Archilochus and Kallinus both appear to fall about the middle of the seventh century B. C., and it is with them that the innovations in Grecian poetry commence. Before them, we are told, there existed nothing but the epos, or daktylic hexameter poetry, of which much has been said in my former volume,—being legendary stories or adventures narrated, together with addresses or hymns to the gods. We must recollect, too, that this was not only the whole poetry, but the whole literature of the age: prose composition was altogether unknown, and writing, if beginning to be employed as an aid to a few superior men, was at any rate generally unused, and found no reading public. The voice was the only communicant, and the ear the only recipient, of all those ideas and feelings which productive minds in the community found themselves impelled to pour out; both voice and ear being accustomed to a musical recitation, or chant, apparently something between song and speech, with simple rhythm and a still simpler occasional accompaniment from the primitive four-stringed harp. Such habits and requirements of the voice and ear were, at that time, inseparably associated with the success and popularity of the poet, and contributed doubtless to restrict the range of subjects with which he could deal. The type was to a certain extent consecrated, like the primitive statues of the gods, from which men only ventured to deviate by gradual and almost unconscious innovations. Moreover, in the first half of the seventh century B. C., that genius which had once created an Iliad and an Odyssey was no longer to be found, and the work of hexameter narrative had come to be prosecuted by less gifted persons,—by those Cyclic poets of whom I have spoken in the preceding volumes. Such, as far as we can make it out amidst very uncertain evidence, was the state of the Greek mind immediately before elegiac and lyric poets appeared; while at the same time its experience was enlarging by the formation of new colonies, and the communion among its various states tended to increase by the freer reciprocity of religious games and festivals. There arose a demand for turning the literature of the age—I use this word as synonymous with the poetry—to new feelings and purposes, and for applying the rich, plastic, and musical language of the old epic, to present passion and circumstance, social as well as individual. Such a tendency had become obvious in Hesiod, even within the range of hexameter verse; but the same causes which led to an enlargement of the subjects of poetry inclined men also to vary the metre.