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 mind, that what would be a Metaphor in a more logical and cultivated age, with him riots in Simile which overflows its banks. His similes not merely go beyond the mark of likeness; in extreme cases they even turn into contrariety. If he were not so carried away by his illustration, as to forget what he is illustrating (which belongs to a quaint mind), he would never paint for us such full and splendid pictures. Where a logical later poet would have said that Menelaus

With eagle-eye survey'd the field,

the mere metaphor contenting him; Homer says:

Gazing around on every side,   in fashion of an eagle, Which, of all heaven's fowl, they say,   to scan the earth is keenest: Whose eye, when loftiest he hangs,   not the swift hare escapeth, Lurking amid a leaf-clad bush:   but straight at it he souseth, Unerring; and with crooked gripe   doth quickly rieve its spirit.

I feel this long simile to be a disturbance of the logical balance, such as belongs to the lively eye of the savage, whose observation is intense, his concentration of reasoning