LXXIV.

THE ILIAD AND THE BIBLE.

Of all the books with which, since the invention of writing, this world has
been deluged, very few have produced any perceptible effect on the mass of
human character. By far the greater part have been, even by their
contemporaries, unnoticed and unknown. Not many a one has made its little
mark upon that generation that produced it, though it sunk with that
generation to utter forgetfulness. But, after the ceaseless toil of six
thousand years, how few have been the works, the adamantine basis of whose
reputation has stood unhurt amid the fluctuations of time, and whose
impression can be traced through successive centuries, on the history of
our species!

When, however, such a work appears, its effects are absolutely
incalculable; and such a work, you are aware, is the Iliad of Homer. Who
can estimate the results produced by the incomparable efforts of a single
mind? Who can tell what Greece owes to this first-born of song? Her
breathing marbles, her solemn temples, her unrivalled eloquence, and her
matchless verse, all point us to that transcendent genius, who, by the very
splendor of his own effulgence, woke the human intellect from the slumber
of ages. It was Homer who gave laws to the artist; it was Homer who
inspired the poet; it was Homer who thundered in the Senate; and, more than
all, it was Homer who was sung by the people; and hence a nation was cast
into the mould of one mighty mind, and the land of the Iliad became the
region of taste, the birthplace of the arts.