process is constantly illustrated in daily conversation. The word [Greek
text], hymn, had not originally a religious sense: it merely meant a lay.
Nobody calls the Theocritean idylls on Heracles and the Dioscuri "hymns,"
but they are quite as much "hymns" (in our sense) as the "hymn" on
Aphrodite, or on Hermes.

To the English reader familiar with the Iliad and Odyssey the Hymns must
appear disappointing, if he come to them with an expectation of
discovering merits like those of the immortal epics. He will not find
that they stand to the Iliad as Milton's "Ode to the Nativity" stands to
"Paradise Lost." There is in the Hymns, in fact, no scope for the epic
knowledge of human nature in every mood and aspect. We are not so much
interested in the Homeric Gods as in the Homeric mortals, yet the Hymns
are chiefly concerned not with men, but with Gods and their mythical
adventures. However, the interest of the Hymn to Demeter is perfectly
human, for the Goddess is in sorrow, and is mingling with men. The Hymn
to Aphrodite, too, is Homeric in its grace, and charm, and divine sense
of human limitations, of old age that comes on the fairest, as Tithonus
and Anchises; of death and disease that wait for all. The life of the
Gods is one long holiday; the end of our holiday is always near at hand.
The Hymn to Dionysus, representing him as a youth in the fulness of
beauty, is of a charm which was not attainable, while early art
represented the God as a mature man; but literary art, in the Homeric
age, was in advance of sculpture and painting. The chief merit of the
Delian Hymn is in the concluding description of the assembled Ionians,
happy seafarers like the Phaeacians in the morning of the world. The
confusions of the Pythian Hymn to Apollo make it less agreeable; and the
humour of the Hymn to Hermes is archaic. All those pieces, however, have
delightfully fresh descriptions of sea and land, of shadowy dells,
flowering meadows, dusky, fragrant caves; of the mountain glades where