s
really fought we must go to the historian; the poet will tell us how
it was fought, he stirs the blood and fires the imagination by his
tale of noble deeds and deaths. His strength rests upon the foundation
of reality that underlies his artistic construction: he has never let
go his hold upon sound experience: and the truth is felt in all the
colour and detail of the picture, though the whole is a work of vivid
imagination. We cannot verify, obviously, the facts and motives which
led to the siege of Troy, although Herodotus appears to agree that the
cause of that war was a Spartan woman's abduction, and only examines
the point whether the Asiatic or the European Greeks were first to
blame in the matter. Professor Murray prefers to believe in a myth
growing out of the strife of light and darkness in the sky: but the
rape of beautiful girls by seafaring rovers was evidently common
enough in those times, so why should not the Homeric version be right?
We can always be sure that the old poems represent accurately life,
manners, and character; and from the analogy of those legends whose
origin is known, we may fairly infer that the root of a famous story,
divine or human, is first planted in fact, not in fancy; just as the
Chanson de Roland is founded on a real battle in the pass of
Roncevalles.

Such, therefore, were the conditions and fortunate coincidences which
produced the finest heroic poetry. You had the popular hero--the noble
warrior who knew his business; and you had also the poet or
story-teller who knew his art, could give you a dramatic picture
founded upon fact, and could always keep close to reality, without
crowding his canvas with unnecessary particulars; he gave you the
ruling motives, actions, and feelings of the age. The excellence of
the work lay in simplicity and directness of treatment, in a sureness
of line drawing, in a power of striking the right note, whether of
praise or sorrow, of glory or grief. There is no staginess or
far-fetched emotion, or artificial scene-painting: the style strikes
the right chords of passion or pity, and stamps upon the mind a vivid
impression of situation and character. Moreover, the heroic poet, as a
composer, had this advantage in early days, that continual recital
before an appreciative public must have had the effect of polishing up
his best verses, and polishing off his bad ones. As the theme was
always some well-known story or personage, it was possible to omit