The description of the shield of Hercules, attributed to Hesiod, is probably an imitation of Homer, and, notwithstanding some fine mythological impersonations which it contains, an imitation less admirable than the original. Of painting there are in Homer no certain indications, and it is consistent with the later date of the imitator that we may perhaps discern in his composition a sign that what he had actually seen was a painted shield, in the pre-dominance in it, as compared with the Homeric description, of effects of colour over effects of form; Homer delighting in ingenious devices for fastening the metal, and the supposed Hesiod rather in what seem like triumphs of heraldic colouring; though the latter also delights in effects of mingled metals, of mingled gold and silver especially-- silver figures with dresses of gold, silver centaurs with pine-trees of gold for staves in their hands. Still, like the shield of Achilles, this too we must conceive as formed of concentric plates of metal; and here again that spacing is still more elaborately carried out, narrower intermediate rings being apparently [204] introduced between the broader ones, with figures in rapid, horizontal, unbroken motion, carrying the eye right round the shield, in contrast with the repose of the downward or inward movement of the subjects which divide the larger spaces; here too with certain analogies in the rows of animals to the designs on the earliest vases. In Hesiod then, as in Homer, there are undesigned notes of correspondence between the partly mythical ornaments imaginatively enlarged of the heroic age, and a world of actual handicrafts. In the shield of Hercules another marvellous detail is added in the image of Perseus, very daintily described as hovering in some wonderful way, as if really borne up by wings, above the surface. And that curious, haunting sense of magic in art, which comes out over and over again in Homer--in the golden maids, for instance, who assist Hephaestus in his work, and similar details which seem at first sight to destroy the credibility of the whole picture, and make of it a mere wonder-land--is itself also, rightly understood, a testimony to a real excellence in the art of Homer's time. It is sometimes said that works of art held to be miraculous are always of an inferior kind; but at least it was not among those who thought them inferior that the belief in their miraculous power began. If the golden images move like living creatures, and the armour of Achilles, so [205] wonderfully made, lifts him like wings, this again is because the imagination of Homer is really under the stimulus of delightful artistic objects actually seen. Only those to whom such artistic objects manifest themselves through real and powerful impressions of their wonderful qualities, can invest them with properties magical or miraculous.