"From Homer and Polygnotus," says Goethe, "I daily learn more and more that in our life here above the ground we have, properly speaking, to enact Hell." A truth, so far as it goes: this Earth is hell; there is no hell, says H.P. Blavatsky, but a man- bearing planet. But we demand of the greatest, that they shall see beyond hell into Heaven. Homer achieves his grandeur oftenest through swift glimpses of the pangs and tragedy of human fate; and I do not think he saw through the gloom to the bright Reality. Watching the Greek host from the walls of Troy, Helen says: "Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia; Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember; Two, two only remain whom I see not among the commanders, Castor, fleet in the car, Polydeukes, brave with the cestus-- Own dear brethren of mine,--one parent loved us as infants. Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lacedaimon? Or, though they came with the rest in the ships that bound through the waters, Dare they not enter the fight, or stand in the council of heroes, All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?" And then: _Hos phato. Tous d'ede kalechen phusizoos aia, En Lakedaimoni authi, phile en patridi gaie._ "--So spake she; but they long since under Earth were reposing There in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedaimon." [From Dr. Hawtrey's translation, quoted by Matthew Arnold in _On Translating Homer._] There it is the sudden antithesis from her gentle womanly inquiry about her brothers to the sad reality she knows nothing, that strikes the magical blow, and makes the grand manner. Then there is that passage about Peleus and Cadmos: "Not even Peleus Aiacides, nor godlike Cadmos, might know the happiness of a secure life; albeit the highest happiness known to mortals was granted them: the one on the mountain, the other in seven-gated Thebes, they heard the gold-snooded Muses sing."