for its mainspring; while I can join with old Ennius in believing in Homer as

the ghost, who, like some patron saint, hovers round the bed of the poet, and

even bestows rare gifts from that wealth of imagination which a host of

imitators could not exhaust,—still I am far from wishing to deny that the

author of these great poems found a rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked

mythical storehouse, from whence he might derive both subject and

embellishment. But it is one thing to use existing romances in the

embellishment of a poem, another to patch up the poem itself from such

materials. What consistency of style and execution can be hoped for from such

an attempt? or, rather, what bad taste and tedium will not be the infallible

result?


A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other bards, are

features perfectly consistent with poetical originality. In fact, the most

original writer is still drawing upon outward impressions—nay, even his

own thoughts are a kind of secondary agents which support and feed the impulses

of imagination. But unless there be some grand pervading principle—some

invisible, yet most distinctly stamped archetypus of the great whole, a poem

like the Iliad can never come to the birth. Traditions the most picturesque,

episodes the most pathetic, local associations teeming with the thoughts of

gods and great men, may crowd in one mighty vision, or reveal themselves in

more substantial forms to the mind of the poet; but, except the power to create

a grand whole, to which these shall be but as details and embellishments, be

present, we shall have nought but a scrap-book, a parterre filled with flowers

and weeds strangling each other in their wild redundancy; we shall have a cento

of rags and tatters, which will require little acuteness to detect.


Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware as I