ll as that
of sense, and was the ambassador of the gods to men. This was his
highest function, and hence his name of "seer." He was the discoverer
and declarer of the perennial beneath the deciduous. His were the _epea
pteroenta_, the true "winged words" that could fly down the unexplored
future and carry the names of ancestral heroes, of the brave and wise
and good. It was thus that the poet could reward virtue, and, by and by,
as society grew more complex, could burn in the brand of shame. This is
Homer's character of Demodocus, in the eighth book of the "Odyssey,"
"whom the Muse loved and gave the good and ill"--the gift of conferring
good or evil immortality. The first histories were in verse; and sung as
they were at feasts and gatherings of the people, they awoke in men the
desire of fame, which is the first promoter of courage and self-trust,
because it teaches men by degrees to appeal from the present to the
future. We may fancy what the influence of the early epics was when they
were recited to men who claimed the heroes celebrated in them for their
ancestors, by what Bouchardon, the sculptor, said, only two centuries
ago: "When I read Homer, I feel as if I were twenty feet high." Nor have
poets lost their power over the future in modern times. Dante lifts up
by the hair the face of some petty traitor, the Smith or Brown of some
provincial Italian town, lets the fire of his Inferno glare upon it for
a moment, and it is printed forever on the memory of mankind. The
historians may iron out the shoulders of Richard the Third as smooth as
they can, they will never get over the wrench that Shakespeare gave
them.

The peculiarity of almost all early literature is that it seems to have
a double meaning, that, underneath its natural, we find ourselves
continually seeing or suspecting a supernatural meaning. In the older
epics the characters seem to be half typical and only half historical.
Thus did the early poets endeavor to make realities out of appearances;
for, except a few typical men in whom certain ideas get embodied, the
generations of mankind are mere apparitions who come out of the dark for
a purposeless moment, and reenter the dark again after they have
performed the nothing they came for.

Gradually, however, the poet as the "seer" became secondary to the
"maker." His office became that of entertainer rather than teacher. But
always something of the old tradition was kept alive. And if he has now
come to