DRAMATIC STYLE OF HOMER. 143 of Greek feeling and Greek faith in all ages. It is the remark of Aristotle, that Homer, though not in form a dramatist, is the most dramatic of all Greek writers, for, except in his exordium of a few lines, he never speaks in his own person, but at once introduces his characters speaking, and they always speak consistently with the occasion, and with themselves.1 This is what the Germans call the objectivity, or objectiveness of the Homeric style-a phrase that, like certain other German phrases, has obtained great currency amongst us lately, though I am not sure that we have got any new idea along with it. Certain it is, however, that all popular poetry, and especially Homeric poetry, is eminently objective, or, as I should rather say, in old unscholastic English, dramatic. Homer did not desire to poetize himself any more than St. Paul did to preach himself. He is only a showman; and his poem is the moving panorama of Greek life. Look at it. "Away!" said Fuseli, to some of the poets and poetlings of his time, "away with your big words and your sublime flights, and your transcendental ecstasies and your vague emotions, and your windy fatherlandizing; give me a picture, give me something that I can see, something that I can paint, something that I can find in every page of rare old Homer !"3 1 Poet. iv. 9, and xxiv. 7. 24 Homer's eye is always on his object; Pope composes with his eye on his style, into which he translates his object "-ARNOLD, On Translating Homer, Lect. i. p. 21. The peculiar claim of Homer to be called the painter among poets has been lately stated by Lord Derby, one of the most accomplished and successful of recent English translators of the Iliad, at the annual dinner of the Royal Academy, May 1, 1865, in the following eloquent language:-"If it be true that ut pictura poesis-if it be true that poetry is word-painting and painting is visible poetry, then I think I may venture to claim for that great original I have endeavoured to copy, that he was among the greatest painters of any country in the world. For, let me ask you and this assembly, what are the great qualities which are required to form a distinguished painter? First, I apprehend, they are fidelity to nature, a genuine appreciation of the beauties of nature; a vivid imagination; a correct and anatomical knowledge of the One of the most striking manifestations of this painter's instinct in Homer is the manner in which he uses epithets. These qualifications of the subject are not only with him peculiarly abundant, but used in a manner quite abhorrent from our ideas of taste, derived as these are from the practice of poetical artists of a later age. With our poets the epithet belongs to the action and the position, and varies always curiously and cunningly as these vary. In Homer, after the model of the ballad-singers, the epithet cleaves to the man, and goes about with him constantly, as a red coat does with a soldier, or a shovel hat with a bishop. To the formation of the human frame; a correct and almost equally anatomical knowledge of all the expressions, feel ings, and passions of the human mind; a correctness of outline, boldness of touch, a vividness of colouring, a judicious distribution of light and shade; and, the great quality of all others, in grouping the subjects together, so to arrange your groups that each individual figure shall possess its own characteristic merit and position, and yet all unite to concentrate the eye and attention on the great central and prin cipal figure of the group. Now, if these are really the characteristics of painting, I claim for Homer that in no age and no country has any painter surpassed the infinite variety of his achievements. It is not in one branch alone, but it is in historical painting, in landscape, I may say even in portrait painting, he stands almost unrivalled in each and every one of them. If he desires to bring before you an extended group of gods, or warriors, or chieftains in debate, he presents a variety and individuality among them that would create the envy of a Maclise, a Herbert, or a Frith. If he desires to represent the ocean in its milder or stormier characters by a few rapid touches, he produces a sketch a Stanfield might look on with envy. If he paints the vineyard or harvest-home, he bathes the landscape in a flood of light which a Linnell would hardly venture to emulate. And, passing to the wilder features of rural life, the representation of the passions and contests of the brute creation-if he attempts to describe a lion springing at and striking down a bull in the midst of the herd, or a wounded boar turning on his pursuers, or a pack of wolves with blood-stained jaws lapping with their lean tongues the cool surface of some dark-watered fountain, or રી wounded panther writhing itself up the spear that has transfixed her in order to reach her assailant, the few touches which Homer gives bring before the mental eye the whole scene with a life and vigour which could hardly be equalled by an Ansdell or surpassed by a Landseer." On this, as on most other points, Keble had a true insight into the genius of Homer's poetry :—“ Præterea, non obscure redolet tum rustici PICTORIAL POWER OF HOMER. 145 same pictorial instinct belongs the peculiar breadth and detailed minuteness of the Homeric similes, which seldom rest contented, as our modern similes do, with flashing out the one point of analogy required for the occasion, but generally indulge in painting out the picture, for the pure imaginative luxury of looking at the object in its completeness. If I were to give examples of this pictorial richness, combined with simplicity, in the rare old minstrel, I should occupy the whole section in stringing pearls. Take only two instances: first, the simile of the stalled horse, which occurs twice in the Iliad, once in the sixth book in reference to Paris, and once again in the fifteenth book in reference to Hector :- "Nor then his lofty hall to leave was Alexander slow ; His fine-wrought mail he deftly dight all burnish'd fair to view, And with wing'd feet from street to street right through the town he flew : Even as a horse in stall confined, and fed with ample grain, Snaps his harsh bond, and eager beats with sounding hoof the plain; Oft hath he gone to lave his flanks in the deep smooth river's bed, And now the well-known stream he seeks and high he rears his head; Adown his shoulders shakes his mane; proud of his strength is he; And flings his limbs light o'er the turf where the haunts of horses be. tatem, tum militiam, quod in illo regum ducumque choro vix unum alterumque invenias, cui non adhæreat suum quodammodo cognomen. Hinc illa, πόδας ὠκὺς ̓Αχιλλεύς, νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς, κορυθαίολος Εκτωρ, sexcenta alia Erant illæ formulæ solennes ac pæne legitimæ, quas tantum non religio fuisset præterire. Neque vero in Deos solos hominesque convenit iste Tv VOL. I. oikeiwv usus: verum etiam rem quam. que notissimam suo tanquam apposito ornavit. Exempli loco sint, ravnλéyns θάνατος, ἀτρύγετος θάλασσα, μέροπες ἄνθρωποι, κήρυκες λιγύφθογγοι, μώνυχες io, cætera id genus. Ea qui fastidio habent, parum vidisse putandi sunt in simplici illo ac plebeio sermone, cujus quasi norma in Homericis omnia fere metiri debemus." K Thus Priam's son from Troy came forth all eager for the fray, Far-gleaming in his burnish'd arms like the light that lords the day." Then take the famous lines from the parting of Hector and Andromache: "Thus he and stretch'd his arm to clasp his infant son so dear; But on the breast of his well-zoned nurse the child shrunk back with fear, Scared at the gleam of the burnish'd brass which cased that warrior dread, And scream'd to see the horse-hair crest high nodding o'er his head. And reign o'er Troy by valorous might; then from the hostile fray Shall some one see him home return, and thus shall proudly say, His mother shall behold her son, and her heart shall leap for joy." Another characteristic of the ballad style, very prominent in the works of Homer, is a certain easy flowing fulness and amplitude, sometimes not much elevated above the tone of colloquial gossip, and not at all free from tautology (though perhaps some of these instances of repetition may be justly attributed to the interpolation of the rhapsodists); no studied condensation, no antithetic balancing as in Pope, no elaborate pregnant conciseness as in Tacitus and Tennyson. Homer was simply a perfectly accomplished musical story THE REAL AND THE IDEAL. 147 teller, and he knew that pictorial vividness of conception, and a pleasant flow of expression combined with variety and contrast, are the great excellences of a story-teller. He suited his own audience perfectly, but just for that reason he is not always a model for us.1 Again, a striking characteristic of all ballad poetry is its harmony with common life, and close brotherhood with the actual. In it there is no ideal elevated hopelessly above the real, no world of internal emotions instinctively rebellious against the world of outward circumstances. In Homer, so far as men are concerned, the real and the ideal are one, or, more correctly, the ideal is merely the flower of the real, metamorphosed, to speak with the botanists, substantially out of the green leaves of the real. perpaucis datum est, multa detrahendo 1The above remarks show in how far I think Mr. Newman right when he said Homer was 66 'garrulous." Here, as in some other points, the truth seems to lie half-way between him and Professor Arnold; though Newman certainly mistook the usage of the English language altogether when he called Homer "quaint." | un des plus grands défauts d'Homère : An Italian writer of the seventeenth il veut placer, chemin faisant, tout ce century, full of enthusiasm for the qu'il scuit, et il n'est pas scrupuleux sur great epic genius of his country, ex- la place."-(Euvres, ii. p. 68.) And presses his sense of the amplitude of Mr. Trapp (Virgil, Pref.), who is one Homer's style in very strong terms :- of those critics that give a decided pre"La soverchia lunghezza d'Homero; ference to Virgil over Homer, specially il qual nel vero più tosto per molta brings forward the brevity of the author abbondanza di parole e ridondanti of the Eneid as his great and distinrepetitioni, che con maravigliose in-guishing excellence: "I take his most ventioni aggrandio più tosto allungo distinguishing character to be the aci suoi poemi.". - Paolo Beni, Com-curacy of his judgment, and particuparatione de Homero, Virgilio e Tor- larly his elegant and exquisite brevity. quato (Padova, 1607, p. 42); and He is never luxuriant; never says anyScaliger had the same thing in his eye thing in vain." "We admire others," when, on comparing Virgil's manner says Rapin, "for what they say; we with Homer's, to the discredit of the admire Virgil for what he does not Greek, he says of the Roman, "quod say." |