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House of Commons; and H. B. Cotterill is a critic and historian of art, while a long line of clergymen or men who have received holy orders, extending from Bentley to Collins, became illustrious by reason of contributions to the appreciation of Homer.

The influence of Homeric poetry in England has been both broad and deep, hardly less felt there than in ancient Greece and Italy.

XII. HOMER AND

HIS PERMANENT INFLUENCE

H

'OMER is now only partially represented by the pages of the Iliad and the Odyssey, for if these poems could somehow be erased from the minds and traditions of men, his influence would be lessened but not destroyed. The Iliad and the Odyssey are like a great investment which has been accumulating interest, compound interest, for nearly two thousand years.

He is the man with the five talents who has gone out and made with them other five talents, and he has been thus occupied for many centuries, so that Homer now represents not only the principal but also the accrued interest. He has drawn interest for only about two thousand years, since his talents were hid in darkness if not in a napkin for about a millennium, that is during the centuries before the revival of learning.

The accomplishments in epic poetry have all been due to him, and no European poet unin

fluenced by Homer has ever succeeded in the epic sphere.

Elegiac poetry began with the Homeric dialect, with the Homeric meter slightly modified, and flourished in Homeric soil. The early elegiac poets practically confined their vocabulary to words which had already been used by Homer.

Homer was called the first of the dramatists. Aeschylus said in pride and not in humility that his plays were courses from the Homeric feast, and the Athenian drama was so thoroughly under the spell of Homer that a Victor Hugo could write: "All the ancient authors of tragedy retail Homer, the same fables, the same catastrophes, the same heroes. All draw their waters from the Homeric rivers. It is everlastingly the Iliad and the Odyssey over again."

Literary criticism became scientific in Aristotle's Poetics which was based on the Iliad and the Odyssey as standards, while Horace, Longinus, Sidney, and Saintsbury have followed in his steps. Pope cleverly says that Aristotle in his literary theories was guided by the Maeonian star.

Herodotus and the Greeks generally looked

upon Homer as the creator of history and one of those who had given to Hellas a definite and workable mythology and theology.

Homer was also considered as the discoverer of the true principles which regulate effective public speaking; Quintilian in his great work, written almost one thousand years after Homer, said of him: "Homer not only gave birth to but has furnished an example of every distinguished sort of oratory. No one has ever surpassed him in treating great matters sublimely or small things fittingly. He is both diffuse and contracted, delightful and dignified, wonderful alike by his abundance and his brevity, most eminent not only in the greatness of a poet but also in the greatness of an orator."

He was regarded as the father of philosophical and ethical doctrines not only by his own people but by the Romans as well. Horace wrote to his friend Lollius: "While you are reciting Homer at Rome I have re-read him at Praeneste. He tells us better than the philosophers Chrysippus and Crantor, what is honorable or disgraceful, what is useful or vain." Then Horace points out how certain moral qualities are made vital in the lives of Nestor, Ulysses, Paris, and other Homeric actors.

Physicians have seen in the accuracy with which wounds, their results and their treatment have been described, a sure indication that the poet himself was a physician, while military leaders have read these same poems and been convinced that he was a tactician.

Homer's sympathetic and exact portrayal of so many forms of vegetable and animal life shows that he was a most careful observer, even if he was not a trained naturalist, while his descriptions of gardens, armor, and especially of the shield of Achilles prove that he had the heart and the eye of the artist.

Homer is coequal with all classes of men; as he is contemporary with all ages, he does not grow out of date. We feel that Chapman, Pope, and Cowper belong to times that are no more, while Homer is young, fresh, and of our own day.

The greatness of Homer consists in this that he saw things and people exactly as they are and he could describe all these in such clear and simple language that we can see them too. This is the reason that a child can comprehend him, and that the wisest man knows that the greatness of Homer, with its simplicity, lies just beyond his grasp.

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