He passed the flaming bounds of space and time:
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.
(Dr. Johnson remarks that if we suppose the blindness caused by study in the formation of his poem, this account is poetically true and happily imagined.)
Hermias, a Galatian writer of the second century, says of Homer’s blindness,—
When Homer resolved to write of Achilles, he had an exceeding desire to fill his mind with a just idea of so glorious a hero: wherefore, having paid all due honors at his tomb, he entreats that he may obtain a sight of him. The hero grants his poet’s petition, and rises in a glorious suit of armor, which cast so insufferable a splendor that Homer lost his eyes while he gazed for the enlargement of his notions.
(Pope says if this be any thing more than mere fable, one would be apt to imagine it insinuated his contracting a blindness by too intense application while he wrote the Iliad.)