Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/125

Rh such folk-songs has the same directness. The rhythm of its imagery and narrative, swift Epic masterpieces. and strong and ceaseless as a great river, would be sadly ruffled by the four winds of a minstrel's self-expression,—its current all set back by his emotional tides,

The modern temper is not quick to apprehend a work of simple beauty and invention. It presupposes, judging from itself, underlying motives even for the legends and matutinal carols of a young people. Age forgets, and fails to understand, the heart of childhood; we "ancients of the earth" misconceive its youth. We even class together the literatures of races utterly opposed in genius and disposition. Some would put the Homeric epos The Homeric epos. on the same footing with the philosophical drama of Job, the end of which is avowedly "to justify the ways of God to men." Professor Snider, who has exploited well the ethical scheme of "Faust," would similarly deal with the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer, he thinks, had in mind a grand exposition of Providence, divine rule, the nature of good and evil, and so forth, in relation to which the narrative and poetry of those epics are subordinate and allegorical. But why should we reason too curiously? Both instinct and common sense are against it. Whether the Homeric epos was a growth, or an originally synthetic creation, I believe that the