If then the Nature-forces could not be expressed, or at least could not be understood as abstractions, to express them as persons was the only other course open to the poet. It was not an effort to follow this method: it would have required great effort to adopt any other. How spontaneous was the impulse which thus generated the mythological system, we may observe from this, that it not only personified in cases where, an agency being seen, its fountain was concealed from view, but it likewise went very far towards personification even in cases where inanimate instruments were wielded by human beings, and where, as the source of the phenomenon was perceived, there was no occasion to clothe it with a separate vitality. Hence that copious vivifying power which Homer has poured like a flood through his verse. Hence his bitter arrow (πικρὸς), his darts hungry for human blood (λιλαιόμενα χρόος ἆσαι), his ground laughing in the blaze of the gleaming armour (γέλασσε δὲ πᾶσα περὶ χθὼν χαλκοῦ ὑπὸ στεροπῆς). Hence again his free use of sensible imagery to illustrate metaphysical ideas: for example, his black cloud of grief, his black pains, his purple death[21]. Hence that singularly beautiful passage on the weeping of the deathless horses of Achilles for Patroclus[22]. Hence too it is, that he does not scruple to carry imagery, drawn from the sphere of one sense, into the domain of another, an operation which later poets have found so difficult and hazardous. He has an iron din[23], a brazen voice[24], a brazen or iron heaven[25], a howling or shouting fire, a blaze of lamentation[26]. Hence, by a system of figure bolder perhaps than has been used by any other poet, he invests the works of high art in metal with the attributes of life and motion. This daring system reaches its climax in the damsel satellites[27] of gold, that support the limping gait of Vulcan: in the dogs of metal, that guard the palace of Alcinous: in the elastic arms of Achilles, which, so far from being a weight upon him, themselves lift him from the ground: and in the animated ships of the Phæacians, which are taught by instinct to speed across the sea, and to pilot their own course to the points of their destination[28]. On every side we see a redundance of life, shaping, and even forcing, for itself new channels: and thus it becomes more easy for us to conceive the important truth that, when he impersonates, he simply takes what was for him the easiest and the most effective way to describe. Every where he is carrying on a double process of action and reaction: on the one hand bringing Deity down to sensible forms; on the other, adorning and elevating humanity, and inanimate nature, with every divine endowment. [21] Il. v. 83. xvii. 591. xviii. 2, 4. [22] Il. xvii. 426-40. [23] Il. xvii. 424. [24] Il. xviii. 222: more strictly, a voice of bronze. [25] Il. xv. 328. xvii. 425, 565. [26] Od. xx. 353. [27] Il. xviii. 417. For the Shield, notice xviii. 539, 599-602. xix. 386.