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[CHAP.72 ANCIENT GREECE..vi.youth. 1 Tlieir subsequentcondition shows that this musthave been so ; although history has not preserved for us anyparticular account on theItsubject.is easy to conceive,that in a country highly favoured by nature external cir;cumstances could afford the poet many facilities, by meansof the forms of social life,of which song was the companion.But the circumstances of the times afforded many greateradvantages to poetic genius.The glimmeringsof tradition were not yet departed,Theexpedition against Troy, and the efforts of the earlier poets,had rather contributed so to mature the traditions, thatthey offered the noblest subjects for national poems. Beforethat time, the heroes of the several tribes had been of importance to none but their tribe but those who were dis;tinguished in the common undertaking against Troy, becameheroes of the nation. Their actions and their sufferingsawakened a generalinterest. Add to this, that these actionsand adventures had already been celebrated by many ofthe early bards ;and that they had even then imparted tothe whole of history the poetic character, which distinguishedit. Time is always needed to mature tradition for the epicpoet.The songs of a Phemius and a Demodocus, thoughthe subjectsof them were taken from that war, were but thefirst essays, which died away, as the ancient songs have done,which commemorated the exploits of the crusaders. It wasnot tillthree hundred years after the loss of the Holy Land,that the poet appeared who was to celebrate the glory ofGodfrey in a manner worthy of the hero more time;hadperhaps passed after Achilles and Hector fell in battle, before the Grecian poet secured to them their immortality.The language no less than the subject had been improved inthis age. Although neither all its words nor its phrases werelimited in their use by strict grammatical rules, it was by nomeans awkward or rough. It had for centuries been improved by the poets, and had now become a poetic language,It almost seemed more easy to make use of it in verse thanin prose ;and the forms of the hexameter, of which alone1 The age of Homer is usually set about a century after the foundation ofIf it be true, that Lycurgus,those colonies, about the year 950 before Christ.whose laws were given about the year 880, introduced his poems into Sparta.Jie cannot be much younger. We must leave to others the prosecution ofthese inquiries.