I don't think Guy's was what is usually called a poetical temperament,
for his taste in this line was quite one-sided. He was no admirer of
the picturesque, certainly. I have heard him say that his idea of a
country to live in was where there was no hill steep enough to wind a
horse in good condition, and no wood that hounds could not run through
in fifteen minutes; therein following the fancy of that eminent French
philosopher, who, being invited to climb Ben Lomond to enjoy the most
magnificent of views, responded meekly, "_Aimez-vous les beautés de la
Nature? Pour moi, je les abhorre_." Can you not fancy the strident
emphasis on the last syllable, revealing how often the poor materialist
had been victimized before he made a stand at last?

All through Livingstone's life the real was to predominate over the
ideal; and so it was at this period of it. He had a great dislike to
purely sentimental or descriptive poetry, preferring to all others those
battle-ballads, like the _Lays of Rome_, which stir the blood like a
trumpet, or those love-songs which heat it like rough strong wine.

He was very fond of Homer, too. He liked the diapason of those sonorous
hexameters, that roll on, sinking and swelling with the ebb and flow of
a stormy sea. I hear his voice--deep-toned and powerful even at that
early age--finishing the story of Poseidon and his beautiful
prize--their bridal-bed laid in the hollow of a curling wave--

_"Porphureon d' ara kuma peristathê, oureï ison,
Kurtôthen, krupsen de Theon thnêtên te gunaika."_

And yet they say that the glorious old Sciote was a myth, and the
Odyssey a magazine worked out by clever contributors. They might as well
assert that all his marshals would have made up one Napoleon.