present its pernicious
effects on the affairs of the Helenic confederacy. Ulysses never
utters a word in which the cautious and prudent counsellor, sagacious
in design but prompt in execution, wary in the council but decided in
the field, far-seeing but yet persevering, is not apparent. Diomede
never falters; alike in the field and the council he is indomitable.
When Hector was careering in his chariot round their fortifications,
and the king of men counselled retreat, he declared he would remain,
were it only with Sthenelus and his friends. So completely marked, so
well defined are his characters, though they were all rapacious chiefs
at first sight, little differing from each other, that it has been
observed with truth, that one well acquainted with the _Iliad_ could
tell, upon hearing one of the speeches read out without a name, who
was the chief who uttered it.

The two authors, since his time, who have most nearly approached him
in this respect, are Shakespeare and Scott. Both seem to have received
the pencil which paints the human heart from nature herself. Both had
a keen and searching eye for character in all grades and walks of
life; and what is a general accompaniment of such a disposition, a
strong sense of the ridiculous. Both seized the salient points in
mental disposition, and perceived at a glance, as it were, the ruling
propensity. Both impressed this character so strongly on their minds,
that they threw themselves, as it were, into the very souls of the
persons whom they delineated, and made them speak and act like nature
herself. It is this extraordinary faculty of identifying themselves
with their characters, and bringing out of their mouth the very words
which, in real life, would have come, which constitutes the chief and
permanent attraction of these wonderful masters of the human heart.
Cervantes had it in an equal degree; and thence it is that Homer,
Shakspeare, Cervantes, and Scott, have made so great, and, to all
appearance, durable impression on mankind. The human heart is, at
bottom, every where the same. There is infinite diversity in the dress
he wears, but the naked human figure of one country scarcely differs
from another. The writers who have succeeded in reaching this deep
substratum, this far-hidden but common source of human action, are
understood and admired over all the world. It is the same on the banks
of the Simois as on those of the Avon--on the Sierra Morena as the
Scottish hi