of a tale told in the first person by a survivor to Lady Hamilton. Note,
again, how boldly (being free to deal with an itinerary of which his
audience knew nothing but surmised that it comprehended a vast deal of
the marvellous, spaced at irregular distances) Homer works in a shipwreck
or a miracle wherever the action threatens to flag. Lessing, as you know,
devoted several pages of the "Laoköon" to the shield of Achilles; to
Homer's craft in depicting it as it grew under Hephaestus' hammer: so
that we are intrigued by the process of manufacture instead of being
wearied by a description of the ready-made article; so also (if one may
presume to add anything to Lessing) that we are cunningly flattered in a
sense that the shield is being made for _us._ Well, that is one artifice
out of many: but if you would gauge at all Homer's resource and subtlety
in technique I recommend you to analyse the first twelve books of
the "Odyssey" and count for yourselves the device by which the
poet--[Greek: polutropos] as was never his hero--evades or hurries over
each flat interval as he happens upon it.

These things, Ulysses,
The wise bards also
Behold and sing.
But O, what labour!
O Prince, what pain!

You may be thinking, Gentlemen, that I take up a disproportionate amount
of your time on such technical matters at these. But literature being an
art (forgive the reiteration!) and therefore to be practised, I want us
to be seeking all the time _how it is done_; to hunt out the principles
on which the great artists wrought; to face, to rationalise, the
difficulties by which they were confronted, and learn how they overcame
the particular obstacle. Surely even for mere criticism, apart from