Page:Odes of Pindar (Paley).djvu/14

viii I have ventured to call Pindar the most genuine of the early Greek poets; and in the sense, that his extant works have come down to us on the whole less tampered with and less modernised than any others, I think this is true. In reading Pindar, we feel a well-founded confidence that we have before us the very words of one who lived at a known time and place. In Pindar too we have a poet sui generis. Standing widely apart from,—we can hardly say between,—the epic on one side and the dramatic on the other,—the lyric poetry of Pindar has the impress of a peculiar and quite unique genius. Chivalrous, if somewhat wanting in pathos, sententious rather than philosophical, jealous of his own fame though genial to others, patriotic without being illiberal, and combining real piety and trust in a divine superintendence with an unquestioning credulity in the wildest legends, he is totally absorbed in