. Pindar says, quite simply, "I cannot
think so-and-so of the gods. It must have been this way--it cannot have
been that way--that the thing was done." And as late among the Latins as
the days of Horace, this sincerity remains. Horace is just as true and
simple in his religion as Wordsworth; but all power of understanding any
of the honest classic poets has been taken away from most English
gentlemen by the mechanical drill in verse-writing at school. Throughout
the whole of their lives afterwards, they never can get themselves quit
of the notion that all verses were written as an exercise, and that
Minerva was only a convenient word for the last of a hexameter, and
Jupiter for the last but one.

48. It is impossible that any notion can be more fallacious or more
misleading in its consequences. All great song, from the first day when
human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song. With deliberate
didactic purpose the tragedians--with pure and native passion the lyrists
--fitted their perfect words to their dearest faiths. "Operosa parvus
carmina fingo." "I, little thing that I am, weave my laborious songs" as
earnestly as the bee among the bells of thyme on the Matin mountains. Yes,
and he dedicates his favorite pine to Diana, and he chants his autumnal
hymn to the Faun that guards his fields, and he guides the noble youth and
maids of Rome in their choir to Apollo, and he tells the farmer's little
girl that the gods will love her, though she has only a handful of salt
and meal to give them--just as earnestly as ever English gentleman taught
Christian faith to English youth in England's truest days.

49. Then, lastly, the creed of the philosophers of sages varied
according to the character and knowledge of each; their relative
acquaintance with the secrets of natural science, their intellectual and
sectarian egotism, and their mystic or monastic tendencies, for there is
a classic as well as a mediaeval monasticism. They end in losing the life
of Greece in play upon words; but we owe to their early thought some of
the soundest ethics, and the foundation of the best practical laws, yet
known to mankind.

50. Such was the general vitality of the heathen creed in its strength.
Of its direct influence on conduct, it is, as I said, impossible for me
to speak now; only, remember always, in endeavoring to form a judgment of
it, that what of good or right the heathens did, they did looking for no
reward. T