interpretation became that of symbolism, St. Basil, one of the great fathers, declared that the direct aim of Homer was to delineate virtue. Still later, from the time of Dante on, Homer is simply the unapproachable poet and artist. This view persisted throughout Europe down to the French Revolution. The epoch of electricity and steam brings out another; Homer is regarded from a scientific point of view. As Mr. Gladstone says: "The poems of Homer do not constitute merely a great item of the splendid literature of Greece, but they have a separate position which none other can approach. They and the manners they describe constitute a world of their own a scheme of human life and character complete in all its parts. We are introduced to man in every relation of which he is capable, in every one of his arts, devices, institutions, in the entire circle of his experience. There is no other author whose case is analogous to this, or of whom it can be said that the study of him is not a mere matter of literary criticism, but a full study of life in every one of its departments. To rescue this circle from inadequate conceptions, and to lay the ground for a true idea of them, I have proposed the term 'Homerology."

So the work of the minstrel after its thousands of years' transmigration has at last found its true place. It is no longer a gospel from which to read our children moral lessons, it is no longer the inimitable model for artists, it is a document for men of science.

The two favourite portraits of "blind old Homer" are the Townley bust upon the lower floor, and the exquisite bronze head in the second vase room, of the British Museum. The face is that of a beautiful old man, with regular features, deep sunken eyes and cheeks, and lips of ineffable sweetness.

This face is one of the finest productions of antique sculpture. Is it the face of Homer? Was there ever a Homer? Concerning the "Iliad," modern criticism maintains that far from being a perfect work of art, it is but an archaic production, a patchwork made up of two, perhaps more, pieces, written by no one man, being the spontaneous outgrowth of the naive poetic sense of a whole people; that it is totally different in kind from the "Inferno," the "Jerusalem Delivered," and the "Paradise Lost;" from the "Enead," the "Lusiad," the "Henriad," and all the others.

Accepting this view, still the bust of Homer will continue to stand upon its high pedestal. Say that the poem was the work of the minstrels, the Greek rhapsodists. Homer is to us their representative, the incarnation of their spirit; no longer a simple individual he becomes a type, rightly called "the Father of Poets."

PINDAR was born in a village near Thebes; he was a contemporary of Eschylus, and was in the prime of his age at the time of the Persian war. Of his parentage little is known with certainty. At thirteen he was sent to Athens to be educated, and was taught song-writing by the poets of his time. In his twentieth year he contested the prize for poetry at Thebes; at first unsuccessfully. Like the other lyric poets of his time, he travelled from village to village in Greece, offering his services for public or private ceremonies; but Athens was his favourite abode. He frequently visited Delphi, where, in later times, an iron chair was shown as the one he occupied when making his poetic offerings to the gods.

When the Persian invasion was at an end, Thebes, which had allied

itself with the Persians, was taken by the Athenians, and many of its leading citizens were put to death as traitors to Greece. Pindar took refuge at Syracuse, at that time the residence of many poets and philosophers, whom Hieron the Tyrant had gathered about him. Four years after, he returned to Thebes and appears to have remained there till his death, in his eightieth year.

The veneration of the Greeks for Pindar has surrounded his cradle and his tomb with legends, legends which at least attest that his countrymen considered him an essentially religious poet, loved by the gods for his piety. His faith has not the child-like simplicity of the early Greek poets. It is more grave and pure, and rises to general views; not limited to the worship of one sect, or to the special divinities of one village or temple. In patriotism he was equally liberal-viewed, and called himself a citizen, not of Thebes, but of Greece. He did not refuse to write odes for princes whom the Greeks called tyrants; but it must be admitted that he never praised other than honourable actions, and more often wrote good counsel than eulogy. The Greeks are unanimous in regarding him as the prince of lyric poets, and declared that he excelled in every branch of his art. Of all his works, accident, rather perhaps than their superior merit, has preserved to our time only his songs of victory; but these are sufficient to stamp his genius as one of the most original and striking in Greek poesy.

During a period of two centuries poets had abandoned epic recitals which were merely an echo of the past, and appealed directly to the living present, to the interests, sentiments, and passions of their contemporaries. This poetry, a poetry of maxims, was full of grave lessons, exhortations to combat, and praises of peaceful enjoyments of civilization. Dramatic poetry was in a state of transition, gradually disengaging itself from its primitive epic form, and approaching by successive steps the new form to be finally given it by the genius of Eschylus and Sophocles.

The merit and originality of Pindar lies in having united these two elements together-the axiomatic and the dramatic. Living as it were in a period of transition, he combined in the ode the wisdom of his predecessors with something of the interest and varied character of the drama. To Pindar, a song of victory was not a mere description of a hero of the Olympian games, and praises of his skill in the arena. He took the whole life of the man, and everything pertaining to it, his ancestry, and nativity, as a subject; an individual is not an isolated object, he belonged to a family, a city, a race.

He

Thus viewed, the poet's choice of material became illimitable. had all the theology, history, and traditions of Greece at his disposal, and used the victory merely as a centre of interest to give unity to his The poet usually took some general moral idea inspired by the

ode.

actual events of the victory, an idea in harmony with the leading incidents in the life of the victor, and applied it in such a way as to serve as a lesson in prosperity, a consolation in misfortune, or an encouragement to goodness and piety. The idea supplied him with moral themes which he developed for the honour or instruction of his hero, tempering his eulogies with grave reflections on the instability of fortune, the fragility of human grandeur, and the omnipotence of the gods.

Pindar sometimes used simple and familiar language, but he had a taste for complex metaphors with subtle and obscure allusions, which require a mental effort to comprehend. He would place before his readers veritable poetic enigmas to sharpen their curiosity and develop a desire to solve them. The rhythmic and musical forms he gave to his odes appear to have been not less remarkable for their variety and excellence than the subjects themselves. Each song had its special tone depending chiefly on the nature of the rhythm and the musical style. The latter was divided into three classes :-Doric, Eolian and Lydian, easily distinguished, though each admitted innumerable variations. One of Pindar's commentators. Boeckh, has endeavoured to reconstitute the poet's rhythm, but the effort, though admirable, fails to reveal to us all the secrets of Pindar's harmonic skill.

"The causes which determined Pindar's poetical character, are to be sought in a period previous to the Persian War, and in the Doric and Eolic parts of Greece, rather than in Athens: and thus we may separate Pindar from his contemporary Eschylus, by placing the former at the close of the early period, the latter at the head of the new period of literature. The poems of Pindar show that he was penetrated with a strong religious feeling. He had not imbibed any of the scepticism which began to take root at Athens after the close of the Persian War."

"Near his own house at Thebes he dedicated a shrine to the Mother of the Gods. Often he was to be found in the temple of Apollo; there, seated in his iron chair, he sang his songs to the shining deity."

Greek

BEFORE the time of Eschylus, there was no real theatre. tragedy, as he found it, was simply a poem, recited or chanted by one speaker; it was declamation without action, scenery, or accessories of any kind. Eschylus introduced dialogue; invented the tragic boot, mask, and mantle; dressed the speakers in character; and turned the platform into a mimic representation of the place or scene where the event was supposed to occur.

What was the origin of the drama? Before there was such a thing in the world as "drama," there existed "chorus;" the drama grew out of the improvised recitations, given in the intervals of the Bacchic choruses sung at the great festivals. While the chorus rested, the leader chanted a long monologue in praise of Bacchus : this was the first stage