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 HOMER 
 
 , AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE 
 THE 
 
 Wilts Xcttrra unit itiitott ^tlcsopjitfal 
 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 OF 
 
 DICKINSON COLLEGE, July, 11th, 1855. 
 
 BY 
 
 KEY. D?D. WHEDON, D.D. 
 
 [an honorary member of the belles lettres society.] 
 
 CARLISLE, PENN'A. 
 
 PRINTED AT THE HERALD OFFICE. 
 
 1855. 
 
> 
 
 •\ 
 
 
 '04, 
 
HOMER, 
 
 i 
 Gentlemen of the Belles Lettees 
 
 and Union Philosophical Societies : 
 
 The attractive pursuits which form the bond of 
 union of your fraternities suggest to me not to move 
 any deep question of science or metaphysics, in 
 which, as heretofore I might be tempted to indulge; 
 but with you to range, for a brief excursion, over 
 the field of esthetic literature. We will seek less 
 the precious metal whose richness coruscates deeply 
 in the mine, than the flowerets scattered by the 
 hand of spring over the sunny surface of the living 
 landscape. Yet, remembering that I am now not 
 quite in the muses' bower, but under the shadow of 
 the halls, where science sheds some severity, and 
 breathes some earnest depth, even into the spirit of 
 lighter literature, I select a topic in which fancy 
 shall still be sobered by sedater thought. Allow 
 me, without being supposed to interfere with the 
 prerogatives of your Professors' chairs, to select a 
 topic from your College course. Permit me to pre- 
 sent for your contemplation the illustrious bard of 
 antiquity — the laureate of the classic ages — the 
 Poet Homek. 
 
i ip mil inn inn inn mil u mil mil mi mi 
 
 On the spacious poetic arena of the two great 
 worlds of ancient and modern literature, there 
 stand two transcendent spirits of kindred genius — 
 rivals to each other — by all others unrivalled — 
 Homer and Shakspeare. Rivals, I say, and yet 
 they stand at centuries of distance, unknown and 
 unenvying each other. I pronounce them of kin- 
 dred genius. No matter that one is epic, and the 
 other dramatic. No matter that one spoke the 
 almost miraculous Greek and the other magically 
 moulded the plastic English. No matter that one 
 trod the luxuriant soil of the summery Ionia; and 
 the other hardened amid the Hyperborean blasts of 
 the, rugged Britannia. Beneath all the external 
 accidents of form, language and clime, there is the 
 created oneness of kindred genius and coequal great- 
 ness. There they stand — that wondrous two — 
 the peerless pair — the highest masters in the highest 
 walks of aesthetic art and power — two greatest of 
 the sons of genius— two truest geniuses of the sons 
 of men. 
 
 I called Homer the laureate of antiquity. I 
 now call Homer and Shakspeare both laureates of 
 nature — laureates of all external, earthly nature — 
 specially laureates of the highest, namely, human 
 nature. And their range is wide as all nature's 
 range. They have a spiritual omnipresence all 
 nature through. Into what depths of human 
 heart, what chaos of human passions, have they 
 not descended? What combination of cunning or 
 formation of beauty have they not threaded ? The 
 reader of Shakspeare finds Shakspeare's sayings 
 
cross him at every turn of life. The lines of 
 Homer intertwined with all a Grecian's changes; 
 and his spirit permeated all the Grecian ages. They 
 were minds that had no one manner but every 
 manner. They, each, seemed to possess all the 
 characters of human kind within their own. 
 
 But who is this Homer? Here all erudition, 
 ancient and modern pauses. It interrogates history 
 — but history is then in her childhood, and she 
 prattles innocent incredibilities about him. It 
 opens his own wondrous works; but he is too 
 wrapt with his own entrancing themes to tell one 
 fact about himself. Plagued with the tantalizing 
 problem of this great authorship — a problem before 
 which the question, who teas Junius? is not fit to 
 be asked — the ancient Greek epigrammatist re- 
 solved that Homer was Jove himself; for none 
 inferior could have produced those immortal works. 
 If all other great creations, traceable back to an 
 origin of mystery, were reverently attributed to 
 Jove supreme, why not those mighty creations, the 
 Iliad and the Odyssey ? Were they not two miracu- 
 lous worlds — a twin pair of universes in them- 
 selves? Not quite satisfied with this solution, 
 modern erudition, German and sceptical, takes up 
 her microscope; and under its solving gaze, the 
 solid person of Homer, evaporates — gasifies into a 
 my tit! The mythic gas then evolves and con- 
 volves, and soon under" the incantations of the 
 German magician, it begins to condense, solidify; 
 and lo! instead of one, twenty Homers stand in 
 goodly phalanx before us. But, verily, this is 
 
i Din inn mil inn mil mil mil inn mil mil mi III! 
 
 liberal. Who would cry for one Homer lost, when 
 he is compensated by a brace of Homers restored? 
 These mighty master-pieces, then, were not pro- 
 duced by Homer merely, but by Homer & Co! It 
 is altogether a company concern — the joint stock 
 in trade of a corporation. And, then, the wonder 
 of greatness and genius is entirely solved, by in- 
 geniously distributing it among a number of pro- 
 prietors, with each his fractional dividend. On 
 such a theory I should be uncrupulous in using 
 ridicule; since argument is almost out of place. 
 One Homer seems to me quite enough to admit in 
 all the rolling centuries; but our Teutonic cousins 
 demand my faith in a score. # They reduce the 
 miracle by multiplication. Twenty Homers, all in 
 one age and all at work upon one job! the 
 omnivorous faith of scepticism — the credulity of 
 unbelief — the superstition of infidelity ! The 
 human race never furnished twenty Homers. 
 There is not sparkle enough in the current of 
 human vitality to generate them. The rolling 
 river of human blood has not fire enough. Besides 
 the Iliad is one — grandly one! One with all its 
 free varieties; varieties of event — varieties of 
 spirit. It is one with all its discrepancies and for- 
 getfulness of itself. Its very varieties prove its 
 oneness; since they speak for themselves as the 
 varied unfoldings of one same boundless creative- 
 ness. I do not know then who Homer is ; — whether 
 he should be called by the letters that spell that 
 name, or that spell the name of Jove. But this I 
 know, that I could sooner believe that Paradise 
 
Lost was written by a herd of Miltons, than that 
 the Iliad was written by as many Homers. I feel 
 myself, when under his song, as listening to the 
 ever weaving spell of one great, unique, master 
 sorcerer. Thankfully, in this late age, I receive 
 the inspirations breathing through the lapse of 
 ages, of that sublime, but unknown mind. It is 
 not to be imagined because these immortal works 
 alone have stood the test of time, that the living 
 Homer was alone the poet of his age. He lived 
 when the spirit of poetry was alive and vivid. 
 For, account for it as we may, there is something 
 wonderfully periodical in the appearance and dis- 
 appearance of the galaxies of genius, in different 
 ages. There seem to be great productive eras in 
 genius, like the great life-periods of Geology, when 
 prolific nature seems to pour from her creative 
 cornucopia, the richest profusions of animated 
 existence. So it was in the middle ages with the 
 rise of the Troubadours in southern France. The 
 spirit of history, awoke and walked over the sunny 
 plains of Languedoc in the fresh bright morning of 
 the thirteenth century and lo ! all the green sward 
 was purpling with the bloomlets of poesy — fresh and 
 moist — all new and rejoicing as if just sprinkled by 
 the dewy fingers of the grey dawn. How curiously 
 then did blend the syllables of the Komanic and 
 Gallic tongues into that witching dialect, which 
 even now enchant the perusing scholar; so truly 
 styled the 'Romance language. And, then, as if by 
 one unanimous consent, how did the new poets — 
 real live poets — born not made — spring into being? 
 
i Him inn urn inn urn nut iim inn inn inn mil mi mi 
 
 They sang, like the spring birds, they knew not 
 why; and were suprised to hear their song re- 
 echoed from each vocal grove, from some strange 
 songster, born like them to melody. Troubadour, 
 Troubadour, where got ye that wondrous strain? 
 And the Troubadour answers, I did not get it — it 
 came. So the most gifted of the modern daughters 
 of song, Felicia Hemans, could hear and copy, as if 
 with the spirit's ear, the strains awakened in her own 
 soul, by the inspirations of inborn genius. And so 
 it is no- intended fiction with Homer, and doubtless 
 his contemporary bards, that they sang as an in- 
 spiring muse — daughter of Jove and Memory — 
 dictated to them. The opening invocation of the 
 Troiac Epos, calling down the enchanting syllables 
 of his dictating Goddess 
 
 Mnviv deeds, Saa, 
 
 As well as the opening prayer of the Odyssean 
 legend. 
 
 ' Ai^pa [lot svv£7t6, Movtia. 
 
 were not with the primal old bard himself a truth- 
 less form — a say-so of mere poetic pretence. It 
 was at a later period — an Augustan age of second- 
 hand literature — when a voluntary dissembling 
 took the place of the old living faith ; and when 
 cold and polished imitation superseded the primeval 
 warm-hearted invention, that Virgil reiterated, ac- 
 cording to precedent, the soulless formula 
 
 Musa, mihi causa memora. 
 
 And so, according to the same tradition, through 
 
9 
 
 ages of set imitation, every poetaster who strided a 
 Pegasus, must also have his muse; as every Quixote 
 who mounts a Rosinante must have his Dulcinea. A 
 bolder age, which despises the traditions of old 
 imitation as much as the illusions of legendary 
 faith, furnishes its Byrons; who sing with a mimic 
 mock, 
 
 " Hail muse let cetera." 
 
 But the conception that the visions of genius are 
 a gift — that they are a visitation from a super- 
 natural world — is expressed with innocent sim- 
 plicity by many a son of genius in different ages. 
 Says the Irish Orator, Grattan, "during the recess 
 of Parliament I retired into the country, considered 
 on the public affairs and thoughts and arguments 
 came to me." And so says Pope of his own youth, 
 
 " While yet a child and not a fool to fame 
 I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came" 
 
 Nay even the Geometrician at the black-board, 
 as the combinations of the figures are presented 
 before him, consciously feels that the new inference 
 comes to him not only a gift — a grace — but an 
 irresistible grace. And this fact, while it serves to 
 refute the error of the old philosopher, that all 
 knowledge is really slumbering in the mind, and 
 only needs a stimulant to awaken it; so, on the 
 other hand, it does illustrate the declaration of the 
 Hebrew writer, that " there is a spirit in man and 
 the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him under- 
 standing." 
 
10 
 
 But in the natural-divine economy, there seem 
 to be ages rife and alive with genius; when its 
 flashes dart from every point; breaking out with 
 incessant electric streaks — pointed and forked — 
 criss-cross and zigzag — until the whole firmament is 
 ablaze with its ever varying play. Thus brilliant, 
 like the age of the Provencal Troubadours, was, I 
 fancy, the era of the Grecian aoidoi, of whom 
 Homer was immortal chief, and strange to say the 
 sole survivor and type. With his rhabdos or 
 sacred wand in one hand, and his melodious Phor- 
 minx on his arm, the son of the muses ranged 
 along the domains of the Asiatic Greek mainland, 
 or visited, in turn, the rocky isles — the Cyclades 
 and Sporades of the blue iEgean. A gaze of ad- 
 miration for his genius and reverence for its divine 
 source, ever welcomed his approach to palace halls. 
 And there he sang the legends of old heroic story; 
 the sacred secrets of Olympian councils and in- 
 trigues, or, taking a deeper, diviner strain, he sang 
 the birth of the creation. He told how, through 
 the vast void, the deep coagulated into substance, 
 and marshaled into form; how the fiery beam first 
 sparkled, and the throb of life first quickened; how 
 the hills first raised their spontaneous heads, and 
 the plains shot up their speary forests, and assumed 
 their crowning verdure. Of the effects of their 
 minstrelsy tales are added, no way to be believed; 
 how the fauns came out of the surrounding groves 
 and danced to the minstrel's measures; how the 
 enchanted oaks bowed their applauding tops and 
 prepared to march in order down and encore the 
 
11 
 
 last performance; and how the hard-hearted Par- 
 nassian rocks, gave up their critical immobility, 
 and (more humane than some modern reviewers) 
 all but melted at the strain. 
 
 Now in another century, John II. king of Castile, 
 said, "I will have in my kingdom genius, and 
 literature and eloquence and poetry." He was 
 absolute king and could do what he pleased, and 
 he decreed there should be genius. He erected 
 academies of arts and sciences, he salaried literati, 
 he established contests of literature and prizes for 
 excellence. The machinery was all erected; the 
 crank was duly turned ; and the force pump brought 
 forth in copious torents the Heliconian stream. 
 But on its surface the life-bubbles did not sparkle; 
 it had a deadish flavor; a marvellous wooden 
 tAvang; as tasting of the machine. Poetry by the 
 yard, made by order and made to order, was man- 
 ufactured and dearly paid for — dear at any price. 
 It was a cash article, not because it was worth but 
 because it cost cash. But all the produce of King 
 John's entire machineries were not worth the first 
 dactyl of a true Greek aoidos or the lighest catch 
 that Troubadour ever flung upon his careless harp. 
 
 This world possesses, young gentlemen, but one 
 truly inspired book. Yet there are one or two 
 other volumes, which, though not inspired, I 
 hold to be Providential hooks. What could we do 
 in sacred and christian history and evidences, with- 
 out Josephus? And if his publication were an 
 accident, how sad the blank the accident of his 
 non-publication would have left! It seems as if 
 
12 
 
 that same Providence which has preserved the 
 wonderful purity of the sacred text, -has taken a 
 prudential care, that no proper link should be 
 wanting to our honest research, to place the very 
 base of its authenticity proudly above the summit 
 level of any other ancient document. And now, if 
 Providence designed that after ages should possess 
 a daguerreotype of one fair age of antiquity; if it 
 were purposed that the very life of that age should 
 live forever and be beheld by the living eye of all 
 subsequent time, surely, for such a purpose there 
 must be created a Homer; and a Homer must 
 create both an Iliad and an Odyssey. Hence, with 
 what a minute accuracy must he catalogue the 
 objects of antiquity! No matter how mean the 
 thing ; its name shall sweetly lie along in his 
 Hexameter. The hovel shall stand upon his 
 grounds, picturesque yet true. The stable and the 
 kitchen, with all their odors and utensils, shall be 
 fully detailed, and we shall love to visit and survey 
 them. And then the poet in telling every event, 
 shall stand by each actor; he shall trace each 
 slightest motion; he shall report each slightest 
 syllable; he shall picture each instrument and 
 plan each scene; until you are insensibly Homer 
 himself; and you see all he saw; and you hear all 
 he heard. And so goes he on, weaving his pictured 
 tapestry; thread after thread; thread after thread; 
 each thread adding some new touch; and each 
 touch some new increase of the spell that entrances 
 you. No letter fresh from Sevastapol, by a sympa- 
 thising spectator or suffering actor, was ever so 
 
13 
 
 minute, or ever so vivid. What others tell in a 
 sentence he. pictures in a whole ballad. For 
 instance, Pandarus shot an arrow. That is the 
 whole of it; but hear how Homer sings it; as by 
 me spoilt into English prose. 
 
 He pulled the covering off the quiver, and drew out an arrow, 
 
 Unshot, winged, source of black pains. 
 
 Quickly upon the leather-string he neatly fits the bitter arrow, 
 
 And he vowed to Apollo Lycian-born, archer-god, 
 
 To offer him a renowned hecatomb of first-born lambs, 
 
 When he should get home to his city of sacred Zeleia. 
 
 He grasped at once the arrow-notch and its ox-hide string; 
 
 He put the string to his breast, and the iron arrow on the bow; 
 
 And when he pulled the big bow to a circle, 
 
 Clinked the bow, shrieked the string, leapt the arrow, 
 
 Sharp-darting, and fierce to alight amid the crowd. 
 
 The enthusiast dwells upon the pages of Homer 
 from the completeness of his pictures. But the 
 antiquarian and the lexicographer, come, like crows 
 after the zest of battle is over, to gather up — the 
 one materials for his archaeology; and the other 
 words for his Dictionary. So is Homer a gazette 
 from antiquity to modern ages. He is poetry for 
 the romancer and science for the savan. He is 
 picture for the connoisseur; and statistics for the 
 census-man. 
 
 I have spoken of Homer's language as the most 
 miraculous Greek. The process by which the 
 unsettled and discordant chaos of an unformed 
 language crystalizes into order, beauty and power, 
 has, indeed, something not only of the wonder, 
 but the divinity of miracle. A German scholar, 
 Schlegel, has well remarked, that over this process 
 
14 
 
 — the genesis of a nascent language — a veil of 
 mystery seems flung, hitherto unsolved. Surely 
 nothing is more unconcertecl and elemental than 
 the scattered particles of a language yet to be. 
 And yet this floating confusion of drifting flood- 
 wood, somehow or other, by most miraculous 
 chance, erects itself into a symmetrical and tower- 
 ing palace — a building not made with hands — a 
 spontaneous, unplanned structure, on which no 
 line was ever drawn and no hammer ever sounded 
 — like, creation itself a mind-created fabric. 
 
 In the formation of an exquisite language, like 
 the Greek, the subtlest of logic and the profoundest 
 of metaphysics are exerted. Yet, strange to say, we 
 are well informed that some of the native tribes of 
 Africa have formed a language inferior in beauty, 
 symmetry and power to the Greek alone. So true 
 it is that man, even rude man, acts upon a natural 
 and spontaneous metaphysics, which it takes more 
 than all the acumen of the schools to analyse. Or, 
 rather, we may say, man acts upon spontaneous 
 principles the analysis of which is the profoundest 
 of metaphysics. And now the formation of a 
 language of a people is the expression of the soul 
 and body — the nature, of that people. All the ex- 
 ternals that go to form a people's character, through 
 that character, form and color the language. 
 
 The Greek language was but the clear flowing 
 out of the Grecian temperament. It was formed 
 as the character of the race was formed. And 
 hence the Greek, when the character of his litera- 
 ture is concerned, may put the superiority of his own 
 
15 
 
 language as a make-weight in his own favor. For 
 instance, in comparing Homer and Shakspeare, we 
 may be ready to exclaim, — But the Greek has a 
 thousand times the advantage in that unrivalled 
 language ; subtract from his side one quarter on ac- 
 count of that magnificent advantage, the Greek 
 Hexameter. Or when a New Englancler ventures 
 to lay Webster's great Speech on the Land Bill 
 against Demosthenes on the Crown, and he finds 
 the judgment of the world inclining against him, 
 he may be ready to cry out — Aye ! but with that 
 glorious Greek dialect" on his lip our Daniel could 
 have beaten the Grecian orator. True, replies the 
 Greek, but our language is as legitimate a part of 
 our boast, as our literature or our oratory. That 
 language, like that literature, or rather as part and 
 parcel of that literature, is the true oorn product 
 of our race's genius. Our literature, language, 
 hexameter and all, are the blooming out from the 
 national heart — the crystalline jet sparkling up 
 from that fountain of beauty — the Grecian soul. 
 When, then, our immortal master-minstrel pours 
 forth in his grand hexameters, such poetry as the 
 world despairs to rival; when our great Athenian 
 rhetor rolls out paragraphs of such oratory as no 
 other human lip ever did, or ever can utter; both 
 must stand, with all their own advantages, and all 
 their own perfectness; producing, as a Greek, such 
 masterpiece as Grecian can accomplish. 
 
 And the Age of which Homer wrote, was truly 
 styled Heroic. It had left a lofty impress on the 
 memories of men. Its characters and events had 
 
16 
 
 created a world wide sensation; and the age suc- 
 ceeding had named the men and told the events 
 with admiring wonder. There are heroic ages. 
 There are periods upon whose spirits and sceneries 
 rests the true picturesque; which the very mind 
 that would repudiate is forced to feel. There was 
 the age of Chivalry, on which the hues of romance 
 will blend their entrancing effect. It was an age 
 whose names melt smoothly into song; whose char- 
 acters adorn the heroic legend; whose scenes will 
 wind into the surpriseful plot; whose men rise 
 gracefully and imposingly before • our fancy. In 
 vain shall some political economist, dear good 
 democrat, tell me that it is all a plain mistake. 
 He will lead me out from the boudoir of the ba- 
 ronial castle to show me the squalidness of the 
 serfdom. He shall tell me of the insecurity of 
 life, of the lawless brigandage, the unlettered igno- 
 rance, the shivering superstition, the plain down- 
 right misery and meanness of the times. He will 
 decompose the blended hues and show me that this 
 picturesque is all imagination. Imagination? I 
 grant you ; it is that I said. That age could — as 
 other ages cannot — entrance the imagination. So 
 a revolving kaleidescope can — as a revolving din- 
 ner horn cannot — entrance the vision. Be it that 
 the entrancement of the kaleidescope is made up of 
 glass and light and trinkets. The entrancement is 
 just as real and far more possible than if made up 
 of golden ingots and bankable promissory notes. 
 
 You will not I trust for one moment imagine me 
 to be one of the mourners that " the age of Chivalry 
 
17 
 
 is past." A picturesque age, like a picturesque 
 prospect, may be more delightful to the spectator, 
 for whom "distance lends enchantment to the 
 view," than to the dweller in that land of beauty. 
 An age of poetic interest may please the contem- 
 plator's fancy; but an age of plain enjoyment is 
 the era of happiness. An age of heroism is ro- 
 mantic, but an age of honesty, of justice, of right, 
 of equality, is infinitely preferable. The stirring 
 events that make history, do not make public hap- 
 piness. The unsettled times that create heroic 
 adventure, create incessant disaster and universal 
 misery. 
 
 Wonderful is the power of genius in shedding a 
 perpetual enchantment over the scenes and locali- 
 ties of its historic narrations or poetic fictions. 
 What right has that little rocky peninsula of 
 Greece to make itself the focal point of classic 
 interest to succeeding ages? Because the recording 
 muse of her own history has clad her with the halo 
 of its glory. What right had the men, the events, 
 the institutes of Athens to claim a permanent and 
 resplendent place in the view and memory of the 
 world ? Because they stood surrounded by the glare 
 of the splendid explosions of Grecian genius. 
 And so the comer from a far land, as he skirts the 
 shores of the Hellespont, as he passes the Tenedos, 
 and treads the Troian plain, gazes with an en- 
 chanted eye. He is not now treading, ordinary, 
 dirty, commonplace, earth. Every sod and every 
 lump is impregnate. It has a spirit in it, And 
 over yon misty plains^ spectral armies are still 
 marching; spectral heroes still wave the battle 
 
18 
 
 plume; a spectre city lifts its shadowy towers, girt 
 with dreamy walls, and portaled with mystic 
 gates. The spell of the blind old sorceror of Scio's 
 rocky isle, pronounced three thousand years ago, 
 still binds with its transfixing power, the gentle 
 visiter of this haunted realm. 
 
 And curious it is to remark how little the magni- 
 tude and the extent of scenes and objects have to 
 do with the interest we feel. He who directs his 
 eye to the astronomic heavens, and sends his mind 
 to range the immensity of measureless space, feels 
 that this earth is a bare speck- — a point- — a mini- 
 mum visible. But let him call in his contempla- 
 tions, and direct his eye to the deep revelations of 
 geology and lo ! within that speck a new immensity 
 is opened. That point- — that minimum is found 
 pregnant with a universe, whose grandeur swells 
 the mind with a vastness scarce less than that 
 which rose upon him from that outer immensity. 
 Why? Because either vastness was enough to fill 
 one little mind; and neither of course could more 
 than fill it. And so, when we contemplate the 
 vast areas of our globe that modern geography 
 uncovers to our eye, and realise how over all the 
 hemispheres, new national systems have arisen, how 
 minute appear the petty strifes and wars of that 
 little patch of Greece, and that little town of 
 Athens. The puny navies that paddled around 
 the iEgean and Ionian seas, afraid to lose the 
 sight of shore, appear like the mimic craft, carved 
 by our boys, for their pastime in a summer pond. 
 And yet we take the volume of Thucydides, and 
 when these little quarrels and fights are pictured 
 
19 
 
 by his pen, they become grand history, sagacious 
 politics, deep philosophy. They fill the mind as 
 fully, they stir the soul as deeply, they instruct the 
 intellect as profoundly, as events of far greater 
 physical sizes and distances. There was a king of 
 Maceclon on the northern base of the little triangle 
 of Greece, against whom Demosthenes thundered, 
 and the southern Republics of Greece were called 
 to. combine — alas! only to be conquered. There 
 was also an earlier Trojan aggressor, whose king- 
 dom standing a little without the triangle, became 
 the object of war from the same Greek Republics; 
 it was conquered by the Grecian heroes, and sung 
 by the Grecian poets. So at the present day, on 
 the eastern margin of Europe, stands the empire of 
 a modern young Alexander, including the eastern 
 half of all Europe and the northern half of all 
 Asia. Like the ancient Macedonian, he rises over 
 the horizon and hovers like a storm-filled cloud 
 over the civilized continent. Two proudest of 
 modern empires, trembling at his dangerous power, 
 have equipped and sent prouder armaments than 
 history ever saw. In mere magnitude and ex- 
 tension the warlike doings of classic and Homeric 
 ages would compare with these, as the little moun- 
 tain printed on your maps, would compare with 
 the real Andes. Yet not all the eloquence of 
 modern parliaments, with all its magnitude of in- 
 terests, can out-thunder the Athenian agora; nor 
 can all the poetic Genius of the nineteenth century 
 make an Iliad of Sevastopol. 
 
 The Homeric system of so called gods and god- 
 desses is a mere poetic machinery. It rises not into 
 
20 
 
 a philosophy, far less a theology. The deities of 
 Olympus are only men and women of a finer 
 mould, larger size and rather improved powers. 
 Venus is a very handsome woman, Apollo is a 
 gentleman of very rare accomplishments, and Mars 
 a most gigantic military chieftain. Jupiter, whether 
 imaged in Homer's hexameters, or chiseled in 
 Phidias' marble, is a large and stately monarch, 
 with an eye keenly clairvoyant, and an arm some- 
 what less powerful than the walking-beam of a 
 modern steamer. Mercury in conveying a dispatch 
 was decidedly inferior to the magnetic telegraph; 
 and Yulcan's thunderbolts would stand a poor 
 chance in front of Colt's revolvers, to say nothing 
 of Paixhan guns. What knows Homer of the in- 
 finite One? What glimpse has he of him who 
 filleth eternity and immensity; whose attributes, 
 spread out on the wide universe, are thence divinely 
 copied and spread out upon the pages of the Hebrew 
 scriptures ? Some inklings seem echoing around his 
 mind of a supreme, universal, eternal Fate, under 
 whose laws Jupiter himself is a half-conscious sub- 
 ject. But that idea of fate does not lead him up 
 to that infinite Personality; from whose will and 
 law alone all the fate, that is proceeds. So true it 
 is that truth is not only stranger, but grander and 
 sublimer than fiction. Fiction is the conception of 
 man; reality the conception of God. What saw 
 ancient fancy in the skies? A glassy vault stud- 
 ded with starry spangles. What sees modern 
 astronomy? An immensity floating with worlds. 
 So science is immeasurably more poetical than 
 poetry. Plato said God is a geometer. As truly, 
 
21 
 
 he might have said, the Divinity is a poet. 
 Creation is God's great Poem. 
 
 The poems of Homer, by the common acknowl- 
 edgment of all subsequent Grecian literature, were 
 the fountain whence the brightest achievements of 
 her arts were drawn. They tuned the minds of 
 the sons of Hellas to that nobleness which pro- 
 duced her master pieces of poetry, oratory, archi- 
 tecture, painting and statuary. It has been said, 
 that while the mission of Judaism was to teach 
 mankind the lesson of the true Divinity ; the 
 mission of Rome to shape our minds to the majesty 
 of a state; the mission of Greece was to develope and 
 educate the world to the idea of the beautiful. 
 And thus do our modern ages inherit the threefold 
 patrimony of the religious, the politic and the 
 aesthetic — producing the full developement of the 
 ideas of right, order and refinement. What the Old 
 Testament was to the mission of Israel, the solemn, 
 sublime and stern inculcator of God and conscience ; 
 that the Homeric poems were to Greece, the Testa- 
 ment of the aesthetic — the fountain of the beauti- 
 ful. And so was every part of the Grecian mind 
 harmonised to a perfect ideality. This was ex- 
 hibited, variedly, in the symmetrical architecture 
 of Phidias; in the severe chasteness of the Attic 
 drama; in the exquisite proportions of the Praxite- 
 lean statuary; in the purity and power of Athenian 
 oratory; nay in the very demonstrative exactness 
 of the Geometry of Euclid and the syllogism of 
 Aristotle. Herein has consisted the true classic 
 spirit — in the true blending of luxuriance and 
 precision into a most chaste medium of perfected 
 

 22 
 
 taste — which born in Greece and transmitted to 
 later ages has educated the mind of modern Europe 
 to that exactitude, art, beauty, reason and practicali- 
 ty which has constituted Europe's historic greatness* 
 The classic has been and is the teacher of the practical. 
 It has been lately said by a great American his- 
 torian, that the fundamental idea of Christianity — 
 the unity of deity and humanity in the world's 
 Messiah — has through all modern ages tended to 
 raise the soul of man towards God, and elevate the 
 level of human history. In a far inferior sense, 
 we may say, that the same idea, conceived in ac- 
 cordance with the mission of ancient Greece, of a 
 divine humanity, tended to idealize and ennoble 
 the material and gross realities of life. It was in 
 short the main source of the beautiful. True, 
 Homer did deify man as he is. He is liable to the 
 charge brought against him with so much point by 
 Longinus, that Homer made his men Gods and his 
 gods men. In this we see by contrast the true 
 divinity of Christianity. The Homeric Mythology 
 deified man as he is; the Christian theology deified 
 man as he should be. The former is the apotheosis 
 of man's natural qualities, his depraved traits not 
 transformed but transfigured; the latter presents 
 perfect man and perfect God in unity. The ten- 
 dency of the former was to invest with ideal lustre 
 the corporeal, the intellectual, and the powerful, 
 in connection with the lower and fiercer attributes 
 of man's nature ; the purpose of the latter is to take 
 in all the ennoblement with which humanity can 
 be invested, to purify man from lower nature, to 
 elevate him above nature, and then to assimilate 
 
him by purity and faith to the God with whom i 
 brings him in contact. 
 
 This suggestive comparison, young gentlemen, 
 with Homer, may relieve the minds of some men 
 of finished educational taste, of that repugnance 
 and even doubt arising from the fact that the Old 
 Testament and the New do not obey the rules oi 
 rhetoric; nor stand the perfect and faultless moclek 
 of symmetry and aesthetic taste. The Bible, re- 
 member, is not the book of beauty; but the book 
 of religion, the book of conscience, the book of 
 God. And though there be peals of surpassing 
 beauty issuing from its grandeurs, yet is its main 
 quality sublime and solemn. Its purpose is to 
 train the spiritual, not the aestlietical man. We 
 may see, in every-clay life, men, whose moral feel- 
 ings are high; whose pious character is blameless 
 and deep. Yet is their taste rude and their man- 
 ners ungraceful. Their character, as christians, 
 may be perfect; but in their character as complete 
 and model men, we feel a sense of very obvious 
 imperfection. Now it is not the province of the 
 Bible to teach specifically the aestlietical, any more 
 than the scientific. But when to that religion 
 which we obtain from the Bible, are added that 
 knowledge we derive from science, and that re- 
 finement we secure from aesthetics, then do we 
 obtain the qualities of the Christian, the scholar, 
 and the gentleman united in the finished man. 
 
 Our sacred volume is not the book of the fancy, 
 or the taste; it is the book of the soul. Yet 
 through the moral, does it finally attain to a higher 
 beauty than poetry ever dreamed, than aesthetics 
 
24 
 
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 003 046 379 1 
 
 ever taught. Achilles was the highest human 
 model of Pagan poetry. But after mentioning 
 Achilles, scarce dare we name that divine concep- 
 tion — that true immaculate conception — that ulti- 
 mate of human excellence suffused with divinity, 
 which Christianity presents in the person of the 
 God-man, the pure perfection of moral beauty. 
 
 Allow me to close then, sons of Dickinson, by 
 congratulating you on the fact, that in accordance 
 with the liberalised religious feeling of the age, 
 the enlightened curators of your venerated Alma 
 Mater do not fear to unite in your education, the 
 classical, the scientific and the sacred. Remember 
 that above all literature is God's own word; and 
 the crown of a finished education is holy religious 
 principle. Learn that aesthetic refinements may 
 ornament a religious character; yet they are not 
 i necessary to its very existence. Nor allow the 
 critical taste which education has supplied you, 
 to generate an effeminate repulsiveness towards 
 christian graces or the expression of spiritual truth, 
 emotion, or experience, unassociated with taught 
 refinements. Let the training of your sensibilities 
 rather qualify you to the quick enjoyment of the 
 excellent, than to sensitive suffering for the defective* 
 So shall you carry a chaste and serene spirit, 
 though duty call you to deal with the homelier 
 realities of life; and yet an appreciative enjoyment 
 amid its higher walks. And so shall your char- 
 acters exhibit what is lovely and of good report in 
 the eyes of man, and what shall secure acquittal 
 beneath the all searching scrutiny of your final 
 judge. 
 
LIE 
 
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