the arguments wherewith wise Matthew exalts him.
A Mr. Newman had translated him so as considerably to out-Bottom
Bottom; and Arnold took up the cudgels--to some effect. Newman
had treated him as a barbarian, a primitive; Arnold argued that
it was Homer, on the contrary, who might have so looked on us.
There is, however, perhaps something to be said on Mr. Newman's
side. Homer's huge and age-long fame, and his extraordinary
virtues, were quite capable of blinding even a great critic to
certain things about him which I shall, with great timidity,
designate imperfections: therein following De Quincey, who read
Greek from early childhood as easily as English, and who, as a
critic, saw things sometimes. _Bonus dormitat Homerus,_ says
Horace; like the elder Gobbo, he "something smacked." He was
the product of a great creative force; which did not however
work in a great literary age: and all I am going to say is
merely a bearing out of this.

First there is his poverty of epithets. He repeats the same ones
over and over again. He can hardly mention Hector without
calling him _megas koruthaiolos Hector,_--"great glittering-
helmeted Hector"; or (in the genitive) _Hectoros hippodamoio_--
"of Hector the tamer of war-steeds." Over and over again we have
_anax andron Agamemnon;_ or "swift-footed Achilles." Over and
over again is the sea _poluphloisbois-terous,_ as if he could say
nothing new about it. Having discovered one resounding phrase
that fits nicely into the hexameter, he seems to have been just
content with the splendor of sound, and unwilling so to stir his
imagination as to flash some new revelation on it. As if Hamlet
should never be mentioned in the play, without some such epithet
as "the hesitating Dane."...... But think how the Myriad-minded
One positively tumbles over himself in hurling and fountaining up
new revelatory figures and epithets about everything: how he
could not afford to repeat himself, because there were not enough
hours in the day, days in the year, nor years in one human
lifetime, in which to ease his imagination of its tremendous
burden. He had Golconda at the root of his tongue: let him but
pass you the time of day, and it shall go hard but he will pour
you out the wealth of Ormus or of Ind. A plethora, some have
said: never mind; wealth was nothing to him, because he had it
all. Or note how severe Milton, almost every time he alludes to
Satan, throws some new light of majestic