one in a thousand knew anything of the way in which the story had arisen,
any more than the English peasant generally is aware of the plebeian
original of St. George; or supposes that there were once alive in the
world, with sharp teeth and claws, real, and very ugly, flying dragons.
On the other hand, few persons traced any moral or symbolical meaning in
the story, and the average Greek was as far from imagining any
interpretation like that I have just given you, as an average Englishman
is from seeing is St. George the Red Cross Knight of Spenser, or in the
Dragon the Spirit of Infidelity. But, for all that, there was a certain
undercurrent of consciousness in all minds that the figures meant more
than they at first showed; and, according to each man's own faculties of
sentiment, he judged and read them; just as a Knight of the Garter reads
more in the jewel on his collar than the George and Dragon of a
public-house expresses to the host or to his customers. Thus, to the
mean person the myth always meant little; to the noble person, much; and
the greater their familiarity with it, the more contemptible it became to
one, and the more sacred to the other; until vulgar commentators
explained it entirely away, while Virgil made the crowning glory of his
choral hymn to Hercules.

"Around thee, powerless to infect thy soul,
Rose, in his crested crowd, the Lerna worm."

"Non te rationis egentem
Lernæus turbâ capitum circumstetit anguis."

And although, in any special toil of the hero's life, the moral
interpretation was rarely with definiteness attached to the event, yet
in the whole course of the life, not only for a symbolical meaning, but
the warrant for the existence of a real spiritual power, was apprehended