gant,—‘pervadingly elegant,’—even in passages of the highest emotion:
Spercheosque, et virginibus bacchata Lacænis
Taygeta![1]
Even there Virgil, though of a divine elegance, is still elegant: but Homer is not elegant; the word is quite a wrong one to apply to him, and Mr. Newman is quite right in blaming any one he finds so applying it. Again; arguing against my assertion that Homer is not quaint, he says; ‘It is quaint to call waves wet, milk white, blood dusky, horses single-hoofed, words winged, Vulcan Lobfoot (Κνλλοποδίων), a spear longshadowy,’ and so on. I find I know not how many distinctions to draw here. I do not think it quaint to call waves wet, or milk white, or words winged; but I do think it quaint to call horses single-hoofed, or Vulcan Lobfoot, or a spear longshadowy. As to calling blood dusky, I do not feel quite sure; I will tell Mr. Newman my opinion when I see the passage in which he calls it so. But then, again, because it is quaint to call Vulcan Lobfoot, I cannot admit that it was quaint to call him Κνλλοποδίων; nor that, because it is quaint to call a spear longshadowy, it was quaint to call it δολιχόσκιον. Here Mr. Newman’s erudition misleads him: he
- ↑ ‘Oh for the fields of Thessaly and the streams of Spercheios! Oh for the hills alive with the dances of the Laconian maidens, the hills of Taygetus!’—Georgics, ii. 486.
