Hellenic nation drew as from an ever-flowing fountain. If it did not form their religion, it helped to maintain something of a common language amidst great diversities of Hellenic speech, and also a sentiment of community which the possession of a great work in a common language must ever produce. Homer was a book for the lyric poet, the dramatist, the historian, the orator, and the philosopher; and finally for the critic and the commentator, into whose hands as into those of devouring death all mortal works must come at last. But Homer has survived all his critics ancient and modern: he resists even the attacks of commentators and translators. new and ever young he is still the best example of that simplicity of style, which comes out of the consciousness of power, and is the mark of genius and an elevated soul.

Ever

But Zeus is gone to rest, and we must rest too. Writers, readers, and critics must have sleep. If the writer goes on too long, the reader will yawn, and the critic will be revenged, if in no other way, by not reading and by consequence condemning. I shall positively finish in the next chapter. It will be a real last chapter. I retire like Priam to refresh my aged body and my wearied soul, cherishing

good thoughts and hopes of another day; not like Homer's king of heaven, who closes not his eyes after he is put to bed by the poet, but lies awake maliciously plotting how he may keep his promise to a fair goddess and deceive Agamemnon with a wicked dream.

OF STYLE.

DO not always think as Montesquieu thinks, but I always look into him with

pleasure. He is lively, and has good

sense. He He says, "I have always had a decided taste

for the works of the ancients: I have admired several criticisms which have been written against them, but I have always admired the ancients. I have studied my taste, and I have examined whether it was not one of these diseased tastes which a man should not trust to; but the more I have examined, the more I have felt that I was right in having thought as I have thought."

Our ancients are the Greeks and Romans, or rather the Athenians and a few other Greeks; and our Romans are the men who wrote in the Latin tongue. These people in the earlier part of their national existence wrote nothing; then a few wrote, and wrote

well; and then many wrote, and most of them wrote ill; just as it is now. Many good Greek and Latin books have been lost, and some which are worth nothing still exist. Perhaps we have as much of the ancients as is good for us: we have certainly a great deal more than we have time to read with care.

I never could comprehend the common story of the origin of the Greek Drama, next to Homer the noblest literary work that man has done. You may find the story anywhere, so many have written about it repeating the old tale one after another till we are tired of it. All the real elements of a drama are in the Iliad. It is itself dramatic, though it could not be made into one drama; but we have dramatic scenes in almost every book; and in the tale of Troy and all its incidents the Greek dramatists found some of their best materials. How wisely these men went about their work, not inventing fictions, but taking what they found in popular story and using it well; not merely producing old tales to please an audience or to gratify national vanity or for a political purpose, though there may be something of all this in some of their plays, but under the names of kings and heroes and men and women of olden time showing the nature of man, his loves and hatreds, his sor

rows and his sufferings and the infinite variety of human life.

We know that the early Greeks made dramas or representations in which the gods appeared. They represented the marriage of Zeus and Here in some way; and they might, if they liked, have represented the quarrels and loves of the celestial couple as Homer did. It was not known to the Greeks, how they came to marry their lyric poetry to the real drama, nor can we discover now. The dramatists chose for the dramatic part a style of writing, the Iambic verse, which approaches nearest to the language of common life; and this is that part of their style which I am looking at. The lyric poetry in the dramas has great beauty, but also great faults. It is sometimes very obscure, even where the text is not corrupt, and it is disfigured by many strange thoughts expressed in stranger language. These are great faults; but still the lyric poetry of the Greek drama is unequalled by anything that has appeared since.

There were minstrels who sung or recited verses before Homer's time, and after him too. They made some kind of music when they recited, and sometimes they recited without an instrument. The rhapsodists, as they were called, would assume and