traite, qu'en la realisant, en lui
donnant un corps, une personalite humaine, un nom propre. Le meme besoin
do simplification, si naturel a la faiblesse, fit aussi designer une
collection d'individus par un nom d'homme. Cet homme mythique, ce fils
de la pensee populaire, exprima a la fois le peuple et l'idee du peuple.
Romulus c'etait la force, et le peuple de la force; Juda, l'election
divine et le peuple elu."

Having thus expounded the theory of the construction of a myth, he
afterwards tries his hand upon the resolution of one into its
constituent elements. The fourth chapter of his introduction commences
thus:--"Circe, dit Hesiode, (_Theog._ v. 1111, 1115) eut d'Ulysse deux
fils, Latinos et Agrios (le barbare,) qui au fond des saintes iles
gouvenerent la race celebre des Tyrseniens. J'enterpreterais volontiers
ce passage de la maniere suivante: Des Pelasges, navigateurs et
magiciens, (c'est-a-dire, industrieux) sortirent les deux grandes
societes Italiennes--les _Osci_, (dont les Latins sont une tribu,) et
les Tusci ou Etrusques. Circe, fille du soleil, a tous les caracteres
d'une Telchine Pelasgique. Le poete nous la montre pres d'un grand feu,
rarement utile dans un pays chaud, si ce n'est pour un but industriel;
elle file la toile, ou prepare de puissants breuvages."

The theory and the application, it will be seen, are worthy of each
other. All comment would be superfluous. We have preferred to retain the
original language for this, amongst other reasons, that we should have
found it difficult to represent in honest English the exact degree of
affirmation to which the Frenchman pledges himself by his
"j'enterpreterais volontiers." It is something less than conviction, and
something more than guess;--it certainly should be, or it ought to have
no place in history.

It is not by mangling the legend, or by predicating of it fantastic
modes of construction, that the few grains of sober fact concealed about
it are to be secured; but by studying honestly the laws of imagination
under which all fabulous narratives are constructed. However wildly the
fancy may range in the main events of a fable, there will be always a
certain portion of the details gathered from real life; and the manners
and morals of an age may be depicted in fictions, the substance of which
is altogether supernatural. The heroes fight like gods, but they dine
and dress like ordinary mortals. Achilles drags the body of Hector three
times round th