themes is deliberate; the form which he gives to them is all his own; and its originality is the result of conscious and even anxious self-criticism. Poetry which has been evolved with little thought, whatever the skill or genius of its author, gains little from a microscopic criticism. If its thoughts and its language are beautiful, its structure coherent and complete, these merits will reveal themselves to the full in its first impression upon the reader; and any defect in these points will be made, by a minute analysis, yet more apparent. Precisely the reverse is the case with Pindar's poetry. His finest thoughts and most felicitous phrases will not produce their maximum of possible effect till the reader has studied them in a variety of lights, till he has pondered on their immediate context, their relation to the leading ideas of the poem in which they occur, their appropriateness to particular circumstances of the occasion on which that poem was produced, the special memories and associations which they would suggest to an audience of Sicilians or Æginetans or Thebans. At first sight, again, an Ode of Pindar's exhibits but little trace of that astonishing internal structure which is revealed on a closer scrutiny—elements apparently the most incongruous, woven by mutual interpenetration and by subtle threads of connecting thought into a coherent and indissoluble whole. The more minute our scrutiny becomes, the more elaborate appears the structure which it reveals, and the more incredible do we find it that such a structure could result from hurried and unreflecting labour.
