"Some there were," he says, "who owed their preservation to Euripides. Of
all the Grecians, his was the muse with whom the Sicilians were most in
love. From the strangers who landed in their island they gleaned every
small specimen or portion of his works, and communicated it with pleasure
to each other. It is said that upon this occasion a number of Athenians on
their return home went to Euripides, and thanked him in the most grateful
manner for their obligations to his pen; some having been enfranchised for
teaching their masters what they remembered of his poems, and others
having procured refreshments, when they were wandering about after the
battle, by singing a few of his verses."
Nowadays we are none of us likely to owe our lives to Poetry in this
sense, yet in another we many of us owe to it a similar debt. How often,
when worn with overwork, sorrow, or anxiety, have we taken down Homer or
Horace, Shakespeare or Milton, and felt the clouds gradually roll away,
the jar of nerves subside, the consciousness of power replace physical
exhaustion, and the darkness of despondency brighten once more into the
light of life.
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