reader's reflection--and let him weigh well the
condition under which that poetry moves that cannot indulge a tender
sentiment without being justly suspected of adulterous commerce with
some after age. This remark, however, is by the by; having grown out
of the [Greek: dakryoen gelasasa], itself a digression. But, returning
from that to our previous theme, we desire every candid reader to ask
himself what must be the character, what the circumscription, of that
poetry which is limited, by its very subject,[12] to a scene of such
intense uniformity as a battle or a camp; and by the prevailing spirit
of manners to the exclusive society of men. To make bricks without
straw, was the excess even of Egyptian bondage; Homer could not fight
up against the necessities of his age, and the defects of its
manners. And the very apologies which will be urged for him, drawn as
they must be from the spirit of manners prevalent in his era, are
reciprocally but so many reasons for not seeking in him the kind of
poetry which has been ascribed to him by ignorance, or by defective
sensibility, or by the mere self-interest of pedantry.

[Footnote 12: But the _Odyssey_, at least, it will be said, is not
thus limited: no, not by its subject; because it carries us amongst
cities and princes in a state of peace; but it is equally limited by
the spirit of manners; we are never admitted amongst women, except by
accident (Nausicaa)--by necessity (Penelope)--or by romance (Circe).]

From Homer, the route stretches thus:--The Grecian drama lies about
six hundred years nearer to the Christian era, and Pindar lies in the
interval. These--_i. e._ the Dramatic and Lyric--are the important
chapters of the Greek poetry; for as to Pastoral poetry, having only
Theocritus surviving, and a very little of Bion and Moschus, and of
these one only being of the least separate importance--we cannot hold
that department entitled to any notice in so cursory a review of the
literature, else we have much to say on this also. Besides that,
Theocritus was not a natural poet, indigenous to Sicily, but an
artificial blue-stocking; as was Callimachus in a different class.

The drama we may place loosely in the generation next before that of
Alexander the Great. And his era may be best remembered by noting it
as 333 years B. C. Add thirty years to this era--that will be the era
of the Drama. Add a little more than a century, and that will be the
era of Pindar. Him, therefo