eneral, above
all with the unique and unapproached _Balder Dead_. To me this last
stands alone in modern art for simple majesty of conception, sober
directness and potency of expression, sustained dignity of thought and
sentiment and style, the complete presentation of whatever is essential,
the stern avoidance of whatever is merely decorative: indeed for every
Homeric quality save rhythmical vitality and rapidity of movement. Here,
for example, is something of that choice yet ample suggestiveness--the
only true realism because the only perfect ideal of realisation--for
which the similitudes of the 'Ionian father of his race' are
pre-eminently distinguished:--

'And as a spray of honeysuckle flowers
Brushes across a tired traveller's face
Who shuffles through the deep dew-moistened dust
On a May evening, in the darken'd lanes,
And starts him, that he thinks a ghost went by--
So Hoder brushed by Hermod's side.'

Here is Homer's direct and moving because most human and comprehensive
touch in narrative:--

'But from the hill of Lidskialf Odin rose,
The throne, from which his eye surveys the world;
And mounted Sleipner, and in darkness rode
To Asgard. And the stars came out in heaven,
High over Asgard, to light home the king.
But fiercely Odin gallop'd, moved in heart;
And swift to Asgard, to the gate, he came.
And terribly the hoofs of Sleipner rang
Along the flinty floor of Asgard streets,
And the Gods trembled on their golden beds
Hearing the wrathful Father coming home--
For dread, for like a whirlwind Odin came.
And to Valhalla's gate he rode, and left
Sleipner; and Sleipner went to his own stall;
And in Valhalla Odin laid him down.'

And here--to have done with evidence of what is known to every one--here
is the Homeric mariner, large and majestic and impersonal, of recording
speech:--

'Bethink ye, Gods, is there no other way?--
Speak, were not this a way, a way for Gods?
If I, if Odin, clad in radiant arms,
Mounted on Sleipner, with the warrior Thor
Drawn in his car beside me, and my sons,
All the strong brood of Heaven, to swell my train,
Should make irruption into Hela's realm,
And set the fields of gloom ablaze with light,
And bring in triumph Balder back to Heaven?'

One has but to contrast such living work as this with the 'mouldering
realm' of _Merope_ to feel the difference with a sense of pain;