Yes; for how far from Thucydides is, at once, the Book of the Games! Look through the Iliad, and see how much and minute depicturing of a World with which the Historian had nothing to do! Shall the Historian, in Prose, of the Ten Years' War, stop to describe the Funeral Games of a Patroclus? Yes; if he stop to describe the Burying of every Hero who falls. But the Historian in Prose assumes that a People know their own Manners, and therefore he omits painting their manners to themselves. The Historian in Verse assumes the same thing, and, therefore, strange to say, he paints the manners! See, then, in the Iliad, how much memorising of a whole departed scheme of human existence, with which the Prose Historian had nothing to do, the Historian in regulated Metre has had the inspiration and the skill to inweave in the narrative of his ever-advancing Action.
BULLER.
Would his lordship were with us!
NORTH.
Give all this to—the Hexameter. Remember always, my dear Seward, the shield of Achilles—itself a world in miniature—a compendium of the world.
SEWARD.
Of the universe.
NORTH.
Even so; for Sun, and Moon, and Stars are there, Astronomy and all the learned sisterhood!
SEWARD.