The feelings are just what we should look for in Ajax. He does not, you observe, ask for his life—such a request would have been unworthy of his heroic soul—but finding himself paralysed by darkness, and prohibited from employing his valour in any noble action, he chafes because his arms are idle, and prays for a speedy return of light. “At least,” he thinks, “I shall find a warrior’s grave, even though Zeus himself should fight against me.” 11 In such passages the mind of the poet is swept along in the whirlwind of the struggle, and, in his own words, he
“Like the fierce war-god, raves, or wasting fire
Through the deep thickets on a mountain-side;
His lips drop foam.”[18]
12 But there is another and a very interesting aspect of Homer’s mind. When we turn to the Odyssey we find occasion to observe that a great poetical genius in the decline of power which comes with old age naturally leans towards the fabulous. For it is evident that this work was composed after the Iliad, in proof of which we may mention, among many other indications, the introduction in the Odyssey of the sequel to the story of his heroes’ adventures at Troy, as so many additional episodes in the Trojan war, and especially the tribute of sorrow and mourning which is paid in that poem to departed heroes, as if in fulfilment of some previous design. The Odyssey is, in fact, a sort of epilogue to the Iliad—
“There warrior Ajax lies, Achilles there,
And there Patroclus, godlike counsellor;
There lies my own dear son.”[19]
13 And for the same reason, I imagine, whereas in the Iliad, which was written when his genius was in its prime, the whole structure of the poem is founded on action and struggle, in the Odyssey he generally prefers the narrative style, which is proper to old age. Hence Homer in his Odyssey may be compared to the setting sun: he is still as great as ever, but he has lost his fervent heat. The strain is now pitched to a lower key than in the “Tale of Troy divine”: we begin to miss that high and equable sublimity which never flags or sinks, that continuous current of moving incidents, those rapid transitions, that force of eloquence, that opulence of imagery which is ever true to Nature. Like the sea when it retires upon itself and leaves its shores waste and bare, henceforth the tide of sublimity begins to ebb, and draws us away into the dim region of myth and legend. 14 In saying this I am not forgetting the fine storm-pieces in the Odyssey, the story of the Cyclops,[20] and other striking passages. It is Homer grown old I am discussing, but still it is Homer. Yet in every one of these passages the mythical predominates over the real.
My purpose in making this digression was, as I 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,[21] the tale of Odysseus’s comrades being changed by Circe into swine[22] (“whimpering porkers” Zoïlus called them), and how Zeus was fed like a nestling by the doves,[23] and how Odysseus passed ten nights on the shipwreck without food,[24] and the improbable incidents in the slaying of the suitors.[25] When Homer nods like this, we must be content to say that he dreams as Zeus might dream. 15 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.
[X]
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 one cause of sublimity is the choice of the most striking circumstances involved in whatever we are describing, and, further, the power of afterwards combining them into one animate whole. The reader is attracted partly by the selection of the incidents, partly by the skill which has welded them together. For instance, Sappho, in dealing with the passionate manifestations attending on the frenzy of lovers, always chooses her strokes from the signs which she has observed to be actually exhibited in such cases. But her peculiar excellence lies in the felicity with which she chooses and unites together the most striking and powerful features.
2 “I deem that man divinely blest
Who sits, and, gazing on thy face,
Hears thee discourse with eloquent lips,