our souls must deal; and the soul of the book is whatsoever beautiful,
and true, and noble we can find in it. It matters not to us whether the
poet was altogether conscious of the meanings which we can find in him.
Consciously or unconsciously to him, the meanings must be there; for
were they not there to be seen, how could we see them? There are
those among the uninitiate vulgar--and those, too, who carry under
the philosophic cloak hearts still uninitiate--who revile such
interpretations as merely the sophistic and arbitrary sports of fancy.
It lies with them to show what Homer meant, if our spiritual meanings be
absurd; to tell the world why Homer is admirable, if that for which we
hold him up to admiration does not exist in him. Will they say that the
honour which he has enjoyed for ages was inspired by that which seems to
be his first and literal meaning? And more, will they venture to impute
that literal meaning to him? can they suppose that the divine soul of
Homer could degrade itself to write of actual and physical feastings,
and nuptials, and dances, actual nightly thefts of horses, actual
fidelity of dogs and swineherds, actual intermarriages between deities
and men, or that it is this seeming vulgarity which has won for him from
the wisest of every age the title of the father of poetry? Degrading
thought! fit only for the coarse and sense-bound tribe who can
appreciate nothing but what is palpable to sense and sight! As soon
believe the Christian scriptures, when they tell us of a deity who has
hands and feet, eyes and ears, who condescends to command the patterns
of furniture and culinary utensils, and is made perfect by being
born--disgusting thought!--as the son of a village maiden, and defiling
himself with the wants and sorrows of the lowest slaves!'

'It is false! blasphemous! The Scriptures cannot lie!' cried a voice
from the farther end of the room.

It was Philammon's. He had been listening to the whole lecture; and yet
not so much listening as watching, in bewilderment, the beauty of the
speaker, the grace of her action, the melody of her voice, and last, but
not least, the maze of her rhetoric, as it glittered before his
mind's eye like a cobweb diamonded with dew. A sea of new thoughts and
questions, if not of doubts, came rushing in at every sentence on his
acute Greek intellect, all the more plentifully and irresistibly
because his speculative faculty was as yet altogether waste and empty,
und