Yet, though clearly perceptible by the æsthetic sense, it is far less easy to define its quality than to miss it altogether. We do not gain much, for example, by pointing to the reminiscences of bygone phraseology curiously blended with new forms of language, to the artificial subtleties of rhythm wrung from well-worn metres, to the richness of effect produced by conscious use of telling images, to the iridescent shimmer of mixed metaphors, compound epithets, and daring tropes, contrasted with the undertone of sadness which betrays the "idle singer of an empty day," although these elements are all combined in the autumnal style. Nor will it profit us to distinguish this kind of beauty from the beauté maladive of morbid art. So difficult, indeed, is it to seize its character with any certainty, that in the case of Hero and Leander the uncritical scholars of the Greek Renaissance mistook the evening for the morning star of Greek poetry, confounding Musæus the grammarian with the semi-mythic bard of the Orphean age. When Aldus Manutius conceived his great idea of issuing Greek literature entire from the Venetian press, he put forth Hero and Leander first of all in 1498, with a preface that ran as follows: "I was desirous that Musæus, the most ancient poet, should form a prelude to Aristotle and the other sages who will shortly be imprinted at my hands." Marlowe spoke of "divine Musæus," and even the elder Scaliger saw no reason to suspect that the grammarian's studied verse was not the first clear woodnote of the Eleusinian singer. What renders this mistake pardonable is the fact that, however autumnal may be the poem's charm, no point of the genuine Greek youthfulness of fancy has been lost. Through conceits, confusions of diction, and oversweetness of style emerges the clear outline which characterized Greek art in all its periods. Both persons and situations are plastically treated—subjected, that is to say, to the conditions best fulfilled by sculpture. The emotional element is adequate to the imaginative presentation; the feeling penetrates the form and gives it life, without exceeding the just limits which the form imposes. The importance of this observation will appear when we examine the same poem romantically handled by our own Marlowe. If nothing but the Hero and Leander of Musæus had survived the ruin of Greek literature, we should still be able to distinguish how Greek poets dealt with their material, and to point the difference between the classic and the modern styles.
What is truly admirable in this poem, marking it as genuinely Greek, is the simplicity of structure, clearness of motives, and unaffected purity of natural feeling. The first fifteen lines set forth, by way of proem, the whole subject:
εἰπέ, θεά, κρυφίων ἐπιμάρτυρα λύχνον ἐρώτων,
καὶ νύχιον πλωτῆρα θαλασσοπόρων ὑμεναίων,
καὶ γάμον ἀχλυόεντα, τὸν οὐκ ἴδεν ἄφθιτος Ἠώς,
καὶ Σηστὸν καὶ Ἄβυδον ὅπη γάμος ἔννυχος Ἡροῦς.[255]
Here, perhaps, a modern poet might have stayed his hand: not so Musæus; he has still to say that he will tell of Leander's death, and, in propounding this part of his theme, to speak once more about the lamp:
λύχνον, ἔρωτος ἄγαλμα, τὸν ὤφελεν αἰθέριος Ζεὺς
ἐννύχιον μετ' ἄεθλον ἄγειν ἐς ὁμήγυριν ἄστρων
καί μιν ἐπικλῆσαι νυμφοστόλον ἄστρον ἐρώτων.[256]
Seven lines were enough for Homer while explaining the subject of the Iliad. Musæus, though his poem is so short, wants more than twice as many. He cannot resist the temptation to introduce decorative passages like the three lines just quoted, which are, moreover, appropriate in a poem that aims at combining the idyllic and epic styles.
After the proem we enter on the story. Sestos and Abydos are divided by the sea, but Love has joined them with an arrow from his bow:
ἠΐθεον φλέξας καὶ παρθένον· οὔνομα δ' αὐτῶν
ἱμερόεις τε Λέανδρος ἔην καὶ παρθένος Ἡρώ.[257]
Hero dwelt at Sestos; Leander lived at Abydos; and both were "exceeding fair stars of the two cities." By the sea, outside the town of Sestos, Hero had a tower, where she abode in solitude with one old servant, paying her daily orisons to Dame Kupris, whose maiden votary she was, and sprinkling the altars of Love with incense to propitiate his powerful deity. "Still even thus she did not shun his fire-breathing shafts;" for so it happened that when the festival of Adonis came round, and the women flocked into the town to worship, and the youths to gaze upon the maidens, Hero passed forth that day to Venus's temple, and all the men beheld her beauty, and praised her for a goddess, and desired her for a bride. Leander, too, was there; and Leander could not content himself, like the rest, with distant admiration:
εἷλε δέ μιν τότε θάμβος, ἀναιδείη, τρόμος, αἰδώς·
ἔτρεμε μὲν κραδιήν, αἰδὼς δέ μιν εἶχεν ἁλῶναι·
θάμβεε δ' εἶδος ἄριστον, ἔρως δ' ἀπενόσφισεν αἰδώ·
θαρσαλέως δ' ὑπ' ἔρωτος ἀναιδείην ἀγαπάζων
ἠρέμα ποσσὶν ἔβαινε καὶ ἀντίον ἵστατο κούρης.[258]