ith but half
success, after what Homer entirely possessed. What a majesty he has
thrown into his harvest scene! The yellow corn falling, the boys
following to gather up the large arms-full as they drop behind the
reapers; in the distance a banquet preparing under the trees; in the
centre, in the midst of his workmen, the king sitting in mellow silence,
sceptre in hand, looking on with gladdened heart. Again we see the
ploughmen, unlike what are to be seen in our corn-grounds, turning their
teams at the end of the furrow, and attendants standing ready with the
wine-cup, to hand to them as they pass. Homer had seen these things, or
he would not have sung of them; and princes and nobles might have shared
such labour without shame, when kings took part in it, and gods designed
it, and the divine Achilles bore its image among his insignia in the
field.

Analogous to this, and as part of the same feeling, is that intense
enjoyment of natural scenery, so keen in Homer, and of which the
Athenian poets show not a trace; as, for instance, in that night
landscape by the sea, finished off in a few lines only, but so
exquisitely perfect! The broad moon, gleaming through the mist as it
parts suddenly from off the sky; the crags and headlands, and soft
wooded slopes, shining out in the silver light, and earth and sea
transformed into fairy land.

We spoke of Homer's similes as illustrative of the Ionic feelings about
war. War, of course, was glorious to him--but war in a glorious cause.
Wars there were--wars in plenty, as there have been since, and as it is
like there will be for some time to come; and a just war, of all human
employments, is the one which most calls out whatever nobleness there is
in man. It was the thing itself, the actual fighting and killing, as
apart from the heroism for which it makes opportunities, for which we
said that he showed no taste. His manner shows that he felt like a
cultivated man, and not like a savage. His spirit stirs in him as he
goes out with his hero to the battle; but there is no drunken delight in
blood; we never hear of warriors as in that grim Hall of the Nibelungen,
quenching their thirst in the red stream; never anything of that fierce
exultation in carnage with which the war poetry of so many nations, late
and old, is crimsoned. Everything, on the contrary, is contrived so as
to soften the merely horrible, and fix our interest only on what is
grand or beautiful. We are never left to dw