while the work of historical analysis is
too often weak with loss, through the very labor of its miniature
touches, or useless in clumsy and vapid veracity of externals, and
complacent security of having done all that is required for the portrait,
when it has measured the breadth of the forehead and the length of the
nose.

18. The first of requirements, then, for the right reading of myths, is
the understanding of the nature of all true vision by noble persons;
namely, that it is founded on constant laws common to all human nature;
that it perceives, however darkly, things which are for all ages true;
that we can only understand it so far as we have some perception of the
same truth; and that its fulness is developed and manifested more and
more by the reverberation of it from minds of the same mirror-temper, in
succeeding ages. You will understand Homer better by seeing his
reflection in Dante, as you may trace new forms and softer colors in a
hillside, redoubled by a lake.

I shall be able partly to show you, even to-night, how much, in the
Homeric vision of Athena, has been made clearer by the advance of time,
being thus essentially and eternally true; but I must in the outset
indicate the relation to that central thought of the imagery of the
inferior deities of storm.

19. And first I will take the myth of AEolus (the "sage Hippotades" of
Milton), as it is delivered pure by Homer from the early times.

Why do you suppose Milton calls him "sage"? One does not usually think
of the winds as very thoughtful or deliberate powers. But hear Homer:
"Then we came to the AEolian island, and there dwelt AEolus Hippotades,
dear to the deathless gods; there he dwelt in a floating island, and
round it was a wall of brass that could not be broken; and the smooth
rock of it ran up sheer. To whom twelve children were born in the sacred
chambers,--six daughters and six strong sons; and they dwell foreer with
their beloved father and their mother, strict in duty; and with them are
laid up a thousand benefits; and the misty house around them rings with
fluting all the day long." Now, you are to note first, in this
description, the wall of brass and the sheer rock. You will find,
throughout the fables of the tempest-group, that the brazen wall and the
precipice (occurring in another myth as the brazen tower of Danae) are
always connected with the idea of the towering cloud lighted by the sun,
here truly described as a floa