themselves, were united in him. The Stoics spoke only of this great poet as a rigid follower of the Porch[106]; at the Academy he was considered as the creator of dialectics; at the Lyceum, the disciples of Aristotle cited him as a zealous dogmatist[107]; finally, the Epicureans saw in him only a man calm and pure, who, satisfied with that tranquil life where one is wholly possessed by it, seeks nothing more.[108] The temples, which devout enthusiasm consecrated to him, were the rendezvous for mankind.[109] Such is the appanage of universal ideas: they are as the Divinity which inspires them, all in all, and all in the least parts. If, at the distance where I am placed, I should dare, traversing the torrent of ages and opinions, draw near to Homer and read the soul of this immortal man, I would say, after having grasped in its entirety the allegorical genius which makes the essence of poetry, in seeking to give to his universal ideas a particular form, that his intention was to personify and paint the passions, and that it was from this that epopœia had birth. I have not sufficient documents to attest positively that the word by which one characterizes this kind of poetry after Homer, did not exist before him; but I have sufficient to repeat that no one had as yet recognized its real nature.[110] The poems of Corinna, of Dares, or of Dictys, were only simple extracts from the mythological cycles, rude copies from certain theosophical fragments denuded of life; Homer was the first who caused the _Voice of Impulse_, that is to say Epopœia, to be understood[111]: that kind of poetry which results from intellectual inspiration united to the enthusiasm of the passions. In order to attain to the perfection of this kind of poetry, it is necessary to unite to the imaginative faculty which feeds the genius, the reason which regulates the impulse, and the enthusiasm which inflames the mind and supplies the talent. Homer united them in the most eminent degree. Thus he possessed the first inspiration and the complete science, as much in its essence as in its form; for the poetic form is always dependent upon talent.