thus uniting in his plan and bringing forward in his details everything which could lay hold of the affections, the prejudices, and vanity of his countrymen. Of his characters we need only say that, like those of Shakspeare, they are stamped with nature's own image and superscription. Though all are possessed of valor and courage, yet they are so distinguished from one another by certain peculiarities of disposition and manners, that to distinguish them it is hardly necessary to hear their names. Achilles is brave, and Hector is brave, so are Ajax, Menelaus, and Diomede; but the bravery of Hector is not of the same kind with that of Ajax, and no one will mistake the battle-shout of the son of Atreus for the war-cry of Tydides.

Homer's machinery, as all epic machinery must be, was founded on the popular belief in the visible appearance of the gods; and on account of this belief he was not less favored by the circumstances under which he introduced them, than he was by those which enabled him to represent his heroes. It cast around his whole subject a sublimity which it could not otherwise have had, giving occasion to noble description, and tending to excite that admiration which is the leading aim of the epic.

We have made this analysis of the Iliad, to show in what way all things combined in Homer's age to assist him in giving a perfect outward manifestation

of the heroic character of his times.

He wrote in that stage of society when man's physical existence assumed an importance in the mind, like that of our immortality, and gave to all without a power and dignity not their own. This it was which imparted an heroic greatness to war which cannot now be seen in it. That far-reaching idea of time, which seems to expand our thoughts with limitless existence, gives to our mental struggles a greatness they could not have before had. We each of us feel within our own bosoms a great, an immortal foe, which, if we have subdued, we may meet with calmness every other, knowing that earth contains no greater; but which, if we have not, it will continually appear in those petty contests with others by which we do but show our own cowardice. The Greeks, on the con-trary, lived only for their country, and drew everything within the sphere of their national views; their highest exemplification of morality was patriot-ism. Of Homer's heroes it may with peculiar propriety be said that they were but children of a larger growth, and they could have no conception of power that was not perceived in its visible effects. "The world," as Milton says of our first parents, "was all before them," and not within them, and their mission was to go forth and make a material impression on the material world. The soul of Homer was the mirror of this outward world, and in his verse we

have it shown to us with the distinctness and reality of the painter's page. Lucan calls him the prince of painters, and with him Cicero agrees, when he says, "Quæ species ac forma pugnæ, quæ acies, quod remigium, qui motus hominum, qui ferarum non ita expictus est, ut quæ ipse non viderit, nos ut videremus effecerit?" It is needless perhaps to say that this state of the mind gives both a reason and excuse for those many epithets, which a false criticism and a false delicacy of taste is so fond of censuring. Such critics would blame the poet for praising the physical strength of his heroes, in short for representing his gods such as they were believed to be, and painting his warriors such as they were. When we look back upon the pages of their history, we cannot contemplate the greatness there exhibited, without a feeling of sorrow that they had not lived under influences as favorable as our own, without a sense of unworthiness at not having exhibited characters corresponding with the high privileges we enjoy. We respect that grandeur of mind in the heroes of Homer which led them to sacrifice a mere earthly existence for the praise of all coming ages. They have not been disappointed. Worlds to them unknown have read of their deeds, and generations yet unborn shall honor them. They live on a page which the finger of time strives in vain to efface, which shall ever remain an eternal monument of

disgrace to those of after times, who, though gifted with higher views of excellence, have yet striven to erect a character on deeds like theirs. We rever

ence not in Hector and Achilles the mere display of physical power, we reverence not the manners of their times which but too often call forth our horror and disgust; but we do reverence and honor those motives which even in the infancy of the human mind served to raise it above the dominion of sense, and taught it to grasp at a life beyond the narrow limits of its earthly vision.

This state of things gave to the Iliad and Odyssey that intense epic interest, which we fail to find in later heroic poems. As the mind advances, a stronger sympathy with the inner man of the heart is more and more felt, and becomes more and more the characteristic of literature. In the expanded mind and cultivated affections, a new interest is awakened, dramatic poetry succeds the epic, thus satisfying the want produced by the farther development of our nature. For the interest of the epic consists in that character of greatness that in the infancy of the mind is given to physical action and the objects associated with it; but the interest of the drama consists in those mental struggles which precede physical action, and to which in the progress of man the greatness of the other becomes subordinate. For as the mind expands and the moral

power is developed, the mightiest conflicts are born within, outward actions lose their grandeur, except to the eye, for the soul looks upon them but as results of former battles won and lost, upon whose decision, and upon whose alone, its destiny hung. This is the mystery of that calm, more awful than the roar of battle, which rests on the spirits of the mighty, and which the hand of the Grecian sculptor strove to fix on the brow of his god. Though Homer has given variety to his poem by the introduction of dialogue, and thus rendered it, in one sense, often dramatic; yet we find it is the mere transferring of the narrative from his own lips to those of others. The interest is still without, it is not the interest of sentiment, but of description. This character of the Greeks, as might be supposed, is shown in their language; and illustrates their tendency in early times to look upon themselves in all reflex acts, whether external or internal, as patients rather than agents; a tendency to use the words of another, which is exemplified in every page of the Homeric poems, and which belongs more or less to every people in an early stage of civilization, before the nation comes of age, and acquires the consciousness along with the free use of its powers. This seems to be the reason why so many of the verbs employed by the Greeks to denote states of mind or of feeling, have a passive form, such as gázoμar,