I cannot admit that further proof is required; nevertheless, I will give you one. Will you allow Homer to have been an admirable poet?

Surely.

Well, he maintains Providence, and warrants my belie}.

Magnificent! why, every one will grant you Homer's poetic excellence; but not that he, or any other poet for that matter, is good authority on questions of this sort. Their object, of course, ts not truth, but fascination; they call in the charms of metre, they take tales for the vehicle of what instruction they give, and in short all their efforts are directed to pleasure.

But I should be glad to hear which parts of Homer you pin your faith to. Where be tells how the daughter, the brother, and the wife of Zeus conspired to imprison him? If Thetis had not been moved to compassion and called Briareus, you remember, our excellent Zeus would have been seized and manacled; and his gratitude to her induced him to delude Agamemnon with a lying dream, and bring about the deaths of a number of Greeks. Do you see? The reason was that, if he had struck and blasted Agamemnon’s self with a thunderbolt, his double dealing would have come to light. Or perhaps you found the Diomede story most convincing?— Diomede wounded Aphrodite, and afterwards Ares himself, at Athene’s instigation; and then the Gods actually fell to blows and went a-tilting—without distinction of sex 3 Athene overthrew Ares, exhausted no doubt with bis previous wound from Diomede; and Hermes the stark and stanch "gainst Leto stood, Or did you put your trust in Artemis? She was a sensitive lady, who resented not being invited to Oeneus’s banquet, and by way of vengeance sent a monstrous irresistible boar to ravage his country. Is it with tales like these that Homer has prevailed on you?

Goodness me, what a shout, Gods! they are all cheering Damis. And our man seems posed; he is frightened and trembles; he is going to throw up the sponge, I am certain of it; he looks round for a gap to get away through.

And will you scout Euripides too, then? Again and again be brings Gods on the stage, and shows them upholding virtue in the Heroes, but chastising wickedness and impiety (like yours).

My noble philosopher, if that is how the tragedians have convinced you, you have only two alternatives: you must suppose that divinity is temporarily lodged either in the actor—a Polus, an Aristodemus, a Satyrus—, or else in the actual masks, buskins, long tunics, cloaks, gloves, stomachers, padding, and ornamental paraphernalia in general of tragedy—a manifest absurdity; for when Euripides can speak bis own sentiments unfettered by dramatic necessity, observe the freedom of his remarks: Dost see this aether stretching infinite, And girdling earth with close yet soft embrace? That reckon thou thy Zeus, that name thy God. And again, Zeus, whateer Zeus may be (for, save by hearsay, I know not)—; and there is more of the same sort.