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204 introduced after anxious and repeated weighing of its probable effect. The unexpected desertion of a theme does not prove that the poet's fancy is really wandering free from the restraint of his judgment; it may result from that last refinement of art—the concealment of its presence.

The more we examine the apparent carelessness and freedom of Pindar's fancy, the more the certainty grows upon us that here are not the vagaries of improvisation, but the studied artlessness of a consummate artist. If he quits a topic abruptly, we find, on reflection, that he has not quitted it prematurely—not till it has served the purpose of its introduction. If in a chain of argument or narrative he seems to let drop an occasional link, the links in question are just those which the audience can spare; and their omission is sometimes an actual gain in point of vigour and suggestiveness. If he seems to ramble heedlessly into an alien topic, it appears in the end that the supposed digression has led him to the very point at which he has from the first been aiming. There are in most of these Odes passages whose obscurity, or abruptness, or extravagance, or. slightness of detail, might well seem the result of haste. But we find on examination that these are no unconscious lapses of a rhapsodist whose tongue outruns his thought. Not only is Pindar aware of the qualities of these passages, but he calls attention to them with an eagerness which is the only trace of naïveté displayed by him in the whole matter. He boasts that he is obscure—his poetry is meant to baffle "the general;" that he is abrupt—he cannot waste