“Confound that man!” growled Maurice, who was standing shoulder to shoulder with Crispin; “he thinks no one has any pluck but himself.” “On the contrary, he is trying to keep up his spirits,” replied Crispin, steadying himself with difficulty as the yacht took a big dip into the trough of the sea; “there is a good deal of brag about Caliphronas, but if we were in any real danger he would not crow so loudly. These Greeks are all afraid of the sea; and if the colonization of the world had been left to them, I am afraid America would never have been discovered.” “Why not?” “Because they are always afraid of venturing out of sight of the land. They slip about boldly enough among these isles of Elishah, as Ezekiel calls them, but if they lose sight of Mother Earth, all their courage leaves them. Their Hellenic ancestors were just the same, for all their poets call Ocean names, such as ‘a hungry beast,’ ‘a ravenous monster,’ and similar pleasant titles. I think Homer, with his ‘multitudinous laughter of the sea,’ is the only poet who pays Ocean a compliment.” “Yet the Greek genius has produced a great sea drama in the ‘Odyssey.’” “A voyage of necessity, not pleasure—Man the sport of the unjust gods; but I fancy Ulysses had a touch of the adventurous Phœnician in his blood. Besides, Greek bravery produced a great sea drama at Salamis; yet, withal, I decline to believe the Hellenes, ancient or modern, were sailors.” “Yet Arnold calls them ‘The young, light-hearted masters of the wave.’” “A charming line, which applies but to Ægean waters. Masters of the wave, forsooth! Why, they were never masters of anything liquid larger than a puddle. The Greeks never loved Nature in her grandest moods, and—saving Æschylus—both shaggy mountain and roaring waters were alien to their genius.” “Yet they loved Nature.” “Nature the Mother, not Nature the Enemy. Hill, meadow, wood, fountain, river, they loved; but mountain and ocean they feared.” “Would a Greek Wordsworth have been possible?” “Ah, now you open up a large field of inquiry! No; I do not think the actual spirituality of Wordsworth would have appealed to a Greek. The Hellenic poet of that class would have been like Keats—he would have sung exquisitely of vitalized Nature, of her incarnate forces, Pan and Demeter, nymphs and satyrs; but none but a modern poet, conversant with the haggardness of modern life, with his soul steeped in the religion of the unseen, could have produced those ‘thoughts too deep for tears’ such as we find in Wordsworth. Theocritus and Bion are your Nature poets of external loveliness, but Arnold and Wordsworth sang deeper strains, and sought the naked soul of Nature, which was but a veiled Isis to the Greek.” “Hallo! what island is that?” cried Maurice, who had been idly listening to such fragments of this discourse as he had caught. “Look to your left.”