creations, which participate in neither By this assumption of the
inferior office of interpreting the effect in which perhaps after
all he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he would resign a
glory in a participation in the cause. There was little danger that
Homer, or any of the eternal poets should have so far misunderstood
themselves as to have abdicated this throne of their widest dominion.
Those in whom the poetical faculty, though great, is less intense,
as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have frequently affected a
moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in exact
proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to this
purpose.



Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a certain interval
by the dramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who flourished
contemporaneously with all that is most perfect in the kindred
expressions of the poetical faculty; architecture, painting, music
the dance, sculpture, philosophy, and, we may add, the forms of
civil life. For although the scheme of Athenian society was deformed
by many imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry and
Christianity has erased from the habits and institutions of modern
Europe; yet never at any other period has so much energy, beauty,
and virtue, been developed; never was blind strength and stubborn
form so disciplined and rendered subject to the will of man, or
that will less repugnant to the dictates of the beautiful and the
true, as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates.
Of no other epoch in the history of our species have we records
and fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity in
man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in language,