deeds brought before us are various in character and worth,--savage,
heroic, repulsive, beautiful, by turns. But the ever-present charm is
man seeing the world about him. It is the vividness with which every
object is seen in its distinctive form and spirit, and conveyed by the
fit word and phrase. So seen and spoken, the commonest object becomes a
thing of delight. The high-roofed house, the brazen threshold, the
polished chest, the silver-studded sword, the purple robes,--the tawny
oxen, the hollow ships, the tapering oars,--the wine-dark sea, the
rosy-fingered dawn, the gold-throned morning,--Hector of the nodding
plume, the white-armed Nausicaa,--so in long procession moves the
spectacle. A like distinctness invests all the actions and emotions of
the story with charm. To us, as to the poet, the world becomes enchanted
simply in being seen.

And presently we discover a strange transfiguration that is being
wrought. Experiences which were painful or grievous to the actors and
sufferers become in the representation the source of keen pleasure to the
hearers or readers. The Iliad is mainly a story of men destroying one
another. The Odyssey depicts a long strife with hardship and danger.
The men who heard those songs were themselves familiar with the fight,
with the wounds and terrors mixed with its energies and elations; they
had tasted the perils of shipwreck and of pirates. But as they listened,
the rehearsal of trials the counterpart of their own filled them with
exhilaration. We who read in modern days, if less experienced in
bloodshed and bodily peril, yet in some fashion have had our share of
battle and storm; and we, too, like the first listeners, drink in the
tale with delight. The poet, in other words, has the secret not only of
seeing but of idealizing the actual world. We catch from him some subtle
art by which, standing a little aloof from the pressure and turmoil
around us, often felt as painful or degrading, we see it through an
atmosphere in which it becomes a splendid and heart-stirring scene. At a
later stage we may perhaps in a degree analyze the change of view; we may
partly understand how through the struggle with evil man is strengthened
and ennobled; how in such strife courage and sympathy and tenderness are
engendered. But long before we can thus philosophize, and to a degree
which our philosophy can hardly explain, we are affected by this beauty
and elevation imparted to the spec