Putnam's Monthly

fain to content themselves with, what the Homerids themselves received of him as their ancestral patron!

No: with these works in their hands to-day, reasoning from them alone, with no collateral aids, with scarce an extant monument of the age from which they come to us, they are not afraid to fly in the face of all antiquity with their conclusions.

Have they not settled among them, already, the old dispute of the contending cities, the old dispute of the contending ages, too, for the honor of this poet's birth? Do they not take him to pieces before our eyes, this venerable Homer; and tell us how many old forgotten poets' ashes went to his formation, and trace in him the mosaic seams which eluded the scrutiny of the age of Pericles? Even Mr. Grote will tell us now, just where the Iliad "cuts me" the fiery Achilles "cranking in ;" and what could hinder the learned Schlegel, years ago, from setting his chair in the midst of the Delian choirs, confronting the confounded children of Ion with his definitions of the term Homeros, and demonstrating, from the Leipsic Iliad in his hand that the poet's cotemporaries had, in fact, named him Homer the seer, not Homer the Blind One?

The criticism of our age found this whole question where the art of writing found it, two thousand five hundred years ago; but, because the Ionian cities, and Solon, and Pisistratus, might be presumed, beforehand, to know at least as much about it as they, or because the opinions of twenty-five centuries, in such a case, might seem to he entitled to some reverence, did the critics leave it there?

Two hundred and fifty years ago, our poet-our Homer-was alive in the world. Two centuries and a half ago, when the art of letters was already millenniums old in Europe, when the art of printing had already been in use a century and a half, in the midst of a cotemporary historical illumination which has its equal nowhere in history, those works were issued that have given our English life and language their imperishable claim in the earth, that have made the name in which they come to us a word by itself, in the human speech; and, to this hour, we know of their origin hardly so much as we knew of the origin of the Homeric ep

ics, when the present discussions in regard to them commenced, not so much, -not a hundredth part so much, as we now know of Pharaoh's, who reigned in the valley of the Nile, ages before the invasion of the Hyksos.

But with these products of the national life in our hands, with all the cotemporary light on their implied conditions which such an age as that of Elizabeth can furnish, are we going to be able to sit still much longer, in a period of historical inquiry and criticism like this, under the gross impossibilities which the still accepted theory on this subject involves?

The age which has put back old Homer's eyes, safe, in his head again, after he had gone without them well nigh three thousand years; the age which has found, and labeled, and sent to the museum, the skull in which the pyramid of Cheops was designed, and the lions which "the mighty hunter before the Lord" ordered for his new palace on the Tigris some millenniums earlier; the age in which we have abjured our faith in Romulus and Remus, is surely one in which we may be permitted to ask this question.

Shall this crowning literary product of that great epoch, wherein these new ages have their beginning, vividly arrayed in its choicest refinements, flashing everywhere on the surface with its costliest wit, crowded everywhere with its subtlest scholasticisms, betraying, on every page, its broadest, freshest range of experience, its most varied culture, its profoundest insight, its boldest grasp of comprehension-shall this crowning result of so many preceding ages of growth and culture, with its essential, and now palpable connection with the new scientific movement of the time from which it issues, be able to conceal from us, much longer, its history?-Shall we be able to accept in explanation of it, much longer, the story of the Stratford poacher?

The popular and traditional theory of the origin of these works was received and transmitted after the extraordinary circumstances which led to its first imposition had ceased to exist, because, in fact, no one had any motive for taking the trouble to call it in question. The common disposition to receive, in good faith, a statement of this kind, however extraordinary-the natural intellectual preference of the affirmative

proposition at hand, as the explanation of a given phenomenon, when the negative or the doubt compels one to launch out for himself, in search of new positions-this, alone, might serve to account for this result, at a time when criticism, as yet, was not; when the predominant mental habit, on all ordinary questions, was still that of passive acceptance, and the most extraordinary excitements, on questions of the most momentous interest, could only rouse the public mind to assume, temporarily, any other attitude.

And the impression which these works produced, even in their first imperfect mode of exhibition, was already so profound and extraordinary, as to give to all the circumstances of their attributed origin a blaze of notoriety, tending to enhance this positive force in the tradition. Propounded as a fact, not as a theory, its very boldness-its startling improbability-was made at once to contribute to its strength; covering, beforehand, the whole ground of attack. The wonderful origin of these works was, from the first, the predominant point in the impression they made-the prominent marvel in those marvels, around which all the new wonders, that the later criticism evolved, still continued to arrange themselves.

For the discoveries of this criticism had yet no tendency to suggest any new belief on this point. In the face of all that new appreciation of the works themselves, which was involved in them, the story of that wondrous origin could still maintain its footing;-through all the ramifications of this criticism, it still grew and inwound itself, not without vital limitation, however, to the criticism thus entangled. But these new discoveries involved, for a time, conclusions altogether in keeping with the tradition.

This new force in literature, for which books contained no precedent-this new manifestation of creative energy, with its self-sustained vitalities; with its inexhaustible prodigality, mocking nature herself; with its new grasp of the whole circuit of human aims and activities ;this force, so unlike anything that scholasticism or art had ever before produced, though it came, in fact, with the sweep of all the ages-moved with all their slow accumulation-could not account for itself to those critics, as anything but a new and mystic manifestation of nature -a new upwelling of the occult vital

forces, underlying our phenomenal existence-invading the historic order with one capricious leap, laughing at history, telling the laboring ages that their sweat and blood had been in vain.

And the tradition at hand was entirely in harmony with this conception. For, to this superhuman genius, bringing with it its own laws and intuitions from some outlying region of life, not subject to our natural conditions, and not to be included in our "philosophy," the differences between man and man, natural or acquired, would, of course, seem trivial. What could any culture, or any merely natural endowment accomplish, that would furnish the required explanation of this result? And, by way of defining itself as an agency wholly supernal, was it not, in fact, necessary that it should select, as its organ, one in whom the natural conditions of the highest intellectual manifestations were obviously, even grossly, wanting?

With this theory of it, no one need find it strange that it should pass in its selection those grand old cities, where learning sat enthroned with all her timehonored array of means and appliances for the development of mental resource -where the genius of England had hitherto been accomplished for all its triumphs-and that it should pass the lofty centres of church and state, and the crowded haunts of professional life, where the mental activities of the time were gathered to its conflicts; where, in hourly collision, each strong individuality was printing itself upon a thousand others, and taking in turn from all their impress; where, in the thick coming change of that "time-bettering age," in its crowding multiplicities, and varieties, and oppositions, life grew warm, and in the old the new was stirring, and in the many, the one; where wit, and philosophy, and fancy, and humor, in the thickest onsets of the hour, were learning to veil, in courtly phrase, in double and triple meanings, in crowding complexities of conceits and unimagined subtleties of form, the freedoms that the time had nurtured; where genius flashed up from all her hidden sources, and the soul of the age-"the mind reflecting ages past"-was collecting itself, and ready, even then, to leap forth, "not for an age, but for all time."

And, indeed, was it not fitting that this new inspiration, which was to reveal the latent forces of nature, and her scorn of

fain to content themselves with, what the Homerids themselves received of him as their ancestral patron!

No: with these works in their hands to-day, reasoning from them alone, with no collateral aids, with scarce an extant monument of the age from which they come to us, they are not afraid to fly in the face of all antiquity with their conclusions.

Have they not settled among them, already, the old dispute of the contending cities, the old dispute of the contending ages, too, for the honor of this poet's birth? Do they not take him to pieces before our eyes, this venerable Homer; and tell us how many old forgotten poets' ashes went to his formation, and trace in him the mosaic seams which eluded the scrutiny of the age of Pericles? Even Mr. Grote will tell us now, just where the Iliad "cuts me" the fiery Achilles "cranking in ;" and what could hinder the learned Schlegel, years ago, from setting his chair in the midst of the Delian choirs, confronting the confounded children of Ion with his definitions of the term Homeros, and demonstrating, from the Leipsic Iliad in his hand that the poet's cotemporaries had, in fact, named him Homer the seer, not Homer the Blind One?

The criticism of our age found this whole question where the art of writing found it, two thousand five hundred years ago; but, because the Ionian cities, and Solon, and Pisistratus, might be presumed, beforehand, to know at least as much about it as they, or because the opinions of twenty-five centuries, in such a case, might seem to he entitled to some reverence, did the critics leave it there?

Two hundred and fifty years ago, our poct-our Homer-was alive in the world. Two centuries and a half ago, when the art of letters was already millenniums old in Europe, when the art of printing had already been in use a century and a half, in the midst of a cotemporary historical illumination which has its equal nowhere in history, those works were issued that have given our English life and language their imperishable claim in the earth, that have made the name in which they come to us a word by itself, in the human speech; and, to this hour, we know of their origin hardly so much as we knew of the origin of the Homeric ep

ics, when the present discussions in regard to them commenced, not so much, -not a hundredth part so much, as we now know of Pharaoh's, who reigned in the valley of the Nile, ages before the invasion of the Hyksos.

But with these products of the national life in our hands, with all the cotemporary light on their implied conditions which such an age as that of Elizabeth can furnish, are we going to be able to sit still much longer, in a period of historical inquiry and criticism like this, under the gross impossibilities which the still accepted theory on this subject involves?

The age which has put back old Homer's eyes, safe, in his head again, after he had gone without them well nigh three thousand years; the age which has found, and labeled, and sent to the museum, the skull in which the pyramid of Cheops was designed, and the lions which "the mighty hunter before the Lord" ordered for his new palace on the Tigris some millenniums earlier; the age in which we have abjured our faith in Romulus and Remus, is surely one in which we may be permitted to ask this question.

Shall this crowning literary product of that great epoch, wherein these new ages have their beginning, vividly arrayed in its choicest refinements, flashing everywhere on the surface with its costliest wit, crowded everywhere with its subtlest scholasticisms, betraying, on every page, its broadest, freshest range of experience, its most varied culture, its profoundest insight, its boldest grasp of comprehension-shall this crowning result of so many preceding ages of growth and culture, with its essential, and now palpable connection with the new scientific movement of the time from which it issues, be able to conceal from us, much longer, its history?-Shall we be able to accept in explanation of it, much longer, the story of the Stratford poacher?

The popular and traditional theory of the origin of these works was received and transmitted after the extraordinary circumstances which led to its first imposition had ceased to exist, because, in fact, no one had any motive for taking the trouble to call it in question. The common disposition to receive, in good faith, a statement of this kind, however extraordinary-the natural intellectual preference of the affirmative