Vlll 



bined to elicit and reward the skill of those who 

 could gratify passions so vehement. Hence not 

 only Ionia, that seat of the Greeks where the 

 most brilliant success in this species of composi- 

 tion was attained, but almost every part of the 

 countries possessed by them, resounded with the 

 voice of minstrels. Absurd as it is to imagine 

 Iliat the contributions of many separate bards 

 could have been blended into poems of such 

 marked unity and surpassing lustre as the Iliad 

 and Odyssey, it is yet undoubtedly true that the 

 bards were a numerous class. The " fames of the 

 heroes" such as Achilles chanted to the harp,* 

 the Argonautic expedition, the siege of Thebes, 

 the death of Meleager, above all the "tale of 

 Troy," were the most prominent subjects of their 

 lays. By the constant celebration of these 

 favourite themes the powers of the Grecian 

 mind were called out and cherished, the language 

 was improved in copiousness and harmony, and 

 the versification was moulded into an exquisite 

 structure, which no subsequent endeavours were 

 able to exceL Brighter, from time to time, 

 shone the gleams of creative fancy ; sweeter and 

 more sweet arose the sounds that were heard in 

 every quarter, until at last came that burst of 

 amazing sweetness, strength, and majesty, which 

 was destined to overpower all previous strains, 

 and to fill the ears of posterity with its own 

 music. 



That great authors represent the times in which 

 they flourish is an opinion commonly advanced 

 and admitted. The proposition is true in rela- 

 tion to those who have taken their subjects from 

 their own times, and so have been induced and 

 enabled to draw from the life a picture of con- 

 temporary manners, feelings, and events. But 

 it is more generally true to say that a great 

 author represents the mind of his age ; partly as 

 by his influence on others he moulds their tastes 

 and understandings to his personal bent, and 

 still more as his genius empowers him to seize 

 in its real essence the spirit of the time, to raise 

 it to the highest pitch, to embody it in the most 

 striking forms, and to bequeath for the instruc- 

 tion of future generations an unerring index to 

 the intellectual condition of his own. Thus, in 

 the poetry of HOMER,-]- while we can perceive that 

 he lived on the margin, as it were, of the heroic 

 age, and that the state of things and manners 

 around him was in some respects altered from 

 that which he describes, we recognize withal a 

 sincere though splendid image of the mental 



II. B. ir. T. 189. See the MUSEUM CRITICUM, v. -i. 

 p. 244. 



t B. C. 900. 



attainments, tastes, and tendencies of his Grecian 

 contemporaries. What the Greeks knew, 

 thought, felt, loved, admired, despised, hated, 

 twenty-seven centuries ago, may be gathered 

 from his strains as fully and freshly as if there 

 had been no interval between them and ourselves 

 Whatever improvements, and doubtless they were 

 many, he might make on the language of hit 

 countrymen ; or on the compass and variety of 

 that metre, to whose first principles the genius 

 of the tongue itself must have led in the very 

 dawn of their poetry ; such as we find it in his 

 poems we may infer to have been the prevailing 

 style of composition in his day. Such in kind, 

 however inferior in excellence, was the charac- 

 ter of all that Greece could yet show of a literary 

 nature, and had later efforts redeemed from oral 

 recitation a mass of contemporary verse, the sole 

 change required in alluding to it would have been 

 one of epithet, from the Homeric to the Heroic 

 literature. Nevertheless, in the case of Homer, 

 as in that of all transcendent genius, the powers 

 and properties of an individual mind are deeply 

 impressed upon his works. There is much in 

 them which could not, we may be well assured, 

 hare emanated from any other mind. He had 

 all that the minstrels of his age possessed : he 

 had a great deal, to the measure and stature of 

 which they never attained. 



To analyse the qualities of Homer's genius 

 would happily be a superfluous task. No student 

 of general literature is ignorant of these of his 

 sublimity and pathos, his tenderness and sim- 

 plicity, his inexhaustible vigour, that seems to 

 revel in the endless display of prodigious ener- 

 gies. The universality of his powers is their 

 most astonishing attribute. He is not great in 

 any one thing ; he is greatest in all things. He 

 imagines with equal ease the terrible, the beauti- 

 ful, the mean, the loathsome ; he paints them 

 with equal force. In his descriptions of external 

 nature, in his exhibitions of human character and 

 passion, no matter what the subject, he exhausts 

 its capabilities. His pictures are true to the 

 minutest touch ; his men and women are made of 

 flesh and blood. They lose not a jot of their 

 humanity for being cast in a heroic mould. He 

 transfers himself into the bosoms of those whom 

 he brings into action ; masters the interior springs 

 of their spiritual mechanism ; and makes them 

 move, look, speak, and do, exactly as they would 

 in real circumstances. If Shakspeare appears to 

 surpass him in this particular, it is only because 

 the shades of character have been multiplied, and 

 the expressions of passion varied, since the time 

 of HOMER, by a widened range of circumstances, 

 and an increased diversity of manners and cou- 



