Xll 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



other themes with livelier pride or more intense 

 exertion. 



The most careless reader of these odes must 

 be struck by the excessive admiration of wealth, 

 magnificence, and every species of greatness, to 

 which we have alluded as a characteristic of Pin- 

 dar's mind. Splendour was the passion of his 

 soul : splendour of achievement, splendour of 

 renown, splendour of station and outward cir- 

 cumstances. His very pride seems to have 

 suggested to him that nothing but splendour was 

 worthy of his muse. His genius, to use a figure 

 of his own, was the eagle of Jove, that would not 

 be severed from the sceptre and the god. These 

 aristocratic predilections, this enthusiastic attach- 

 ment to munificent monarchs and chiefs of 

 ancient fame, were in perfect unison with the 

 whole tenor of his destiny ; born, as he wai, in 

 the midst of the Pythian festival, living surround- 

 ed by shows of solemn pomp, and dying, as be 

 had lived, in the full blaze of public ceremony, 

 in the centre of a theatre, and while rapt in those 

 emotions of rejoicing sympathy, which such 

 scenes were sure to awaken in his bosom. To 

 those, however, who may deem apology requisite 

 for the indulgence of so stately a temper, it may 

 be urged in behalf of Pindar, that, as in the case 

 of many remarkable poets, the abstract feeling of 

 veneration was predominant in his mental con- 

 stitution, and that it was called forth not merely 

 by rank and opulence among mankind, but even 

 more powerfully by the contemplation of the 

 divine attributes. Hence that glow of piety 

 which shines so brightly in his odes, sometimes 

 breaking out in expressions of the deepest awe, 

 or in sublime pictures of deity, and sometimes 

 assuming an aspect of moral beauty, adding 

 force and lustre to the lessons of wisdom. The 

 latter modification of religious feeling has given 

 birth to some of the noblest passages in the poetry 

 of Pindar. He was well aware that emotion does 

 not exclude sentiment ; that the ethics of the 

 heart are not less sound than those of the brain ; 

 and that nature is often hurried, in moments of 

 excitement, into the innermost shrines of truth. 

 But he knew, likewise, that the philosophy of 

 such moments is prompt and peremptory ; oracu- 

 lar not syllogistic ; and this knowledge has 

 secured him from frequently offending against 

 the genuine character of lyric song by lengthen- 

 ed trains of moral reflection. His example, 

 indeed, strongly supports a doctrine primarily 

 suggested by the study of the heart itself, that 

 the lyric transport should not be abated by many 

 thoughts of a meditative cast ; and that the middle 

 region, which certain critics have discovered ; 

 that mild and temperate clime in which they 



place the ethical and philosophic ode ; is properly 

 the province not of lyric but of didactic poetry. 

 No opposition to this doctrine can fairly be 

 grounded upon the strains of moral sentiment, so 

 frequently found in the choral parts of ancient 

 tragedy. For it may be argued that these are 

 the offspring of peculiar circumstances, allowable, 

 on a principle of contrast, as points of repose 

 amid the passions of the drama ; that they nre, 

 at whatever length delivered, still the dictates of 

 a moral sense, brought into sudden energy by 

 the excitement of the moment ; and that, upon 

 the whole, the greater portion of the choric odes 

 rather abound in glowing portraitures of the 

 objects of sense, in rapid narration, in brief 

 allusions to heroic or divine achievements, in short 

 in all those brilliant qualities that adorn the 

 verse of Pindar. A rapid movement, though 

 perfectly consistent with the utmost grace in the 

 transitions, is impressed upon the whole style of 

 this genuine lyrist; distinguishing on the one 

 hand his bursts of moral feeling from the for- 

 mality of didactic poetry, and on the other his 

 sketches of incident or action from the copious- 

 ness of epic narrative. The latter distinction 

 should be especially noted by those, who would 

 understand wherein consists both the resemblance 

 and the difference of heroic and lyric song. 

 Narrative is a prominent feature of both ; but the 

 narrative of the Epos abounds in full details, and 

 dwells with lingering fondness upon the minutest 

 particulars of an action; whereas the narrative 

 of the ode is of a summary and impetuous char- 

 acter, bounding from part to part of a history 

 with unflagging vigour, and touching only upon 

 the roost salient and striking points. This is the 

 true source of nearly all the obscurity which 

 modern readers, not so well versed as the ancients 

 were in the ground-work of their own heroic 

 legends and family traditions, have to complain 

 of in the writings of Pindar ; for nothing can be 

 less like his style than the laboured incoherence 

 and affected wildness of many of his imitators, 

 whose faults, though belonging entirely to them- 

 selves, have been unjustly visited upon the name 

 of their master. 



The diction of Pindar, being founded upon a 

 Homeric basis, and sparingly mixed up with 

 Doric and ./Eolic peculiarities, has no philological 

 value as a specimen of dialect But his works 

 have a double value as pertaining to the Doric 

 school, and thus affording something, out of a 

 mass of lost poetry and philosophy, to set off 

 against the vast preponderance of Ionian and 

 Attic literature. His lofty temper, and undis- 

 guised antipathy to the democratic principle, 

 are strongly expressive of that school, and in 



