and tremendous themes of the poet, the sweet persuasion of the sophist
were a wonder and delight. I remember even now the thrill with which I
heard my form-master translate for us the prayer with which the
_Phædrus_ closes: "Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this
place...." Beloved Pan! My knowledge of Pan was of the vaguest, and
yet more than once or twice did I utter that prayer wandering alone
the playing field, or watching the evening mist roll down the Thames
Valley and blot up the elm trees, thick and white, clinging to the day
like a fleece. The third Iliad again I have never forgotten, nor the
twenty-fourth; nor the picture of the two gods, like vulture birds,
watching the battle from the dead tree. Nor, again, do I ever fail to
recapture the beat of the heart with which I apprehended some of
Homer's phrases: "Sandy Pylos," Argos "the pasture land of horses," or
"clear-seen" Ithaca. These things happened upon by chance in the dusty
class-room, in the close air of that terrible hour from two to three,
were as the opening of shutters to the soul, revealing blue distances,
dim fields, or the snowy peaks of mountains in the sun. One seemed to
lift, one could forget. It lasted but an instant; but time is of no
account to the inner soul, of no more account than it is to God. I
have never forgotten these moments of escape; nor can I leave Homer
without confessing that his books became my Bible. I accepted his
theology implicitly; I swallowed it whole. The Godhead of the
Olympians, the lesser divinity of Thetis and Alpheios and Xanthos were
indisputable. They were infinitely more real to me than the deities of
my own land; and though I have found room for these later on in life,
it has not been by displacing the others. Nor is there any need for
that, so far as I see. I say that out of Homer I took his Gods; I add
that I took them instantly. I seemed to breathe the air of their
breath; they appealed to my reason; I knew that they had existed and
did still exist. I was not shocked or shaken in my faith, either, by