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The designs on the shield of Achilles are, together, a complete picture of Homer's microcosm; Homer surely never thought inglorious or ignoble what the immortal art of Hephaistos condescended to imitate. The first groups of figures point a contrast which is obviously intentional; and the significance becomes sadly earnest when we remember who it was that was to bear the shield.
In the first place, if tears are arguments of cowardice, what shall I say of Homer's hero? Shall Achilles pass for timorous because he wept, and wept on less occasions than AEneas? Herein Virgil must be granted to have excelled his master; for once both heroes are described lamenting their lost loves: Briseis was taken away by force from the Grecians, Creusa was lost for ever to her husband.
A hammerman who might sit for one of Homer's blacksmith heroes, and machinery which effects in a few minutes what an army of such hammermen could not do. If our painters of mythological Vulcans and sprawling Satyrs want to display their powers over flesh and muscle, they may find something real and not vulgar among our iron factories.
XXX. When Peisistratus wounded himself and was driven into the market-place in a cart to excite the people, whom he told that he had been so treated by his enemies because he defended the constitution, and while he was surrounded by a noisy crowd of sympathisers, Solon came near him and said, "Son of Hippokrates, you are dishonourably imitating Homer's Ulysses.
But we do not appreciate what Homer did for his time, and is still doing for all the world, we do not appreciate the spirit of his music, unless we see the warfare and the adventure as symbols of the primary courage of life; and there is more in those words than seems when they are baldly written. And it is not his morals, but Homer's art that does that for us.
The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarme but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians. From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.
Some of them, on hearing Homer's request, observed, that he had exhausted his vein, and had already said and sung every subject over and over. Mr. Hamilton, however, remarked that he thought he could propose something new to the bard, and pointing to Mr. West, said, that he was an American come to study the fine arts in Rome; and that such an event furnished a new and magnificent theme.
Consider what Homer's 'Odyssey' would be, reduced into an analysis. The editor of the 'Letters of Columbus' apologises for the rudeness of the old seaman's phraseology. Columbus, he tells us, was not so great a master of the pen as of the art of navigation. We are to make excuses for him.
Homer's stories about the gods can hardly have demoralised the youths who recited them. No religion has ever given a picture of deity which men could have imitated without the grossest immorality. Yet these shocking representations have not had a bad effect on believers. The deity was opposed to their own vices; those it might itself be credited with offered no contagious example.
Odysseus is said in his voyage in springtime to have seen the Pleiades and Arcturus setting late, which seemed to early commentators a proof of Homer's inaccuracy.
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