Page:On the Sublime 1890.djvu/57

 X said, to point out into what trifles the second childhood of genius is too apt to be betrayed; such, I mean, as the bag in which the winds are confined, the tale of Odysseus's comrades being changed by Circe into swine ("whimpering porkers" Zoïlus called them), and how Zeus was fed like a nestling by the doves, and how Odysseus passed ten nights on the shipwreck without food, and the improbable incidents in the slaying of the suitors. When Homer nods like this, we must be content to say that he dreams as Zeus might dream. Another reason for these remarks on the Odyssey is that I wished to make you understand that great poets and prose-writers, after they have lost their power of depicting the passions, turn naturally to the delineation of character. Such, for instance, is the lifelike and characteristic picture of the palace of Odysseus, which may be called a sort of comedy of manners.



Let us now consider whether there is anything further which conduces to the Sublime in writing. It is a law of Nature that in all things there are certain constituent parts, coexistent with their substance. It necessarily follows, therefore, that