At first, I think, that was all it meant but after a time it came to mean something more; it came to mean men who helped their country; men in those old times, when the country was half wild, who killed fierce beasts and evil men, and drained swamps, and founded towns, and therefore after they were dead, were honoured, because they had left their country better than they found it. And we call such a man a hero in English to this day, and call it a "heroic" thing to suffer pain and grief, that we may do good to our fellow-men. We may all do that, my children, boys and girls alike; and we ought to do it, for it is easier now than ever, and safer, and the path more clear. But you shall hear how the Hellens said their heroes worked, three thousand years ago. The stories are not all true, of course, nor half of them; you are not simple enough to fancy that but the meaning of them is true, and true forever, and that is "Do right, and God will help you." FARLEY COURT, Advent, 1855. [I OWE an apology to the few scholars who may happen to read this hasty jeu d'esprit, for the inconsistent method in which I have spelt Greek names. The rule which I have tried to follow has been this: When the word has been hopelessly Latinized, as "Phœbus" has been, I have left it as it usually stands; but in other cases I have tried to keep the plain Greek spelling, except when it would have seemed pedantic, or when, as in the word"Tiphus," I should have given an altogether wrong notion of the sound of the word. It has been a choice of difficulties, which has been forced on me by our strange habit of introducing boys to the Greek myths, not in their original shape, but in a Roman disguise.] |