Homer's 'Iliad' owes its marvellous popularity to the genius which its author displayed in the portrayal of heroic character.

Yet he does not so much describe his personages in detail as make them develope themselves by their actions.
"There are in Homer," said Dr.Johnson, "such characters of heroes and combination of qualities of heroes, that the united powers of mankind ever since have not produced any but what are to be found there." The genius of Shakspeare also was displayed in the powerful delineation of character, and the dramatic evolution of human passions.

His personages seem to be real--living and breathing before us.

So too with Cervantes, whose Sancho Panza, though homely and vulgar, is intensely human.

The characters in Le Sage's 'Gil Blas,' in Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield,' and in Scott's marvellous muster-roll, seem to us almost as real as persons whom we have actually known; and De Foe's greatest works are but so many biographies, painted in minute detail, with reality so apparently stamped upon every page, that it is difficult to believe his Robinson Crusoe and Colonel Jack to have been fictitious instead of real persons.
Though the richest romance lies enclosed in actual human life, and though biography, because it describes beings who have actually felt the joys and sorrows, and experienced the difficulties and triumphs, of real life, is capable of being made more attractive, than the most perfect fictions ever woven, it is remarkable that so few men of genius have been attracted to the composition of works of this kind.