Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/223

SIMPLICITY OF HOMERIC POETRY. 20 / rith dialogue, its vivid pictures of living agents, always clearly and sharply individualized, whether in the commanding proportions of Achilles and Odysseus, in the graceful presence of Helen and Penelope, or in the more humble contrast of Eu- maeus and Melanthius ; and always, moreover, animated by the frankness with which his heroes give utterance to all their transient emotions and even all their infirmities, its constant reference to those coarser veins of feeling and palpable motives which belong to all men in common, its fulness of graphic details, freshly draAvn from the visible and audible world, and though often homely, never tame, nor trenching upon that limit of satiety to which the Greek mind was so keenly alive, lastly, its perpetual junction of gods and men in the same picture, and familiar appeal to ever-present divine agency, in harmony with the interpretation of nature at that time universal. It is undoubtedly easier to feel than to describe the impressive influence of Homeric narrative : but the time and circumstances under which that influence was first, and most powerfully felt, preclude the possibility of explaining it by comprehensive and elaborate comparisons, such as are implied in Aristotle's remarks upon the structure of the poems. The critic who seeks the explanation in the right place will not depart widely from the point of view of those rude auditors to whom the poems were originally addressed, or from the susceptibilities and capacities common to the human bosom in every stage of progressive cul- ture. And though the refinements and delicacies of the poems, as well as their general structure, are a subject of highly interest- ing criticism, yet it is not to these that Homer owes his wide- spread and imperishable popularity. Still less is it true, as the well-known observations of Horace would lead us to believe, broad highway and the market-place, touching the common sympathies and satisfying the mental appetencies of his countrymen with unrivalled effect ; but exempt from ulterior views, either selfish or didactic, and immersed ia the same medium of practical life and experience, religiously construed, as his auditors. No nation has ever yet had so perfect and touching an expo- sition of its early social mind as the Iliad and Odyssey exhibit. In the verbal criticism of Homer, the Alexandrine literati seem to hava made a very great advance, as compared with the glossographers who pre- ceded them. (See Lehrs, De Studiis Aristarchi, Dissert, ii. p. 42.)