There is another point alleged for the artificiality of the Homeric poems which has not any greater weight. It is the use of epithets and of forms evidently determined by the convenience of the metre. In all poetry of all ages metre is a shackle,--perhaps modern rime is more tyrannous than the quantities of the hexameter. Yet these shackles, if they mar the efforts of the poetaster, only serve to bring out into clearer light the excellence of the true poet. And the longer the Homeric poems are read, the more firmly are all good critics persuaded of their supreme excellence. [Sidenote: High excellence incompatible with artificiality.] [Sidenote: The Homeric poems therefore mainly natural;] This it is which makes any systematic artificiality to my mind most improbable. The difference between the learned epic of a really reflective age and the _Iliad_ is illustrated by comparing with it the _Argonautics_ of Apollonius Rhodius, a great poet in his way, but unmistakably and lamentably artificial. I agree, therefore, with Thirlwall, that the Homeric poets described an age not very different from that in which they lived, and that the reason why widely varying societies, such as the democratic Athenian, or the modern European, can appreciate these pictures, is that they are not artificially constructed, but adapted from a real experience, drawn from very human nature, and reflecting permanent human passions[50:1]. The most unreal thing in the poems is of course their theology; and yet this became in after days perhaps more real than the rest by its universal adoption among the Greeks as the authoritative account of their gods. [Sidenote: but only generally true;] § 26. The Homeric poems therefore give us a general picture of the state of the Greeks at a time shortly before the dawn of history; for such poems could hardly be composed and held together without writing, and when writing becomes diffused, history begins[51:1]. Still, the poets lived in an age not controlled by criticism, or subject to the verifications of study. Hence they could deal loosely with particulars, omit details that suited them not, and describe places poetically rather than topographically. So it is that the Catalogue of the Ships will not agree with the rest; and in many other cases there is evidence that the lays brought together were not weeded of their mutual inconsistencies, or compelled to conform strictly to the final plan. [Sidenote: and therefore variously judged by various minds.]