"Tush!" said they, "the Greek Soul! he was a Greek as we
are!".... And so Tomides, Dickaion and Harryotatos, Athenian
tinkers and cobblers, go swaggering back to their shops, and
dream grand racial dreams. For this is a much more impressionable
people than the English; any wind from the Spirit blows
in upon their minds quickly and easily. Homer in Greece
--once Solon, or Pisistratus, or Hopparchus, had edited and
canonized him, and arranged for his orderly periodical public
reading (as the Bible in the churches)--had an advantage even
over the Bible in England. When Cromwell and his men grew mighty
upon the deeds of the mighty men of Israel, they had to thrill to
the grand rhythms until a sort of miracle had been accomplished,
and they had come to see in themselves the successors and living
representatives of Israel. But the Greek, rising on the swell of
Homer's roll and boom, had need of no such transformation. The
uplift was all for him; his by hereditary right; and no
pilfering necessary, from alien creed or race. We have seen in
Homer an inspired Race-patriot, a mighty poet saddened and
embittered by the conditions he saw and his own impotence to
change them.--Yes, he had heard the golden-snooded sing; but
Greeks were pygmies, compared with the giants who fought at
Ilion! There was that eternal contrast between the glory he had
within and the squalor he saw without. Yes, he could sing; he
could launch great songs for love of the ancients and their
magnificence. But what could a song do? Had it feet to travel
Hellas; hands to flash a sword for her; a voice and kingly
authority to command her sons into redemption?--Ah, poor blind
old begging minstrel, it had vastly greater powers and organs
than these!