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.
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