But, through waywardness and infirmity, mankind corrupts that with which it sympathizes, and undermines what it obeys. The same law of waste and decomposition, which from day to day corrodes the works of nature, operates also in divers manners and degrees upon the creations of mind. As the portraitures of individual character, to be found in the works of the great masters of the imaginative faculty, are among the very highest of these creations, so, because they are the greatest, they are the most difficult to render into other forms, and to transfuse through new media. Among the ancient sculptures it is easier to find a good Faun than a good Venus, while again those works, which embody the very highest ideals, are not only rare, but are in most instances unique. In like manner the Punch and the Harlequin, the broad characters of primitive spectacle and farce, readily become national, and are transmitted, spontaneously as it were, through ages without substantial change; but the finer and nobler representations of man, requiring greater effort, and a different order of mind to comprehend, as well as to project them, rapidly degenerate in the very points on which their peculiar excellence depends.
Other causes, besides mental impotence in the recipient, contribute towards this result. One main agent is, the inability or the disinclination of mankind to go back to originals. For the mass, a modernizing process is commonly in demand, is readily furnished, and is itself again and again varied from age to age. It is always easier to derive from what is itself derivative, than to go up to the fountain-head. Into the business of every profession, including (now more than ever) that of letters, necessity drives her adamantine clamps: and the βάναυσον and the φορτικὸν, or slang and the clap-trap, maintain a too successful struggle to depress its higher and more genial aims.
Causes of injury to Homeric characters.
It is not difficult to point out reasons why the characters of Homer should have been peculiarly exposed to injury from the lapse of time. Most of all from two causes; because they were of such extraordinary and refined merit, and because of the form in which they were conveyed. Not only did they bear the stamp that the highest genius alone could affix, but nothing less than care, sympathy, and manly effort, could enable men to comprehend them. For they were not exhibited in the set forms of descriptive passages, which might be learnt by rote, but they were wrought out in the fine, as well as deep and strong lines of life and action; and none of them could be defined in terms, until they had first been profoundly felt within. We were to become acquainted with them as friends, by living with them through their varied fortunes; not as strangers, by some letter of introduction, that sets forth their birth, parentage, calling, and qualifications. For earnest and hearty attention they provided the richest possible reward; by the careless they were to be enjoyed indeed, but scarcely to be apprehended. To the eyes of such men there is little or nothing to discriminate, as between Agamemnon, Ajax, Diomed, Menelaus, and Patroclus; and if Nestor is a good deal older, Ulysses a good deal more cunning, and Achilles even more valiant than the rest, a single touch disposes of these differences, and enables us to reduce all the eight nearly to a common type. A prior examination of particular instances will best prepare us for weighing the force of those other causes, besides the weakness of human nature, and the excellence of the works in the general sense of the words, that contributed to depress and deface the Homeric characters.
In the present Section, then, I propose to invite attention to a few Homeric characters, as they stand in the poems, which, as far as I am able to judge, stand in need as yet of further elucidation.
Perhaps there is no one particular in which Colonel Mure has rendered such important service to the modern Homeridæ, as in his account of the Homeric characters. In general, I shall best discharge my duty by simply referring the reader to his pages. I venture, however, to think, that while the paramount subject of the great Grecian characters is incomparably handled by him throughout, some exception may be taken to his representation of a part of the Trojan personages; of Hector, for example, and more particularly (if she may be placed in this class) of Helen. At least, I presume to regard some of them as fairly capable of being presented in another light, and I shall proceed at once to make the attempt with Hector.
Relation of Orlando to Hector.
I. ‘In the character of this hero,’ says Mure, ‘good and evil are so curiously blended that it is hard to say which element predominates[974].’ Is there not a different view of the composition of qualities, which Mure has thus placed in equipoise?
It is indeed eminently true, as in the same place he proceeds to observe, that in order to maintain what may be called the conventional balance, or stage-equality, which was necessary in order to give interest to his poem, Homer has magnified the prowess of Hector, in general terms, as of the highest transcendental order: but that in actual achievement he is greatly surpassed by the leading Greek heroes. Indeed, in many places of the Iliad it even seems questionable, whether Hector is a hero at all.
How successful Homer’s art has been in thus paying off the Trojan champion with generalities, while he nevertheless reserved the true palm of military virtue to his own countrymen, we may, perhaps, best judge from considering the effect which the picture has had upon the poets of Italy, and upon European opinion at large, in more recent times. With the former, the name of Hector seems to be the prime type of the heroic character. Thus Tasso celebrates—