File:Great men and famous women - a series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in history Volume 7 (1894) (14802987833).jpg

Identifier: greatfamous07hornuoft (find matches)
Title: Great men and famous women : a series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in history Volume 7
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Horne, Charles F. (Charles Francis), 1870-1942
Subjects: Biography
Publisher: New York : Selmar Hess
Contributing Library: Kelly - University of Toronto

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sad to think that in many of the Christian centuries his worksshould have slumbered without notice in hidden repositories. His place amongthe greatest poets of the world, whom no one supposes to be more than three orfour in number, has never been questioned. Considering him as anterior to allliterary aids and training, he is the most remarkable phenomenon among themall. It may be well to specify some of the points that are peculiarly his own.One of them is the great simplicity of the structure of his mind. With an in-comparable eye for the world around him in all things, great and small, he is ab-horrent of everything speculative and abstract, and what may be called philoso-phies have no place in his works, almost the solitary exception being that heemploys thought as an illustration of the rapidity of the journey of a deity. Heis, accordingly, of all poets the most simple and direct. He is also the most freeand genial in the movement of his verse; grateful nature seems to give to him
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< UJ I HO h o UJ a:u o I PLATO 7 spontaneously the perfection to which great men Hke Virgil and Milton had toattain only by effort intense and sustained. In the high office of drawing humancharacter in its multitude of forms and colors he seems to have no serious rivalexcept Shakespeare. We call him an epic poet, but he is instinct from beginningto end with the spirit of the drama, while we find in him the seeds and rudimentseven of its form. His function as a reciting minstrel greatly aided him herein.Again, he had in his language an instrument unrivalled for its facility, supple-ness, and versatility, for the large range of what would in music be called its reg-ister, so that it embraced every form and degree of human thought, feeling, andemotion, and clothed them all, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the slightestto the most intense and concentrated, in the dress of exactly appropriate styleand language. His metre also is a perfect vehicle of the language. If we thinkthe ra

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