(Thus a man will talk of Chaucer as though his
inflexions were the most important thing about him.) Now to acclaim
Homer as a great teacher, and use him in the schools, was right enough
so long as the Athenians remembered (and is right enough for us, so long
as we remember) _how_ he teaches us, or rather _educates_. What we have
described the Poet as doing for men--drawing forth the inner harmonies
of the soul and attuning them to the Universal--is _educative_ in the
truest sense as in the highest degree. So long as we remember this, the
old dispute whether the aim of Poetry be to teach or to delight is seen
to be futile: for she does both, and she does the one by means of the
other. On the other hand, you cannot leave a delicate instrument such as
Poetry lying within reach of the professional teacher; he will
certainly, at any risk of marring or mutilating, seize on it and use it
as a hammer to knock things into heads; if rebuked for this, plaintively
remonstrating, "But I thought you told me it was useful to teach with!"
(So Gideon taught the men of Succoth.) And therefore, we need not be
astonished: coming dawn to Strabo, to find him asserting that "the
ancients held poetry to be a kind of elementary philosophy, introducing
us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character,
behaviour and action.
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