As for the organ wherewith beauty is perceived, it is the soul: the senses only apprehend shadow-beauties—reflections and suggestions of reality. The faculty must be cultivated; it must be refined by high thinking and plain living, and at last it will see that, though Good and Beauty are one, yet Beauty is in a lower sphere than Good—is, in fact, but an imitation of it. All this is not merely Platonic—it is itself beautiful and good: it is noble, it is true, it deserves everything that can possibly be said in its favour. But for the actual purposes of literary criticism it is but as a sweet song in a foreign language. It will hardly help us in the very least degree to distinguish Shelley from the most estimable of minor poets, or Thackeray from the least estimable of minor novelists. It does, by way of illustration, touch literary criticism once itself, for it refers to “the admirable allegory” which represents Ulysses as using all his efforts to withdraw himself from the enchantments of Circe and the passion of Calypso, resisting all the enticements of bodily beauty and delight. To the greatest as to the least of Neo-Platonists the allegorical explanation is itself Circe, itself Calypso; and instead of endeavouring to escape from it, he willing meets it willing, and abides contented in those ever-open arms. This is especially seen in the writings, known or attributed, of the most industrious and variously accomplished, if not the [Sidenote: _Porphyry._] most gifted, of the Neo-Platonists, Porphyry. Porphyry has to his credit two documents which, in title and subject, are undoubtedly literary, the _Quæstiones Homericæ_ and the _De Antro Nympharum_; while some would take away from Plutarch, and give to him, the work on Homer’s Life and Poems, which has undergone the indignity of being spoken of as “miserable” by M. Egger,[72] while, on the other hand, Archbishop Trench[73] gives the author, whoever he was, what would, if deserved, be the very high praise of having thus early “recognised very distinctly the charm which rhyme has for the ear.” If this were so, I should be inclined to put him together with Philostratus, as having at least stumbled on a great critical truth. But perhaps the words will hardly bear the burden, for the writer, quoting μελισσάων ἀδινάων ... ἐρχομενάων, adds, “These words and their likes add much grace and pleasure to the expression.”[74] And unluckily, the remark occurs only in an examination of Homer _by figures_, where this is taken as representing _homoeoteleuton_. Now, _homoeoteleuton_, though it is a sort of poor relation of rhyme, belongs to that branch of the family which more rightly bears the name of Jingle. However this may be, the treatise, as a whole, would scarcely add to the reputation either of Plutarch or of Porphyry. Footnote 72: _Op cit. plur._, p. 484. Footnote 73: _Sacred Latin Poetry_ (ed. 2, London, 1864), p. 30, _note_. Footnote 74: μάλιστα προστίθησι τῷ λόγῳ χάριν καὶ ἡδονήν.