RISE AND PROGRESS 



the gods. It was in regular sequence that after 

 the bard should come the system-maker, with an 

 attempt to reduce to order the desultory sallies 

 of an imagination, which had given its own 

 colouring to every thing that fell within its 

 range. Perhaps, too, since Hesiod belonged, by 

 residence at least, to a part of European Greece, 

 his breast was imbued with the spirit of that Or- 

 phic poetry, of which we have no genuine re- 

 mains, but which was certainly didactic in its 

 tone, and devoted to the inculcation of ethics 

 and theology. Now the Orphic poetry, together 

 with the rites of the Bacchanalian worship, first 

 introduced into Thrace, seem to have taken hold 

 of the Grecian mind subsequently to the epoch 

 of Homer. A contemplative cast of disposition, 

 clearly discernible in his strains, will likewise 

 serve to explain why Hesiod should have inclined 

 to the mysteries of a symbolical religion, rather 

 than to the more popular and romantic repre- 

 sentations of the Homeric muse. The genius of 

 the elder and far greater poet asserted, however, 

 in this, as in all other points, a decided ascen- 

 dency. We recognize it already in those Hymns 

 in honour of the deities, commonly called Ho- 

 meric, which came not, indeed, from Homer 

 himself, but some of which are probably little 

 later than the age of Hesiod, about eight centuries 

 before the Christian era. 



These HYMNS* form the connecting link between 

 the Epic poetry, which, after being carried to per- 

 fection by Homer, ceased for a long period to be 

 successfully cultivated by the Greeks, and those 

 Lyric effusions, under whose shape their inspira- 

 tion was next bodied forth. The steps of the tran- 

 sition can be distinctly traced. Even the recita- 

 tions of Heroic verse had been sustained by a 

 simple musical accompaniment; but the music, 

 to which the Hymns were sung, was apparently of 

 a more prominent character, and thus led on to 

 that decided influence of the lyre and pipe, which 

 had so strong an effect upon the metre, style, and 

 whole construction of the later poetry. Again, 

 in the Epic narrative, the person of the minstrel 

 was almost entirely concealed ; but in the Hymns, 

 as in the strains of Hesiod, it became more visible, 

 and so prepared the minds of Grecian audiences 

 for those explicit revelations of individual 

 feeling, in which Lyric poetry, the poetry of 

 emotion, largely indulges. Through all the 

 Greek Lyric compositions, whether appearing in 

 odes, in songs, or in the choruses of Tragedy 

 and Comedy, this is the predominant tone. We 

 find it in the enthusiasm and bitter fierceness of 

 Archilochus ;f in the thrilling, burning, heart- 



'* B.C. 750. 



t B. c. TOO. 



searching energies of love-tortured Sappho ;* in 

 the regal spirit and lofty pride that mixes itself 

 up with all the fire of Pindar :f three illustrious 

 names that mark the close of each successive cen- 

 tury from the date of Hesiod, down to that of the 

 Persian war, one of the most distinguished epoch, 

 in the literary history of Greece. 



During this long interval of three hundred 

 years, of which the remains are miserably scanty 

 in comparison with its extent and importance, 

 there occurred many events of vast moment to 

 the progress of Grecian literature. It includes 

 the age of Solon,J and the reduction of' the old 

 heroic minstrelsy to writing, of which the prae 

 tice had then become current, and the materials 

 abundant. It includes the rise of prose compo. 

 sition in the works of the early historians, $ whose 

 chronicles, though but a few fragments of them 

 survive, appear evidently to have set the example, 

 and paved the way, for the immortal muses of 

 Herodotus. It embraces, also, the separation of 

 the Greek tongue into dialects, a thing observ- 

 able in every language, but rendered most con- 

 spicuous in this instance, by the rank and value 

 of the several bodies of literature, thus distin- 

 guished from each other. It is true that, from 

 the mode in which the ravages of time have 

 operated, the relics of Ionic and Attic literature 

 are by so much the most considerable, as to throw 

 the rest into the shade; yet the /Eolic and Dorian 

 branches, to judge even from the fragments we 

 possess, maintained an equal elevation, at least 

 during the period now marked out, and until 

 the culminating star of Athenian genius usurped 

 the sky. While the heroic times, and those im- 

 mediately succeeding them, still endured, and the 

 forms of manners and policy among the Grecian 

 tribes were nearly uniform, there was one gene- 

 ral language of composition, somewhat modified 

 by circumstances, chiefly of a local nature. Ho- 

 mer on the coasts of Asia Minor, Hesiod in Bce- 

 otia, and other poets in different quarters, em- 

 ployed the same form of their native tongue, 

 diversified in none of its essential characteristics; 

 and that form was undoubtedly the current speech 

 of their countrymen, so far adapted to the exi- 

 gencies of versification, and subjected to such 

 occasional process of extension or elision, as was 

 possible in the day of no grammars and glossa- 

 ries, without risk of baulking the comprehension 

 of their hearers. But with the various forms of 

 life and government that followed the decline of 

 the heroic age, there arose simultaneous varia- 

 tions in the language and complexion of Greek 



* B. C. 600. + B. C. 500. i B. C. 600. 

 j Cadmus of Milelus, B. C. 600, Hecatinus, B. C. 500, & 



