Excerpt: ‘In the first chapter ‘History of Greek Poetry, ‘ Schlegel speaks of the religious rites and mysteries of the primitive Greeks, and of the Orphic poetry to which they gave rise. Contrary to the opinion of many scholars who, though they admit the present form of the Orphic hymns to be the work of a later period, yet refer their substance to a very remote antiquity, Schlegel assigns their origin to the age of Hesiod. Enthusiasm, he says, is the characteristic of the Orphic poetry—repose that of the Homeric poems.’

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