* Note, once for all, that unless when there is question about some
particular expression, I never translate literally, but give the real
force of what is said, as I best can, freely.
So that you may obtain a more truthful idea of the nature of Greek
religion and legend from the poems of Keats, and the nearly as beautiful,
and, in general grasp of subject, far more powerful, recent work of
Morris, than from frigid scholarship, however extensive. Not that the
poet's impressions or renderings of things are wholly true, but their
truth is vital, not formal. They are like sketches from the life by
Reynolds or Gainsborough, which may be demonstrably inaccurate or
imaginary in many traits, and indistinct in others, yet will be in the
deepest sense like, and true; while the work of historical analysis is
too often weak with loss, through the very labor of its miniature
touches, or useless in clumsy and vapid veracity of externals, and
complacent security of having done all that is required for the portrait,
when it has measured the breadth of the forehead and the length of the
nose.
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