Ἥρη, μήτε θεῶν τόγε δείδιθι μήτε τιν’ ἀνδρῶν
ὄψεσθαι· τοῖόν τοι ἐγὼ νέφος ἀμφικαλύψω,
χρύσεον.
“Fear thou not that any god or man will look upon us,” that does not prove that the cloud was needed to conceal them from the eyes of mortals, but that in this cloud they would be as invisible to the gods as they always were to men. So, when Minerva puts on the helmet of Pluto (Iliad, v. 485), which has the same effect of concealment that a cloud would have, it is not that she may be concealed from the Trojans, who either see her not at all or under the form of Sthenelus, but simply that she may not be recognized by Mars.
Note 34, p. [87].
Tableaux tirés de l’Iliade, Avert. p. 5. “On est toujours convenu, que plus un poëme fournissait d’images et d’actions, plus il avait de supériorité en poésie. Cette réflexion m’avait conduit à penser que le calcul des différens tableaux, qu’ offrent les poëmes, pouvait servir à comparer le mérite respectif des poëmes et des poëtes. Le nombre et le genre des tableaux que présentent ces grands ouvrages, auraient été une espèce de pierre de touche, ou, plutôt, une balance certaine du mérite de ces poëmes et du génie de leurs auteurs.”
Note 35, p. [88].
What we call poetic pictures, the ancients, as we learn from Longinus, called “phantasiæ;” and what we call illusion in such pictures, they named “enargia.” It was therefore said by some one, as Plutarch tells us (Erot. T. ii. edit. Henr. Steph. p. 1351), that poetic “phantasiæ” were, on account of their “enargia,” waking dreams: Αἱ ποιητικαὶ φαντασίαι διὰ τὴν ἐνάργειαν ἐγρηγορότων ἐνύπνια εἰσίν. I could wish that our modern books upon poetry had used this nomenclature, and avoided the word picture altogether. We should thus have been spared a multitude of doubtful rules, whose chief foundation is the coincidence of an arbitrary term. No one would then have thought of confining poetic conceptions within the limits of a material picture. But the moment these conceptions were called a poetic picture, the foundation for the error was laid.
Note 36, p. [89].
Iliad, iv. 105.