d of the Soul.
Matthew Arnold speaks of the Homeric poems as "the most important
poetical monument existing." Well; cultured Tom, Dick and Harry
would say much the same thing; it is the orthodox thing to say.
But with great deference to Matthew, I believe they are really a
less important monument than the poems of Aeschylus, Dante,
Shakespeare, or Milton, or I suppose Goethe--to name only poets
of the Western World; because each of these created a Soul-
symbol; which I think the Iliad at any rate does not.

Here, to me, is another sign of primitivism. If there is paucity
of imagination in his epithets, there is none whatever in his
surgery. I do not know to what figure the casualty list in the
Iliad amounts; but believe no wound or death of them all was
dealt in the same bodily part or in the same way. Now Poetry
essentially turns from these physical details; her preoccupations
are with the Soul.

"From Homer and Polygnotus," says Goethe, "I daily learn more
and more that in our life here above the ground we have, properly
speaking, to enact Hell." A truth, so far as it goes: this
Earth is hell; there is no hell, says H.P. Blavatsky, but a man-
bearing planet. But we demand of the greatest, that they shall
see beyond hell into Heaven. Homer achieves his grandeur
oftenest through swift glimpses of the pangs and tragedy of human
fate; and I do not think he saw through the gloom to the
bright Reality. Watching the Greek host from the walls of Troy,
Helen says:

"Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia;
Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember;
Two, two only remain whom I see not among the commanders,
Castor, fleet in the car, Polydeukes, brave with the cestus--
Own dear brethren of mine,--one parent loved us as infants.
Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved
Lacedaimon?
Or, though they came with the rest in the ships that bound
through the waters,
Dare they not enter the fight, or stand in the council of heroes,
All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?"

And then:

_Hos phato. Tous d'ede kalechen phusizoos aia,
En Lakedaimoni authi, phile en patridi gaie._

"--So spake she; but they long since under Earth were
reposing
There in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedaimon."

[From Dr. Hawtrey's translation, quo