whose thoughts are full of majesty.

4
Hence sublime thoughts belong properly to the loftiest minds. Such was
the reply of Alexander to his general Parmenio, when the latter had
observed, "Were I Alexander, I should have been satisfied"; "And I, were
I Parmenio"...

The distance between heaven and earth[1]--a measure, one might say, not
less appropriate to Homer's genius than to the stature of his discord.

[Footnote 1: _Il._ iv. 442.]

5
How different is that touch of Hesiod's in his description of sorrow--if
the _Shield_ is really one of his works: "rheum from her nostrils
flowed"[2]--an image not terrible, but disgusting. Now consider how
Homer gives dignity to his divine persons--

"As far as lies his airy ken, who sits
On some tall crag, and scans the wine-dark sea:
So far extends the heavenly coursers' stride."[3]

He measures their speed by the extent of the whole world--a grand
comparison, which might reasonably lead us to remark that if the divine
steeds were to take two such leaps in succession, they would find no
room in the world for another.

[Footnote 2: _Scut. Herc._ 267.]

[Footnote 3: _Il._ v. 770.]

6
Sublime also are the images in the "Battle of the Gods"--

"A trumpet sound
Rang through the air, and shook the Olympian height;
Then terror seized the monarch of the dead,
And springing from his throne he cried aloud
With fearful voice, lest the earth, rent asunder
By Neptune's mighty arm, forthwith reveal
To mortal and immortal eyes those halls
So drear and dank, which e'en the gods abhor."[4]

Earth rent from its foundations! Tartarus itself laid bare! The whole
world torn asunder and turned upside down! Why, my dear friend, this is
a perfect hurly-burly, in which the whole universe, heaven and hell,
mortals and immortals, share the conflict and the peril.

[Footnote 4: _Il._ xxi. 388; xx. 61.]

7
A terrible picture, certainly, but (unless perhaps it is to be taken
allegorically) downright impious, and overstepping the bounds of
decency. It seems to me that the strange medley of wounds, quarrels,
revenges, tears, bonds, and other woes which makes up the Homeric
tradition of the gods was designed by its author to degrade his deities,
as far as possible, into men, and exalt his men into deities--or rather,
his gods are worse off than his human characters, since we, when we are
unhappy, have a haven from ills in death, while t