ire Homer, is manifestly squinting at the reader to see how far he
admires his own flourish of admiration; and, in the very agony of his
frosty raptures, is quite at leisure to look out for a little private
traffic of rapture on his own account. But it won't do; this old
critical posture-master (whom, if Aurelian hanged, surely he knew what
he was about) may as well put up his rapture pipes, and (as Lear says)
'not squiny' at us; for let us ask Master Longinus, in what earthly
respect do these great strides of Neptune exceed Jack with his
seven-league boots? Let him answer that, if he can. We hold that Jack
has the advantage. Or, again look at the Koran: does any man but a
foolish Oriental think that passage sublime where Mahomet describes
the divine pen? It is, says he, made of mother-of-pearl; so much for
the 'raw material,' as the economists say. But now for the size: it
can hardly be called a 'portable' pen at all events, for we are told
that it is so tall of its age, that an Arabian 'thoroughbred horse
would require 500 years for galloping down the slit to the nib. Now
this Arabic sublime is _in this instance_ quite a kin brother to the
Homeric.

[Footnote 10: On the memorable inaugural day of the Liverpool
railroad, when Mr. Huskisson met with so sad a fate, a snipe or a
plover tried a race with Sampson, one of the engines. The race
continued neck and neck for about six miles, after which, the snipe
finding itself likely to come off second best, found it convenient to
wheel off, at a turn of the road, into the solitudes of Chat Moss.]

However, it is likely that we shall here be reminded of our own
challenge to the Longinian word [Greek: hypselon] as not at all
corresponding, or even alluding to the modern word sublime. But in
this instance, the distinction will not much avail that critic--for no
matter by what particular _word_ he may convey his sense of its
quality, clear it is, by his way of illustrating its peculiar merit,
that, in his opinion, these huge strides of Neptune's have something
supernaturally grand about them. But, waiving this solitary instance
in Homer of the sublime, according to his idolatrous critics--of the
pseudo sublime according to ourselves--in all other cases where
Longinus, or any other Greek writer has cited Homer as the great
exemplary model of [Greek: hypsos] in composition, we are to
understand him according to the Grecian sense of that word. He must
then be supposed to praise Ho