a writer as
Thucydides. I had no high opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been
reading him with a mind accustomed to historical researches, and to
political affairs; and I am astonished at my own former blindness, and
at his greatness. I could not bear Euripides at college. I now read my
recantation. He has faults undoubtedly. But what a poet! The Medea, the
Alcestis, the Troades, the Bacchae, are alone sufficient to place him in
the very first rank. Instead of depreciating him, as I have done, I may,
for aught I know, end by editing him.

I have read Pindar,--with less pleasure than I feel in reading the great
Attic poets, but still with admiration. An idea occurred to me which may
very likely have been noticed by a hundred people before. I was always
puzzled to understand the reason for the extremely abrupt transitions
in those Odes of Horace which are meant to be particularly fine. The
"justum et tenacem" is an instance. All at once you find yourself in
heaven, Heaven knows how. What the firmness of just men in times of
tyranny, or of tumult, has to do with Juno's oration about Troy it
is hardly possible to conceive. Then, again, how strangely the fight
between the Gods and the Giants is tacked on to the fine hymn to the
Muses in that noble ode, "Descende coelo et die age tibia"! This
always struck me as a great fault, and an inexplicable one; for it
is peculiarly alien from the calm good sense, and good taste, which
distinguish Horace.

My explanation of it is this. The Odes of Pindar were the acknowledged
models of lyric poetry. Lyric poets imitated his manner as closely as
they could; and nothing was more remarkable in his compositions than the
extreme violence and abruptness of the transitions. This in Pindar was
quite natural and defensible. He had to write an immense number of poems
on subjects extremely barren, and extremely monotonous. There could be
little difference between one boxing-match and another. Accordingly,
he made all possible haste to escape from the immediate subject, and to
bring in, by hook or by crook, some local description; some old legend;
something or other, in short, which might be more susceptible
of poetical embellishment, and less utterly threadbare, than the
circumstances of a race or a wrestling-match. This was not the practice
of Pindar alone. There is an old story which proves that Simonides did
the same, and that sometimes the hero of the day was nettled at finding
how li