from an African of the Gold Coast', is never more at home, never more nobly himself, than in applying profound ideas to his narrative. As a poet he belongs, narrative as is his poetry, and early as is his date, to an incomparably more developed spiritual and intellectual order than the balladists, or than Scott and Macaulay; he is here as much to be distinguished from them, and in the same way, as Milton is to be distinguished from them. He is, indeed, rather to be classed with Milton than with the balladists and Scott; for what he has in common with Milton, the noble and profound application of ideas to life is the most essential part of poetic greatness. The most essentially grand and characteristic things of Homer are such things as
ἔτλην δ', οἷ' οὔπω τις ἐπιχθόνιος βροτὸς ἂλλος,
ἀνδρὸς παιδοφόνοιο ποτὶ στόμα χεῖρ' ὀρέγεσθαι[1],
or as
καὶ σὲ, γέρον, τὸ πρὶν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὄλβιον εἶναι[2],
- ↑ 'And I have endured—the like whereof no soul
upon the earth hath yet endured—to carry to my lips
the hand of him who slew my child'.—Iliad, xxiv.
505. - ↑ 'Nay and thou too, old man, in times past wert,
as we hear, happy'.—Iliad, xxiv. 543. In the
original this line, for mingled pathos and dignity,
is perhaps without a rival even in Homer.
