Note 155 — THE THEOGONY.

The servant of the Muse.] Laws were always promulgated in verse, and often publicly sung; a practice which remained in many places long after letters were become common: morality was taught: history was delivered in verse. Lawgivers, philosophers, historians, all who would apply their experience or their genius to the instruction and amusement of others, were necessarily poets. The character of poet was therefore a character of dignity: an opinion even of sacredness became attached to it: a poetical genius was esteemed an effect of divine inspiration and a mark of divine favour: and the poet, who moreover carried with him instruction and entertainment, not to be obtained without him, was a privileged person, enjoying by a kind of prescription the rights of universal hospitality. Mitford.

Yet in the vulgar tradition, Homer is represented as a mere ballad-singing mendicant! and whoever attempts to refute, by the light of historic evidence and of reason, this or similar absurdities of modern ignorance, when sanctioned by popular prejudice, must expect to be set down as a dealer in paradoxes.