ptions of right and wrong, which are usually
those of his place and time, in his poetical 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, which has rendered this epoch memorable above
all others, and the storehouse of examples to everlasting time. For
written poetry existed at that epoch simultaneously with the other
arts, and it is an idle inquiry to demand which gave and which
received the light, which all, as from a common focus, have scattered
over the darkest periods of succeeding time. We know no more of cause
and effect than a constant conjunction of events: poetry is ever found
to co-exist with whatever other arts contribute to the happiness and
perfection of man. I appeal to what has already been established to
distinguish between the cause and the effect.

It was at the