, backed
and supported by an antique form of an antique language--the most
comprehensive and the most melodious in the world, would--could--should--ought
to merit a filial attention; and, perhaps with those who had
waggon-loads of time to spare, might plead the benefit, beyond most of
those in whose favour it was enacted, of that Horatian rule--

'vos exemplaria Graeca,
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.'

In fact, when we recollect that, in round numbers, we ourselves may be
considered as two thousand years in advance of Christ, and that (by
assuming less even than a mean between the different dates assigned to
Homer) he stands a thousand years before Christ, we find between Homer
and ourselves a gulf of three thousand years, or about one clear half
of the total extent which we grant to the present duration of our
planet. This in itself is so sublime a circumstance in the relations
of Homer to our era, and the sense of power is so delightfully
titillated to that man's feeling, who, by means of Greek, and a very
moderate skill in this fine language, is able to grasp the awful span,
the vast arch of which one foot rest upon 1838, and the other almost
upon the war of Troy--the mighty rainbow which, like the archangel in
the Revelation, plants its western limb amongst the carnage and the
magnificence of Waterloo, and the other amidst the vanishing gleams
and the dusty clouds of Agamemnon's rearguard--that we may pardon a
little exultation to the man who can actually mutter to himself, as he
rides home of a summer evening, the very words and vocal music of the
old blind man at whose command

'----------the Iliad and the Odyssey
Rose to the murmurs of the voiceful sea.'

But pleasures in this world fortunately are without end. And every
man, after all, has many pleasures peculiar to himself--pleasures
which no man shares with him, even as he is shut out from many of
other men. To renounce one in particular, is no subject for sorrow, so
long as many remain in that very class equal or superior. Elwood the
Quaker had a luxury which none of us will ever have, in hearing the
very voice and utterance of a poet quite as blind as Homer, and by
many a thousand times more sublime. And yet Elwood was not perhaps
much happier for _that_. For now, to proceed, reader--abstract from
his _sublime_ antiquity, and his being the very earliest of authors,
allowance made for one or two Hebrew writers (who