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 EARLY GREEK POETS. 355 tivated his imagination and his feelings was sufficient to engendei spontaneous belief; or rather, that no question as to truth or falsehood of the narrative suggested itself to his mind. His faith is ready, literal and uninquiring, apart from all thought of discriminating fact from fiction, or of -detecting hidden and sym- bolized meaning ; it is enough that what he hears be intrinsically plausible and seductive, and that there be no special cause to pro- voke doubt. And if 'indeed there were, the poet overrules such doubts by the holy and all-sufficient authority of the Muse, whose omniscience is the warrant for his recital, as her inspiration is the cause of his success. The state of mind, and the relation of speaker to hearers, thus depicted, stand clearly marked in the terms and tenor of the an- cient epic, if we only put a plain meaning upon what we read. The poet like the prophet, whom he so much resembles sings under heavenly guidance, inspired by the goddess to whom he has prayed for her assisting impulse : she puts the word into his mouth and the incidents into his mind : he is a privileged man, chosen as her organ and speaking from her revelations. 1 As the tonic philology and antiquities. He examines the extent to which either his- torical matter of fact or historical names can be traced in the Deutsche Helden- saye ; and he comes to the conclusion that the former is next to nothing, the latter not considerable. He draws particular attention to the fact, that the audience for whom these poems were intended had not learned to distin- guish history from poetry (W. Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, pp. 8, 337, 342 345, 399, Go'tt. 1829). 1 Hesiod, Theogon. 32. kvinvsvaav 6s (the Muses^ fioi av6f]v, Beiqv, uf Kfaioifu ru r' taao/teva, npo r' iovra, Kai [is /ceAov$' vfiveiv fj.aKu.puv -yevof aiev iovruv, etc. Odyss. xxii. 347 ; viii. 63, 73, 481. 489. Ay/ioSon' y ae ye Mot)oZ/5oc 'ATroA Also Iliad, ii. 485. Both the fiavTif and the uoidbf are standing, recognized professions xvii. 383), like the physician and the carpenter, dri