mer, not so much for any ideal grandeur
either of thought, image, or situation, as in a general sense for his
animated style of narration, for the variety and spirited effect with
which he relieves the direct formal narration in his own person by
dialogue between the subjects of his narration, thus ventriloquising
and throwing his own voice as often as he can into the surrounding
objects--or again for the similes and allusive pictures by which he
points emphasis to a situation or interest to a person.

Now then we have it: when you describe Homer, or when you hear him
described as a lively picturesque old boy [by the way, why does
everybody speak of Homer as old?], full of life, and animation, and
movement, then you say (or you hear say) what is true, and not much
more than what is true. Only about that word picturesque we demur a
little: as a chirurgeon, he certainly _is_ picturesque; for Howship
upon gunshot wounds is a joke to him when he lectures upon _traumacy_,
if we may presume to coin that word, or upon traumatic philosophy (as
Mr. M'Culloch says so grandly, Economic Science). But, apart from
this, we cannot allow that simply to say [Greek: Zakunthos nemoessa],
woody Zacynthus, is any better argument of picturesqueness than Stony
Stratford, or Harrow on the Hill. Be assured, reader, that the Homeric
age was not ripe for the picturesque. _Price on the Picturesque_, or,
_Gilpin on Forest Scenery_, would both have been sent post-haste to
Bedlam in those days; or perhaps Homer himself would have tied a
millstone about their necks, and have sunk them as public nuisances by
woody Zante. Besides, it puts almost an extinguisher on any little
twinkling of the picturesque that might have flared up at times from
this or that suggestion, when each individual had his own regular
epithet stereotyped to his name like a brass plate upon a door:
Hector, the tamer of horses; Achilles, the swift of foot; the ox-eyed,
respectable Juno. Some of the 'big uns,' it is true, had a dress and
an undress suit of epithets: as for instance, Hector was also [Greek:
korythaiolos], Hector with the tossing or the variegated plumes.
Achilles again was [Greek: dios] or divine. But still the range was
small, and the monotony was dire.

And now, if you come in good earnest to picturesqueness, let us
mention a poet in sober truth worth five hundred of Homer, and that is
Chaucer. Show us a piece of Homer's handywork that comes within a
hundred leagu