ersed with the most homely and
grotesque expressions, which is so well known to all the readers of
the _Iliad_. The battle in _Marmion_ is beyond all question, as
Jeffrey long ago remarked, the most _Homeric_ strife which has been
sung since the days of Homer. But these passages are few and far
between; his poems are filled with numerous and long interludes,
written with little art, and apparently no other object but to fill up
the pages or eke out the story. It is in prose that the robust
strength, the powerful arm, the profound knowledge of the heart,
appear; and it is there, accordingly, that he approaches at times so
closely to Homer. If we could conceive a poem, in which the storming
of Front-de-Boeuf's castle in _Ivanhoe_--the death of Fergus in
_Waverley_--the storm on the coast, and death scene in the fisher's
hut, in the _Antiquary_--the devoted love in the _Bride of
Lammermoor_--the fervour of the Covenanters in _Old Mortality_, and
the combats of Richard and Saladin in the _Talisman_, were united
together, and intermingled with the incomparable characters,
descriptions, and incidents with which these novels abound, they would
form an epic poem.

Doubts have sometimes been expressed, as to whether the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ are all the production of one man. Never, perhaps, was doubt
not merely so ill founded, but so decisively disproved by internal
evidence. If ever in human composition the traces of one mind are
conspicuous, they are in Homer. His beauties equally with his defects,
his variety and uniformity, attest this. Never was an author who had
so fertile an imagination for varying of incidents; never was one who
expressed them in language in which the same words so constantly
recur. This is the invariable characteristic of a great and powerful,
but at the same time self-confident and careless mind. It is to be
seen in the most remarkable manner in Bacon and Machiavel, and not a
little of it may be traced both in the prose and poetical works of
Scott. The reason is, that the strength of the mind is thrown into the
thought as the main object; the language, as a subordinate matter, is
little considered. Expressions capable of energetically expressing the
prevailing ideas of the imagination are early formed; but, when this
is done, the powerful, careless mind, readily adopts them on all
future occasions where they are at all applicable. There is scarcely a
great and original thinker in whose writings the s