at all to mud, we shall all be of one mind--that it must be found _above_. But to us it appears--that when the true modern idea of mud was in view, _limus_ was not the word used. Cicero, for instance, when he wishes to call Piso 'filth, mud,' &c. calls him _Caenum_: and, in general, _limus_ seems to have involved the notion of something adhesive, and rather to express _plaister_, or artificially prepared cement, &c., than that of filth or impure depositions. Accordingly, our own definition differs from the Parrian, or Birmingham definition; and may, nevertheless, be a Birmingham definition also. Not having room to defend it, for the present we forbear to state it.] Now, therefore, after this explanation, recurring to the Longinian critiques upon Homer, it will avail any idolator of Homer but little, it will affect us not much, to mention that Longinus makes frequent reference to the _Iliad_, as the great source of the sublime-- 'A quo, ceu fonte perenni, Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis'; for, as respected Grecian poets, and as respected _his_ sense of the word, it cannot be denied that Homer was such. He was the great well-head of inspiration to the Pagan poets of after times, who, however (_as a body_), moved in the narrowest circle that has ever yet confined the natural freedom of the poetic mind. But, in conceding this, let it not be forgotten how much we concede--we concede as much as Longinus demanded; that is, that Homer furnished an ideal or model of fluent narration, picturesque description, and the first outlines of what could be called characteristic delineations of persons. Accordingly, uninventive Greece--for we maintain loudly that Greece, in her poets, _was_ uninventive and sterile beyond the example of other nations--received, as a traditional inheritance, the characters of the Paladins of the Troad.[8] Achilles is always the all-accomplished and supreme amongst these Paladins, the Orlando of ancient romance; Agamemnon, for ever the Charlemagne; Ajax, for ever the sullen, imperturbable, columnar champion, the Mandricardo, the _Bergen-op-Zoom_ of his faction, and corresponding to our modern 'Chicken' in the pugilistic ring, who was so called (as the books of the Fancy say) because he was a 'glutton'; and a 'glutton' in this sense--that he would take any amount of cramming (_i. e._ any possible quantum of 'milling,' or 'punishment'). Ulysses, again, is uniformly, no matter whether in the solemnities of the tragic scene, or the festivities of the Ovidian romance, the same shy cock, but also sly cock, with the least thought of a white feather in his plumage; Diomed is the same unmeaning double of every other hero, just as Rinaldo is with respect to his greater cousin, Orlando; and so of Teucer, Meriones, Idomeneus, and the other less-marked characters. The Greek drama took up these traditional characters, and sometimes deepened, saddened, exalted the features--as Sophocles, for instance, does with