Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/152

130 130 HISTORY OF THE may be poetical, when it is accompanied by a pure and noble conception of things as they ought to be. Yet more, the poet may himself suffer from the assaults of human passions. He may himself be stained with the vices and the weak- nesses of human nature, and his voice may be poured forth from amidst the whirl and the conflict of the passions, and may be troubled, not only by disgust at the sight of interruptions to the moral order of the world, but by personal resentments and hatreds. The ancients in their day, and we in ours, have bestowed admiring sympathy on such a poet, if the expressions of his scorn and his hate did but betray an unusual vehemence of feeling and vigour of thought ; and if, through all the passionate confusion of his spirit, gleams of a nature susceptible of noble sentiments were apparent ; for the impotent rage of a vulgar mind will never rise to the dignity of poetry, even though it be adorned with all the graces of language. § 3. Here, as in many other places, it will be useful to recur to the two epic poets of antiquity, the authors of all the principles of Greek literature. Homer, spite of the solemnity and loftiness of epic poetry, is full of archness and humour; but it is of that cheerful and good-natured character which tends rather to increase than to disturb enjoyment. Thersites is treated with unqualified severity ; and we perceive the peculiar disgust of the monarchi- cally disposed poet at such inciters of the people, who slander every- thing distinguished and exalted, merely because they are below it. But it must be remarked that Thersites is a very subordinate figure in the group of heroes, and serves only as a foil to those who, like Ulysses, predominate over the people as guides and rulers. When, however, persons of a nobler sort are exhibited in a comic light, as, for instance, Agamemnon, blinded by Zeus and confident in his delusion and in his supposed wisdom *, it is done with such a delicacy of handling that the hero hardly loses any of his dignity in our eyes. In this way the comedy of Homer (if we may use the expression) dared even to touch the gods, and in the lottiest regions found subjects for humorous descriptions: for, as the gods presided over the moral order of the universe only as a body, and no individual god could exercise his special functions without regard to the prerogatives of others, Ares, Aphrodite, and Hermes might serve as types of the perfection of quarrelsome violence, of female weakness, and of finished cunning, without ceasing; to have their due share of the honours paid to divinity. Of a totally different kind is the wit of Hesiod; especially as it is employed in the Theogony against the daughters of Pandora, the female sex. This has its source in a strong feeling of disgust and indignation,
 * See ch. v. § 8.