cal originality. In fact, the
most original writer is still drawing upon outward impressions--nay, even
his own thoughts are a kind of secondary agents which support and feed the
impulses of imagination. But unless there be some grand pervading
principle--some invisible, yet most distinctly stamped archetypus of the
great whole, a poem like the Iliad can never come to the birth. Traditions
the most picturesque, episodes the most pathetic, local associations
teeming with the thoughts of gods and great men, may crowd in one mighty
vision, or reveal themselves in more substantial forms to the mind of the
poet; but, except the power to create a grand whole, to which these shall
be but as details and embellishments, be present, we shall have nought but
a scrap-book, a parterre filled with flowers and weeds strangling each
other in their wild redundancy: we shall have a cento of rags and tatters,
which will require little acuteness to detect.

Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware as
I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief, it
still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved for a
higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are not by nature intended
to know all things; still less, to compass the powers by which the
greatest blessings of life have been placed at our disposal. Were faith no
virtue, then we might indeed wonder why God willed our ignorance on any
matter. But we are too well taught the contrary lesson; and it seems as
though our faith should be especially tried touching the men and the
events which have wrought most influence upon the condition of humanity.
And there is a kind of sacredness attached to the memory of the great and
the good, which seems to bid us repulse the scepticism which would
allegorize their existence into a pleasing apologue, and measure the
giants of intellect by an homeopathic dynameter.

Long and habitual reading of Homer appears to familiarize our thoughts
even to his incongruities; or rather, if we read in a right spirit and
with a heartfelt appreciation, we are too much dazzled, too deeply wrapped
in admiration of the whole, to dwell upon the minute spots which mere
analysis can discover. In reading an heroic poem we must transform
ourselves into heroes of the time being, we in imagination must fight over
the same battles, woo the same loves, burn with the same sense of injury,
as an Achilles or a Hector.