Laudator Temporis Acti

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), "Shooting Niagra: And After?" Essays on Politics and Society (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022), pp. 265-299 (at 282-283):

The Bible itself has, in all changes of theory about it, this as its highest distinction, that it is the truest of all Books;—Book springing, every word of it, from the intensest convictions, from the very heart’s core, of those who penned it. And has not that been a “successful” Book? Did all the Paternoster-Rows of the world ever hear of one so “successful”! Homer’s Iliad, too, that great Bundle of old Greek Ballads, is nothing of a Fiction; it is the truest a Patriotic Balladsinger, rapt into paroxysm and enthusiasm for the honour of his native Country and native Parish, could manage to sing. To ‘sing,’ you will observe; always sings,—pipe often rusty, at a loss for metre (flinging-in his γε, μὲν, δὲ); a rough, laborious, wallet-bearing man; but with his heart rightly on fire, when the audience goes with him, and ‘hangs on him with greed’ (as he says they often do). Homer’s Iliad I almost reckon next to the Bible; so stubbornly sincere is it too, though in a far different element, and a far shallower.