making a picture "in the great style" against a sky charged with
marvels.'

Well, the object of these lectures is not to explain genius. Just here it
is rather to state a difficulty; to admit that, once in history, genius
overcame it; yet warn you how rare in the tale of poetical achievement is
such a success. Homer, indeed, stands first, if not unmatched, among
poets in this technical triumph over the capital disability of
annihilating flat passages. I omit Shakespeare and the dramatists;
because they have only to give a stage direction 'Enter Cassius, looking
lean,' and Cassius comes in looking leaner than nature; whereas Homer has
in his narrative to walk Hector or Thersites on to the scene, describe
him, walk him off. I grant the rapidity of Dante. It is amazing; and we
may yield him all the credit for choosing (it was his genius that chose
it) a subject which allowed of the very highest rapidity; since Hell,
Purgatory and Paradise, though they differ in other respects, have this
in common, that they are populous and the inhabitants of each so
compendiously shepherded together that the visitor can turn from one
person to another without loss of time. But Homer does not escort us
around a menagerie in which we can move expeditiously from one cage to
another. He proposes at least, both in the "Iliad" and in the "Odyssey,"
to unfold a story; and he _seems_ to unfold it so artlessly that we
linger on the most pedestrian intervals while he tells us, for example,
what the heroes ate and how they cooked it. A modern writer would serve
us a far better dinner. Homer brings us to his with our appetite all the
keener for having waited and watched the spitting and roasting.

I would point out to you what art this genius conceals; how cunning is
this apparent simplicity: and for this purpose let me take Homer at the
extreme of his difficulty--when he has to describe a long sea-voyage.