THE prevailing opinion in ancient times was, that the poems of Homer were written, or rather sung, in detached pieces. "Eygay, says Suidas, Ιλιάδα, οὐχ ἅμα, οὐδὲ κατὰ τὸ συνεχές, καθάπερ σύγκειται· ἀλλ' αὐτὸς μὲν ἱκαστην ῥαψῳδίας γράψας ἐν τῷ περινοστεῖν τὰς πόλεις τροφῆς ἕνεκεν, ἀπέλιπεν. The common story is, that these scattered fragments were put into the order in which we now have them by Pisistratus. If he did so, well may the inscription said to have been engraven on his statue recite it as one of his proudest boasts. ὃς τὸν "Ομηρον *Ἤθροισα, σποράδην τὸ πρὶν ἀειδόμενον. All critical readers of Homer know, that the Scholia on Dionysius the Thracian, cited by Leo Allatius de Patriâ Homeri, Eustathius, Josephus, Aulus Gellius, Libanius, lian, tell the same story. Cicero believed it:-" Quis doctior iisdem illis temporibus, aut cujus eloquentia litteris instructior, quam Pisistrati, qui primus Homeri libros, confusos antea, sic disposuisse fertur, ut nunc habemus?"-De Oratore. The honour, however, is claimed for Lycurgus, that he brought the whole poems to Sparta from Ionia, about three hundred years before the days of Pisistratus. Plutarch, in his Life, tells us that Lycurgus gathered the fragments in Asia, and introduced them VOL. XVII. NO. XCVII. to the Greeks, among whom their renown was as yet obscure [dóža. Νο pavg]. Elian asserts, that he brought back the poems entire : 'Ovì di Avxougyos ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος ἀθρόαν πρῶτον εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐκόμιζε τὴν ̔Ομήρου ποίησιν. Solon, also, who preceded Pisistratus, has some share of the glory. Diogenes Laertius thinks the old legislator did more for Homer than his successor: Μᾶλλον οὖν Σόλων Ομηρον ἐφώτισεν ἥ Πεισίστρατος, ὥς φήσι Διευχίδας ἐν πέμπτῳ Μεγαρικών. ancient author, I believe (except the Chorizontes, who maintained that the Iliad and Odyssey were written by different persons, and supported their argument by a piece of stupid criticism, which is found in the Venetian Scholia, Il. B. 356, and which I may hereafter take an opportunity of noticing), imagined that the works gathered by Pisistratus, or Solon, or Lycurgus, were not written by one man, and that one man named Homer. It was reserved for modern times to start the astounding doctrine that these divine poems are the production of different hands. I am not ignorant of the talent, learning, and industry of Wolf; but I should as soon believe in four-andtwenty contemporary, or nearly contemporary, Homers, as in four-and-twenty contemporary Shakespeares, or Miltons, or Dantes. More than seven-andtwenty centuries have rolled away since B Homer's time, according to his received date; and, in all languages, half-adozen names have not been produced who can be allowed to approximate to him. I firmly believe he has had but one equal, and even the greatness of his genius is disputed-by those, however, who, in my opinion, are not capable of appreciating either Shakespeare or Homer. I look only to the internal evidence of the poems themselves. As for external evidence, we know as much of Homer as the earliest Greek writer who mentions him. The poems were in all men's mouths before history or biography- far before criticism or antiquarianism, were thought of; and Herodotus himself tells nothing certain of their author. The stories of scholiasts and grammarians, picked up from obscure and idle sources, are nothing more than guesses or fictions, on which no reliance can be placed. How little do we in reality know of Solon, or Lycurgus, or Pisistratus! It is highly probable that men, legislating for rude communities, would be anxious to furnish their people with the means of enjoying the strains of their national favourite, which were, besides, manuals of their religion and records of their ancient history; but they did no more than direct that the public reciters of the poems, the Rhapsodists, should sing them in order. Such was the regulation of Hipparchus, as we are informed by Plato; the same we are told of Solon. Pisistratus might, perhaps, have directed the details of an edition, as Ptolemy did some three centuries later; but I should as readily credit that the poems were written by different persons, whose labours were afterwards gathered and soldered into a whole by a man of another age, as I should swallow the Voyage of Ulysses. The thing is merely impossible; "And what's impossible can't be, And never, never comes to pass." Scaliger, I believe, first started the hypothesis in his Poetics; a work, of which the taste and judgment are in an inverse ratio to its learning; and Giambattista Vico, about the beginning of the last century, put it forth with much ability, in his Principi di Scienza Nuova. Wolf, at the end of the century, in his Prolegomena, collected all that learning and ingenuity could effect for the same purpose; and he has succeeded in convincing some scholars. Sir Walter Scott, I am told, used to call it the great literary heresy; and so must every one who looks upon the poems with critical or poetical eye. It is possible, nay, certain, that many lines, and some whole passages, are interpolated; and we must often agree with Payne Knight, though certainly not so far as to retrench with him about two thousand lines: but I think it possible, also, that the obelising hand of Aristarchus sometimes went too far, and that many genuine lines were rejected. It may be true, for instance, that the adventure of Dolon, which forms the tenth book of the Iliad, may have been inserted, as Eustathius tells us, by order of Pisistratus; though I do not believe any thing of the kind : but that any mind but one, and that of the highest class of human mind, not only for the execution of details, but for the general ordering and regulating of a whole, originally directed the march of the poems, will appear incredible to those who have critically considered what epic poetry is. So far from the Iliad being a collection or miscellany of ballads, composed at fits and starts by various minstrels, and then pieced together in ages afterwards, the fact is, that it is the only epic poem ever written of which the unity is perfect and complete, and in which it would be impossible to disturb the order of the several parts of the poem without marring the regular and connected sequence of the entire. The Eneid is quite disconnected. The adventure of the first and fourth books has nothing to do with those of the remainder; it does not unite with them, far less influence them. The fifth book is a clumsy interpolation. Hardouin justly remarks, that the story of the sack of Troy, and the wanderings of Eneas, might have been as well told to Latinus or Evander as to Dido; and the funeral games better performed in honour of Pallas than of a trumpeter, who makes no appearance in the poem until he is dead. Milton well knew, though his commentators, including Addison, do not [Bentley, of course, excepted; but he was otherwise employed, in his wonderful edition of Milton], that the epic character could not be sustained throughout Paradise Lost; and, accordingly, he plainly tells us, in the ninth book, that he changes his notes to tragic. In the Iliad, on the contrary, the theme laid down is pur Homeric Ballads. sued, from beginning to end, with all the precision of a logical argument. The greatest warrior of the host assembled around Troy forsakes the cause in an excess of just anger. To shew that his presence is not indispensable towards success, the King of Men determines on active operations at once without him, and musters his army for the fight. All the accidents of war ensue-battles, charges, retreats, duels, truces. The first day's combat has been such, that the Greeks feel it necessary to call in the spade to the assistance of the sword; and they intrench. Still more disastrous is the second day's battle. Heaven declares decidedly against them; and the victorious Hector bivouacs amid his watchfires in the field, waiting impatiently for morning to attack the hostile lines. Then is the indignant prophecy of Achilles remembered, that his arm would ere long be needed; and his intrepid cousin, his aged tutor, and the most eloquent chieftain of the host, are sent with rich gifts to supplicate him to return: but in vain. The vicissitudes of warfare again fill the scene. We have a night adventure, which certainly is not necessary in the story; but an epic poem and a romance are two different things. The main theme of the Iliad is war, and every accident of war should therein have a place. Among these, the employment of espionage and the surprise of an unguarded camp are prominent; and, therefore, I pay no attention to the tradition already noticed, that the Dolonia was inserted by Pisistratus. Then follow sallies from the intrenchments, storming of walls, desperate defence of position after position, with gleams of success, followed by irretrievable defeat; when the hero, moved by the tears of his friend, consents to allow his troops to rush to the rescue, but refuses to stir in person. a time the rush is successful, and the For assailants are driven back; but the leader of the rescuing division is soon slain, and the rout is more hopeless than before. In triumph then rises before us Hector, radiant in gloriously won arms, the hero of his country, generous, true-hearted, noble, brave, about to receive, with swelling heart, the reward of a thousand valiant actions, by the prostrate subjugation and expulsion of the enemies of his land and lineage. His sword is raised to smite resistlessly, when upon the ears 3 of his panic-stricken followers falls that battle-cry so fatally remembered which tells the appalling story that Achilles is in the field again. The rout is instantly checked; and, in the morning, the furious the king, and girt with armour forged and heart-broken warrior, reconciled to by the god of Fire, sweeps raging to pitiless and indiscriminating slaughter. nearly exhausted; and now the imOrdinary war-adventures had been mortals come down to the fight, and the River-god rises to do battle in vain flung aside, and at last the closing hour with a man. All obstacles are speedily hand to hand, and all alone, meet the arrives. Under the walls of Troy, single combat, which death only can two champions of their people in a conclude; and Hector falls. Then follow funeral games and funeral lamentslew him, lie in a common death; and ations. Patroclus, and the chief who the victor Achilles honours his fallen friend with all the pomp of martial chivalry, while amid the vanquished habitants of the beleaguered city bursts forth the wailing of women over the corpse of Hector, the gallant and the good. If Pisistratus put this together, he is a far greater poet than any of the fourand-twenty ballad-mongers whose purpurei panni he gathered and joined. What is the ballad of the Bravery of poem of the Iliad? Diomed, for example, compared to the Harmonious verse, stirring incident, picturesque description, profound thought, are to be found in every page; but the power of producing these, lofty as it is, falls far short of that mens divinior which can evolve such a work complete and ginning, middle, and end so closely, absolute in all its numbers, with the beand as it were mathematically, linked together. Throughout the Iliad runs, also, one vein of thought, which it would be impossible to expect from unconnected writers. The battle-bards, supposed to hold steadily in view a working separately, could hardly be yet that feeling strongly pervades the detestation of strife and quarrel, and book, and Phoenix in the ninth,—each Iliad. Not only Nestor in the first in his several way deprecates anger, and counsels the suppression of revengeful feelings; but even the hero himself breaks into a passionate execration of discord, praying that it might perish from amid gods and men, when he finds that the consequence of his own indulgence in wrath has been to stretch his brother in arms, the partner of his soul, in the gory dust. This moral follows from, not, as Bossu absurdly imagines, creates, the poem. But, I am wasting my time. He who cannot see that the Iliad was written by the same hand, from beginning to end, is past the help of couching; and I might as well attempt to describe the cartoons to a man in a state of physical blindness. Of the Odyssey, I may speak hereafter. Vico says, "Che percio i popoli Greci cotanto contesero della di lui (Omero) patria, e'l vollero quasi tutti lor cittadino; perche essi popoli Greci furono quest Omero." There may be in this sentence either sense or nonsense. Nonsense in all its altitudes, if it be intended to maintain that what is the popular fancy can be best expressed by the people; or, as Vico phrases it, that the popoli Greci were Omero; for the contrary is the fact. It is the Omeri-the Homers -- who ultimately lead, and make the popoli Greci. Sense, if it be intended to say that there is no Homer without the education un-schoolmasterlike of observation and memory. I should readily concede to Vico, or Wolf, that many a story is contained in the Homeric poems which their author had heard and embodied. "To us," he says, "the glory-the report only-has come down. We know nothing of it." Thamyris, Demodoeus, and other illustrious singers, are perpetually quoted. Nothing appears to me more absurd than the controversy about the reality of the events of the Iliad. It is highly probable that the tribes on the opposite coasts of the Archipelago had many a piratical war, ante Helenam, occasioned, in pretext, by the carrying off of a lady in reality, by the pleasure of living a life of tumult and plunder. For Bryant and his school I feel no respect; but just as much as I do for those who made it a matter of orthodoxy to believe in the Trojan war. I am well aware of the theory of Nimrod--not the Nimrod whose unwearied pen throws perpetual fascination over the themes of sporting and conviviality; who brings before us the chase and the turf, the field and the table, with a freshness and a vigour that makes us almost participators in the scenes of active manhood or jocular relaxation which he pictures-but Herbert, who will not be offended if I style him, after his impressive poem, Herbert of Helga, in his work called after the mighty hunter. Ingenious it is, and supported by a world of talent and erudition; but I think Homer is to be read literally. Some actual war, which appeared to him remarkable, suggested the song. It having been so suggested, genius did the rest. The four and-twenty minstrels I must again dismiss, and agree with Aristotle that θεσπέσιος ἂν φανείη Ομήρος παρὰ τοὺς λλous (Poet xxiv.). Divine is Homer -[the one Homer] above all others. The same Aristotle, who made for the use of Alexander the Great the most famous of the editions of Homer, thereby for ever ennobling the office of editor, also declares that the poet surpasses all, not only in style (xiğu), but in the intellectual faculty (divia),— not merely in the melody of versification and the choice of words, but in the philosophical arrangement and consideration of the course of his poems. And Aristotle was a man worthy of all the worship ever bestowed upon him even by the blindest of his devotees. They might not have known why they worshipped him, and often assigned absurd or false reasons for their idolatry ; but they were not substantially wrong when they bowed down before the "ipse dixit." I have written more than I intended, and shall only say, that my own opinion is that the Iliad and Odyssey are, with no very important differences, as we now have them, the work of one man, who dwelt on the Asiatic side of the Archipelago, or in the islands-perhaps Scio. I do not believe that he was a beggar-man, or a singing man, or a blind man. I do not think his name was Homer; and I look upon the derivations of that word which we find in the Greek scholiasts, men utterly ignorant of the principles of etymology, and the pedants who follow them, as mere trash. The meaning is to be sought elsewhere. I think he wrote or spoke his great poems as wholes, in Asia, and that they came over to Hellas piece by piece, after having filled the east with their fame; and that by the great men of Athens, or Sparta, they were gathered, not in the sense of making them into poems, but of re-making them. They were, both before their importation and afterwards, sung in |