Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/57

 is Homer's double; there is, whatever you may think, ten thousand times more of the real strain of Homer in

Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides, And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old,

than in

Now Christ thee save, thou proud portèr, Now Christ thee save and see ,

or in

While the tinker did dine, he had plenty of wine.

For Homer is not only rapid in movement, simple in style, plain in language, natural in thought; he is also, and above all, noble. I have advised the translator not to go into the vexed question of Homer's identity. Yet I will just remind him that the grand argument—or rather, not argument, for the matter affords no data for arguing, but the grand source from which conviction, as we read the Iliad, keeps pressing in upon us, that there is one poet of the Iliad, one Homer—is precisely this nobleness of the poet, this grand manner; we feel that the analogy drawn from other joint compositions does not hold good here, because those works do not bear, like the Iliad, the magic stamp of a master; and the moment you have anything less than a masterwork, the co-operation or consolidation of several poets