Or are we to reject altogether the idea of defect, and to treat his use of colour as one conceived in the spirit which, with even the most perfect knowledge, would properly belong to his art?
The mere tradition of Homer’s blindness is hardly relevant. The presumption of it drawn from the poems, because they make Demodocus blind, is inappreciably minute. The testimony of the Hymn to Apollo is ancient[850]; but, as his blindness (if he really was blind) allowed of the most vivid conceptions of light, it will not account for defectiveness in his conceptions of colour. The vigorous apprehension and accurate description of sensible objects in the poems demonstrate, that we cannot seek in this hypothesis for an explanation of what may be either singular, crude, or irregular.
Neither can we resort to the supposition of anything, that is to be properly called a defect in his organization; when we bear in mind his intense feeling for form, and when we observe his effective and powerful handling of the ideas of light and dark.
License of Poetry as to colour.
Our answer to the third question must also, I think, be in the negative. It is true, indeed, that much of merely literal discrepancy as to colour might be understood to appertain to the license of poetry. There is high poetical effect in what may be called straining epithets of colour. But it seems essential to that effect,
(1.) That the straining should be the exception, and not the rule.
(2.) That there should be a fixed standard of the colour itself, so that the departures from it may be measured. Otherwise the result is not license, but confusion. Shakespeare with high effect says[851],
Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood.