intellect as he was less in all qualities that call for true
respect. Yet often we applaud Homer, only upon a knowledge of
Pope; and it is safe to say that if you love Pope you would
loathe Homer. Pope held that water should manifest, so to say,
through Kew or Versailles fountains; but it was essentially to
be from the Kitchen-tap--or even from the sewer. Homer was more
familiar with it thundering on the precipices, or lisping on the
yellow sands of time-forgotten Mediterranean islands. Which
pronunciation do you prefer for his often-recurring and famous
sea-epithet: the thunder-on-the-precipices of

_poluphloisboio thalasses,_

or the lisping-on-the-sands of

_ poluphleesbeeo thalassace?_

(pardon the attempted phonetics).--For truly there are advocates
of either; but neither I suppose would have appealed much to
Mr. Pope.

As to his style, his manner or movement: to summarize what
Mathew Arnold says of it (the best I can do): it is as direct
and rapid as Scott's; as lucid as Wordsworth's could be; but
noble like Shakespeare's or Milton's. There is no Dantesque
periphrasis, nor Miltonian agnostic struggle and inversion; but
he calls spades, spades, and moves on to the next thing swiftly,
clearly, and yet with exultation. (Yet there is retardation
often by long similes.) And he either made a language for
himself, or found one ready to his hand, as resonant and sonorous