Eothen [15]
surrounded at Constantinople by scenes of much interest to the "classical scholar," I had cast aside their associations like an old Greek grammar, and turned my face to the "shining Orient," forgetful of old Greece and all the pure wealth she left to this matter-of-fact-ridden world. But it happened to me one day to mount the high grounds overhanging the streets of Pera. I sated my eyes with the pomps of the city and its crowded waters, and then I looked over where Scutari lay half veiled in her mournful cypresses. I looked yet farther and higher, and saw in the heavens a silvery cloud that stood fast and still against the breeze: it was pure and dazzling white, as might be the veil of Cytherea, yet touched with such fire, as though from beneath the loving eyes of an immortal were shining through and through. I knew the bearing, but had enormously misjudged its distance and underrated its height, and so it was as a sign and a testimony, almost as a call from the neglected gods, and now I saw and acknowledged the snowy crown of the Mysian Olympus!
CHAPTER IV - THE TROAD
METHLEY recovered almost suddenly, and we determined to go through the Troad together.
My comrade was a capital Grecian. It is true that his singular mind so ordered and disposed his classic lore as to impress it with something of an original and barbarous character - with an almost Gothic quaintness, more properly belonging to a rich native ballad than to the poetry of Hellas. There was a certain impropriety in his knowing so much Greek - an unfitness in the idea of marble fauns, and satyrs, and even Olympian gods, lugged in under the oaken roof and the painted light of an odd, old Norman hall. But Methley, abounding in Homer, really loved him (as I believe) in all truth, without whim or fancy; moreover, he had a good deal of the practical sagacity
"Of a Yorkshireman hippodamoio,"
and this enabled him to apply his knowledge with much more tact than is usually shown by people so learned as he.
I, too, loved Homer, but not with a scholar's love. The most humble and pious among women was yet so proud a mother that she could teach her firstborn son no Watts' hymns, no collects for the day; she could teach him in earliest childhood no less than this, to find a home in his saddle, and to love old Homer, and all that old Homer sung. True it is, that the Greek was ingeniously rendered into English, the English of Pope even, but not even a mesh like that can screen an earnest child from the fire of Homer's battles.
I pored over the ODYSSEY as over a story-book, hoping and fearing for the hero whom yet I partly scorned. But the Iliad - line by line I clasped it to my brain with reverence as well as with love. As an old woman deeply trustful sits reading her Bible because of the world to come, so, as though it would fit me for the coming strife of this temporal world, I read and read the ILIAD. Even outwardly, it was not like other books; it was throned in towering folios. There was a preface or dissertation printed in type still more majestic than the rest of the book; this I read, but not till my enthusiasm for the ILIAD had already run high. The writer compiling the opinions of many men, and chiefly of the ancients, set forth, I know not how quaintly, that the ILIAD was all in all to the human race - that it was history, poetry, revelation; that the works of men's hands were folly and vanity, and would pass away like the dreams of a child, but that the kingdom of Homer would endure for ever and ever.
I assented with all my soul. I read, and still read; I came to know Homer. A learned commentator knows something of the Greeks, in the same sense as an oil-and-colour man may be said to know something of painting; but take an untamed child, and leave him alone for twelve months with any translation of Homer, and he will be nearer by twenty centuries to the spirit of old Greece; HE does not stop in the ninth year of the siege to admire this or that group of words; HE has no books in his tent, but he shares in vital counsels
CHAPTER IV - THE TROAD
METHLEY recovered almost suddenly, and we determined to go through the Troad together.
My comrade was a capital Grecian. It is true that his singular mind so ordered and disposed his classic lore as to impress it with something of an original and barbarous character - with an almost Gothic quaintness, more properly belonging to a rich native ballad than to the poetry of Hellas. There was a certain impropriety in his knowing so much Greek - an unfitness in the idea of marble fauns, and satyrs, and even Olympian gods, lugged in under the oaken roof and the painted light of an odd, old Norman hall. But Methley, abounding in Homer, really loved him (as I believe) in all truth, without whim or fancy; moreover, he had a good deal of the practical sagacity
"Of a Yorkshireman hippodamoio,"
and this enabled him to apply his knowledge with much more tact than is usually shown by people so learned as he.
I, too, loved Homer, but not with a scholar's love. The most humble and pious among women was yet so proud a mother that she could teach her firstborn son no Watts' hymns, no collects for the day; she could teach him in earliest childhood no less than this, to find a home in his saddle, and to love old Homer, and all that old Homer sung. True it is, that the Greek was ingeniously rendered into English, the English of Pope even, but not even a mesh like that can screen an earnest child from the fire of Homer's battles.
I pored over the ODYSSEY as over a story-book, hoping and fearing for the hero whom yet I partly scorned. But the Iliad - line by line I clasped it to my brain with reverence as well as with love. As an old woman deeply trustful sits reading her Bible because of the world to come, so, as though it would fit me for the coming strife of this temporal world, I read and read the ILIAD. Even outwardly, it was not like other books; it was throned in towering folios. There was a preface or dissertation printed in type still more majestic than the rest of the book; this I read, but not till my enthusiasm for the ILIAD had already run high. The writer compiling the opinions of many men, and chiefly of the ancients, set forth, I know not how quaintly, that the ILIAD was all in all to the human race - that it was history, poetry, revelation; that the works of men's hands were folly and vanity, and would pass away like the dreams of a child, but that the kingdom of Homer would endure for ever and ever.
I assented with all my soul. I read, and still read; I came to know Homer. A learned commentator knows something of the Greeks, in the same sense as an oil-and-colour man may be said to know something of painting; but take an untamed child, and leave him alone for twelve months with any translation of Homer, and he will be nearer by twenty centuries to the spirit of old Greece; HE does not stop in the ninth year of the siege to admire this or that group of words; HE has no books in his tent, but he shares in vital counsels