eighteenth century, and in[Pg 79] part to the waning influence of Latin. Nevertheless even now the best writers in their most genuinely poetic moments still assert for themselves, though within narrower limits, the licence of modifying the strict grammatical order. This surely is as it ought to be; for though a language like ours, which has shed most of its inflections, is compelled to have a more rigid word-order than an inflected language like Latin, yet emotional stress and the need for rhetorical emphasis will always, even in prose, tempt writers to violate the conventional rules, and still more in poetry, where the position of words and phrases in relation to the line is of such, paramount importance. [Pg 79] [Pg 81] [Pg 81] CHAPTER VI The Children of Thamyris The Children of Thamyris There is another legend concerning the ancient Hellenic Muses, which I would here like to recall. It is said that one of their most gifted and distinguished pupils, the Thessalian bard Thamyris, having made certain innovations in the orthodox technique of poetry, and having moreover enlarged its boundaries by annexing subject-matter that had hitherto been considered beneath the dignity of classic art, one day had the audacity to challenge his august schoolmistresses to a contest of song. Apollo was the umpire, and he, as might have been expected, adjudged the victory to his divine relatives. The presumptuous mortal was condemned to lose his eyes, and forbidden henceforth[Pg 82] to practise the sacred art of poesy. The baser medium of prose would be good enough for such renegade impostors. But the result was far different from what the Goddesses had expected. Thamyris, though blinded, remained recalcitrant, and retaining all his former skill and genius, like his remote descendants, blind Maeonides and Milton, continued to produce masterpiece after masterpiece. Worse still, he became a popular hero among the miserable mortal multitude, who naturally sided with the victim of divine jealousy. Moreover Thamyris soon afterwards became the father of a numerous family, and their descendants, multiplying throughout
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