47. Then, thirdly, the faith of the poets and artists was, necessarily, less definite, being continually modified by the involuntary action of their own fancies; and by the necessity of presenting, in clear verbal or material form, things of which they had no authoritative knowledge. Their faith was, in some respects like Dante's or Milton's: firm in general conception, but not able to vouch for every detail in the forms they gave it; but they went considerably farther, even in that minor sincerity, than subsequent poets; and strove with all their might to be as near the truth as they could. Pindar says, quite simply, "I cannot think so-and-so of the gods. It must have been this way--it cannot have been that way--that the thing was done." And as late among the Latins as the days of Horace, this sincerity remains. Horace is just as true and simple in his religion as Wordsworth; but all power of understanding any of the honest classic poets has been taken away from most English gentlemen by the mechanical drill in verse-writing at school. Throughout the whole of their lives afterwards, they never can get themselves quit of the notion that all verses were written as an exercise, and that Minerva was only a convenient word for the last of a hexameter, and Jupiter for the last but one. 48. It is impossible that any notion can be more fallacious or more misleading in its consequences. All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song. With deliberate didactic purpose the tragedians--with pure and native passion the lyrists --fitted their perfect words to their dearest faiths. "Operosa parvus carmina fingo." "I, little thing that I am, weave my laborious songs" as earnestly as the bee among the bells of thyme on the Matin mountains. Yes, and he dedicates his favorite pine to Diana, and he chants his autumnal hymn to the Faun that guards his fields, and he guides the noble youth and maids of Rome in their choir to Apollo, and he tells the farmer's little girl that the gods will love her, though she has only a handful of salt and meal to give them--just as earnestly as ever English gentleman taught Christian faith to English youth in England's truest days. 49. Then, lastly, the creed of the philosophers of sages varied according to the character and knowledge of each; their relative acquaintance with the secrets of natural science, their intellectual and sectarian egotism, and their mystic or monastic tendencies, for there is a classic as well as a mediæval monasticism. They end in losing the life of Greece in play upon words; but we owe to their early thought some of the soundest ethics, and the foundation of the best practical laws, yet known to mankind.