nature as it is, and the sights and wonders of the external world, all narrated with singular simplicity, yet marvelous artistic skill. We find accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, yet grandeur, sentiment, and beauty, such as Pheidias represented in his statues of Jupiter. No poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted greater admiration from critics. Like Shakespeare, Homer is a kind of Bible to both the learned and unlearned among all people and ages--one of the prodigies of this world. His poems form the basis of Greek literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of all Grecian composition. The unconscious simplicity of the Homeric narrative, its vivid pictures, its graphic details and religious spirit, create an enthusiasm such as few works of genius can claim. Moreover, it presents a painting of society, with its simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its compassion and its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. [Footnote: The Homeric poems have been translated into nearly all the European languages, and several times into English. The last translation is by the Earl of Derby--a most remarkable work. Guizot, _Cours d'Hist. Mod_., Lecon 7me; Grote, vol. ii. p. 277; _Studies in Homer_, by Hon. W. E. Gladstone; Mure, _Critical Hist. of Lang. and Lit. of Greece_; Muller, _Hist, of the Lit. of Ancient Greece_, translated by Donaldson.] Nor is it necessary to speak of any other Grecian epic, when the Iliad and the Odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and twenty years before Hesiod was born. Grote thinks that the Iliad and the Odyssey were produced at some period between 850 B.C., and 776 B.C. [Sidenote: Pindar.] In lyrical poetry the Greeks were no less remarkable, and indeed they attained to absolute perfection, owing to the intimate connection between poetry and music. Who has surpassed Pindar in artistic skill? His _triumphal odes_ are paeans, in which piety breaks out in expressions of the deepest awe, and the most elevated sentiments of moral wisdom. They alone of all his writings have descended to us, but all possess fragments of odes, songs, dirges, and panegyrics, which show the great excellence to which he attained. He was so celebrated that he was employed by the different states and princes of Greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially the public games. Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation by the Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. [Footnote: Born in Thebes 522 B.C., and died probably in his eightieth year, and was contemporary with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon.] We possess, also, fragments of Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to show that, could the lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should probably possess the richest collection that the world has produced. [Sidenote: Greek dramatic poetry.]