 

 from becoming offensive. The fact is, that the pe- 

 culiarity marks Homer as the singer, not the writer, 

 of poetry. I would not be understood as accepting 

 the theory, according to which the f Iliad ' is a mere 

 string of ballads. I imagine that no one who justly 

 appreciates that noble poem would be willing to 

 countenance such a theory. But that the whole poem 



