modulated pipes; with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of
hell; touch a troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns; and fill the
openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their faces, and
which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of their scholastic
imagination, and melancholy lights of frantic faith in their lost mortal
love.

Is not this a mystery of life?

But more. We have to remember that these two great teachers were both of
them warped in their temper, and thwarted in their search for truth. They
were men of intellectual war, unable, through darkness of controversy, or
stress of personal grief, to discern where their own ambition modified
their utterances of the moral law; or their own agony mingled with their
anger at its violation. But greater men than these have
been--innocent-hearted--too great for contest. Men, like Homer and
Shakespeare, of so unrecognized personality, that it disappears in future
ages, and becomes ghostly, like the tradition of a lost heathen god. Men,
therefore, to whose unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of human
nature reveals itself in a pathetic weakness, with which they will not
strive; or in mournful and transitory strength, which they dare not
praise. And all Pagan and Christian civilization thus becomes subject to
them. It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us have read,
either of Homer or Shakespeare; everything round us, in substance or in
thought, has been moulded by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under
Homer. All Roman gentlemen, by Greek literature. All Italian, and French,
and English gentlemen, by Roman literature, and by its principles. Of the
scope of Shakespeare, I will say only that the intellectual measure of
every man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned
to him according to the degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare.
Well, what do these two men, centres of mortal intelligence, deliver to us
of conviction respecting what it most behooves that intelligence to grasp?
What is their hope--their crown of rejoicing? what manner of exhortation
have they for us, or of rebuke? what lies next their own hearts, and
dictates their undying words? Have they any peace to promise to our
unrest, any redemption to our misery?

Take Homer first, and think if there is any sadder image of human fate
than the great Homeric story. The main features in the character of
Achilles are its int