But the Irish history corrects our view with regard to other
matters connected with the gods of the Aryan nations of Europe
also.

All the nations of Europe lived at one time under the bardic and
druidic system, and under that system imagined their gods and
elaborated their various theogonies, yet, in no country in Europe
has a bardic literature been preserved except in Ireland, for no
thinking man can believe Homer to have been a product of that rude
type of civilisation of which he sings. This being the case, modern
philosophy, accounting for the origin of the classical deities by
guesses and _a priori_ reasonings, has almost universally adopted
that explanation which I have, elsewhere, called Wordsworthian, and
which derives them directly from the imagination personifying the
aspects of nature.

"In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched
On the soft grass through half a summer's day,
With music lulled his indolent repose,
And in some fit of weariness if he,
When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain far sweeter than the sounds
Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched,
Even from the blazing chariot of the sun,
A beardless youth who touched a golden lute
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment--
***
"Sunbeams upon distant hills,
Gliding apace with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed