INTRODUCTION

Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of

scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the

most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very

gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and

emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set

aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must

be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour

and anxiety to acquire.

And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which

progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which

persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu

of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept

away traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the

revenues of sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from

attractive superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in

society. The credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another,

finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the

healthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams

of conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the

Church. History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively

recent times, are subjected to very different handling from that

which the indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere

statements are jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form

as important an ingredient in the analysis or his history, as the

facts he records. Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and

it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical

evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting

in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than

mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an introduction of extended

experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history.

Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which

human experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To

form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming

parts of a great whole—we must measure them by their relation to the

mass of beings by whom they are surrounded; and, in contemplating the

incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down

to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole

narrative, than the respective probability of its details.

It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know

least, and talk most. Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere have, perhaps,

contributed more to the intellectual enlightenment of mankind than

any other three writers who could be named, and yet the history of

all three has given rise to a boundless ocean of discussion, which

has left us little save the option of choosing which theory or

theories we will follow. The personality of Shakespere is, perhaps,

the only thing in which critics will allow us to believe without

controversy; but upon everything else, even down to the authorship of

plays, there is more or less of doubt and uncertainty. Of Socrates we

know as little as the contradictions of Plato and Xenophon will allow

us to know. He was one of the dramatis personae in two dramas as

unlike in principles as in style. He appears as the enunciator of

opinions as different in their tone as those of the writers who have

handed them down. When we have read Plato or Xenophon, we think we

know something of Socrates; when we have fairly read and examined

both, we feel convinced that we are something worse than ignorant.

It has been an easy, and a popular expedient of late years, to deny

the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and

condition were too much for our belief. This system—which has often

comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of

Strauss for those of the New Testament—has been of incalculable

value to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries.

To question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more

excusable act, than to believe in that of Romulus. To deny a fact

related in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory

developed from an Assyrian inscription which no two scholars read in

the same way, is more pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured

old king whom the elegant pen of Florian has idealized—Numa

Pompilius.

Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer,

and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be described as a free

permission to believe any theory, provided we throw overboard all

written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the Iliad and

Odyssey. What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily

dismissed, although the arguments appear to run in a circle. "This

cannot be true, because it is not true; and that is not true, because

it cannot be true." Such seems to be the style, in which testimony

upon testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and

oblivion.

It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies of Homer

are partly forgeries, partly freaks of ingenuity and imagination, in

which truth is the requisite most wanting. Before taking a brief

review of the Homeric theory in its present conditions, some notice

must be taken of the treatise on the Life of Homer which has been

attributed to Herodotus.

According to this document, the city of Cumae in AEolia was, at an

early period, the seat of frequent immigrations from various parts of

Greece. Among the immigrants was Menapolus, the son of Ithagenes.

Although poor, he married, and the result of the union was a girl

named Critheis. The girl was left an orphan at an early age, under

the guardianship of Cleanax, of Argos. It is to the indiscretion of

this maiden that we "are indebted for so much happiness." Homer was

the first fruit of her juvenile frailty, and received the name of

Melesigenes from having been born near the river Meles in Boeotia,

whither Critheis had been transported in order to save her

reputation.

"At this time," continues our narrative, "there lived at Smyrna a man

named Phemius, a teacher of literature and music, who, not being

married, engaged Critheis to manage his household, and spin the flax

he received as the price of his scholastic labours. So satisfactory

was her performance of this task, and so modest her conduct, that he

made proposals of marriage, declaring himself, as a further

inducement, willing to adopt her son, who, he asserted, would become

a clever man, if he were carefully brought up."

They were married; careful cultivation ripened the talents which

nature had bestowed, and Melesigenes soon surpassed his schoolfellows

in every attainment, and, when older, rivalled his preceptor in

wisdom. Phemius died, leaving him sole heir to his property, and his

mother soon followed. Melesigenes carried on his adopted father's

school with great success, exciting the admiration not only of the

inhabitants of Smyrna, but also of the strangers whom the trade

carried on there, especially in the exportation of corn, attracted to

that city. Among these visitors, one Mentes, from Leucadia, the

modern Santa Maura, who evinced a knowledge and intelligence rarely

found in those times, persuaded Melesigenes to close his school, and

accompany him on his travels. He promised not only to pay his

expenses, but to furnish him with a further stipend, urging, that,

"While he was yet young, it was fitting that he should see with his

own eyes the countries and cities which might hereafter be the

subjects of his discourses." Melesigenes consented, and set out with

his patron, "examining all the curiosities of the countries they

visited, and informing himself of everything by interrogating those

whom he met." We may also suppose, that he wrote memoirs of all that

he deemed worthy of preservation. Having set sail from Tyrrhenia and

Iberia, they reached Ithaca. Here Melesigenes, who had already

suffered in his eyes, became much worse; and Mentes, who was about to

leave for Leucadia, left him to the medical superintendence of a

friend of his, named Mentor, the son of Alcinor. Under his hospitable

and intelligent host, Melesigenes rapidly became acquainted with the

legends respecting Ulysses, which afterwards formed the subject of

the Odyssey. The inhabitants of Ithaca assert, that it was here that

Melesigenes became blind, but the Colophonians make their city the

seat of that misfortune. He then returned to Smyrna, where he

applied himself to the study of poetry.

But poverty soon drove him to Cumae. Having passed over the Hermaean

plain, he arrived at Neon Teichos, the New Wall, a colony of Cumae.

Here his misfortunes and poetical talent gained him the friendship of

one Tychias, an armourer. "And up to my time," continues the author,

"the inhabitants showed the place where he used to sit when giving a

recitation of his verses; and they greatly honoured the spot. Here

also a poplar grew, which they said had sprung up ever since

Melesigenes arrived."

But poverty still drove him on, and he went by way of Larissa, as

being the most convenient road. Here, the Cumans say, he composed an

epitaph on Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with

greater probability, been attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus.

Arrived at Cumae, he frequented the conversaziones of the old men,

and delighted all by the charms of his poetry. Encouraged by this

favourable reception, he declared that, if they would allow him a

public maintenance, he would render their city most gloriouslv

renowned. They avowed their willingness to support him in the measure

he proposed, and procured him an audience in the council. Having made

the speech, with the purport of which our author has forgotten to

acquaint us, he retired, and left them to debate respecting the

answer to be given to his proposal.

The greater part of the assembly seemed favourable to the poet's

demand, but one man "observed that if they were to feed Homers, they

would be encumbered with a multitude of useless people." "From this

circumstance," says the writer, "Melesigenes acquired the name of

Homer, for the Cumans call blind men Homers." With a love of economy,

which shows how similar the world has always been in its treatment of

literary men, the pension was denied, and the poet vented his

disappointment in a wish that Cumae might never produce a poet

capable of giving it renown and glory.

At Phocaea Homer was destined to experience another literary

distress. One Thestorides, who aimed at the reputation of poetical

genius, kept Homer in his own house, and allowed him a pittance, on

condition of the verses of the poet passing in his name. Having

collected sufficient poetry to be profitable, Thestorides, like some

would-be literary publishers, neglected the man whose brains he had

sucked, and left him. At his departure, Homer is said to have

observed: "O Thestorides, of the many things hidden from the

knowledge of man, nothing is more unintelligible than the human

heart."

Homer continued his career of difficulty and distress, until some

Chian merchants, struck by the similarity of the verses they heard

him recite, acquainted him with the fact that Thestorides was

pursuing a profitable livelihood by the recital of the very same

poems. This at once determined him to set out for Chios. No vessel

happened then to be setting sail thither, but he found one ready to

start for Erythrae, a town of Ionia, which faces that island, and he

prevailed upon the seamen to allow him to accompany them. Having

embarked, he invoked a favourable wind, and prayed that he might be

able to expose the imposture of Thestorides, who, by his breach of

hospitality, had drawn down the wrath of Jove the Hospitable.

At Erythrae, Homer fortunately met with a person who had known him in

Phocaea, by whose assistance he at length, after some difficulty,

reached the little hamlet of Pithys. Here he met with an adventure,

which we will continue in the words of our author. "Having set out

from Pithys, Homer went on, attracted by the cries of some goats that

were pasturing. The dogs barked on his approach, and he cried out.

Glaucus (for that was the name of the goat-herd) heard his voice, ran

up quickly, called off his dogs, and drove them away from Homer. For

some time he stood wondering how a blind man should have reached such

a place alone, and what could be his design in coming. He then went

up to him and inquired who he was, and how he had come to desolate

places and untrodden spots, and of what he stood in need. Homer, by

recounting to him the whole history of his misfortunes, moved him

with compassion; and he took him and led him to his cot, and, having

lit a fire, bade him sup.

"The dogs, instead of eating, kept barking at the stranger, according

to their usual habit. Whereupon Homer addressed Glaucus thus: O

Glaucus, my friend, prythee attend to my behest. First give the dogs

their supper at the doors of the hut: for so it is better, since,

whilst they watch, nor thief nor wild beast will approach the fold.

"Glaucus was pleased with the advice and marvelled at its author.

Having finished supper, they banqueted afresh on conversation, Homer

narrating his wanderings, and telling of the cities he had visited.

"At length they retired to rest; but on the following morning,

Glaucus resolved to go to his master, and acquaint him with his

meeting with Homer. Having left the goats in charge of a

fellow-servant, he left Homer at home, promising to return quickly.

Having arrived at Bolissus, a place near the farm, and finding his

mate, he told him the whole story respecting Homer and his journey.

He paid little attention to what he said, and blamed Glaucus for his

stupidity in taking in and feeding maimed and enfeebled persons.

However, he bade him bring the stranger to him.

"Glaucus told Homer what had taken place, and bade him follow him,

assuring him that good fortune would be the result. Conversation soon

showed that the stranger was a man of much cleverness and general

knowledge, and the Chian persuaded him to remain, and to undertake

the charge of his children."

Besides the satisfaction of driving the impostor Thestorides from the

island, Homer enjoyed considerable success as a teacher. In the town

of Chios he established a school, where he taught the precepts of

poetry. "To this day," says Chandler, "the most curious remain is

that which has been named, without reason, the School of Homer. It is

on the coast, at some distance from the city, northward, and appears

to have been an open temple of Cybele, formed on the top of a rock.

The shape is oval, and in the centre is the image of the goddess, the

head and an arm wanting. She is represented, as usual, sitting. The

chair has a lion carved on each side, and on the back. The area is

bounded by a low rim, or seat, and about five yards over. The whole

is hewn out of the mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of the

most remote antiquity."

So successful was this school, that Homer realised a considerable

fortune. He married, and had two daughters, one of whom died single,

the other married a Chian.

The following passage betrays the same tendency to connect the

personages of the poems with the history of the poet, which has

already been mentioned:—

"In his poetical compositions Homer displays great gratitude towards

Mentor of Ithaca, in the Odyssey, whose name he has inserted in his

poem as the companion of Ulysses, in return for the care taken of him

when afflicted with blindness. He also testifies his gratitude to

Phemius, who had given him both sustenance and instruction."

His celebrity continued to increase, and many persons advised him to

visit Greece whither his reputation had now extended. Having, it is

said, made some additions to his poems calculated to please the

vanity of the Athenians, of whose city he had hitherto made no

mention, he set out for Samos. Here, being recognized by a Samian,

who had met with him in Chios, he was handsomely received, and

invited to join in celebrating the Apaturian festival. He recited

some verses, which gave great satisfaction, and by singing the

Eiresione at the New Moon festivals, he earned a subsistence,

visiting the houses of the rich, with whose children he was very

popular.

In the spring he sailed for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios,

now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his

death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an

enigma proposed by some fishermen's children.

Such is, in brief, the substance of the earliest life of Homer we

possess, and so broad are the evidences of its historical

worthlessness, that it is scarcely necessary to point them out in

detail. Let us now consider some of the opinions to which a

persevering, patient, and learned—but by no means consistent—series

of investigations has led. In doing so, I profess to bring forward

statements, not to vouch for their reasonableness or probability.

"Homer appeared. The history of this poet and his works is lost in

doubtful obscurity, as is the history of many of the first minds who

have done honour to humanity, because they rose amidst darkness. The

majestic stream of his song, blessing and fertilizing, flows like the

Nile, through many lands and nations; and, like the sources of the

Nile, its fountains will ever remain concealed."

Such are the words in which one of the most judicious German critics

has eloquently described the uncertainty in which the whole of the

Homeric question is involved. With no less truth and feeling he

proceeds:—

"It seems here of chief importance to expect no more than the nature

of things makes possible. If the period of tradition in history is

the region of twilight, we should not expect in it perfect light. The

creations of genius always seem like miracles, because they are, for

the most part, created far out of the reach of observation. If we

were in possession of all the historical testimonies, we never could

wholly explain the origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey; for their

origin, in all essential points, must have remained the secret of the

poet."

From this criticism, which shows as much insight into the depths of

human nature as into the minute wire-drawings of scholastic

investigation, let us pass on to the main question at issue. Was

Homer an individual? or were the Iliad and Odyssey the result of an

ingenious arrangement of fragments by earlier poets?

Well has Landor remarked: "Some tell us there were twenty Homers;

some deny that there was ever one. It were idle and foolish to shake

the contents of a vase, in order to let them settle at last. We are

perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our

devotion to superior power. Of all the animals on earth we least know

what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best for us is our

admiration of good. No man living venerates Homer more than I do."

But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests

contented with the poetry on which its best impulses had been

nurtured and fostered, without seeking to destroy the vividness of

first impressions by minute analysis, our editorial office compels us

to give some attention to the doubts and difficulties with which the

Homeric question is beset, and to entreat our reader, for a brief

period, to prefer his judgment to his imagination, and to condescend

to dry details. Before, however, entering into particulars respecting

the question of this unity of the Homeric poems, (at least of the

Iliad,) I must express my sympathy with the sentiments expressed in

the following remarks:—

"We cannot but think the universal admiration of its unity by the

better, the poetic age of Greece, almost conclusive testimony to its

original composition. It was not till the age of the grammarians that

its primitive integrity was called in question; nor is it injustice

to assert, that the minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is

not the best qualification for the profound feeling, the

comprehensive conception of an harmonious whole. The most exquisite

anatomist may be no judge of the symmetry of the human frame; and we

would take the opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on the proportions

and general beauty of a form, rather than that of Mr. Brodie or Sir

Astley Cooper.

There is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in the lines

of Pope:—

"'The critic eye—that microscope of wit—

Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;

How parts relate to parts, or they to whole.

The body's harmony, the beaming soul,

Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see,

When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.'"

Long was the time which elapsed before any one dreamt of questioning

the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. The grave and

cautious Thucydides quoted without hesitation the Hymn to Apollo, the

authenticity of which has been already disclaimed by modern critics.

Longinus, in an oft-quoted passage, merely expressed an opinion

touching the comparative inferiority of the Odyssey to the Iliad;

and, among a mass of ancient authors, whose very names it would be

tedious to detail, no suspicion of the personal non-existence of

Homer ever arose. So far, the voice of antiquity seems to be in

favour of our early ideas on the subject: let us now see what are the

discoveries to which more modern investigations lay claim.

At the end of the seventeenth century, doubts had begun to awaken on

the subject, and we find Bentley remarking that "Homer wrote a sequel

of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself, for small comings and

good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment. These loose

songs were not collected together, in the form of an epic poem, till

about Peisistratus' time, about five hundred years after."

Two French writers—Hedelin and Perrault—avowed a similar scepticism

on the subject; but it is in the "Scienza Nuova" of Battista Vico,

that we first meet with the germ of the theory, subsequently defended

by Wolf with so much learning and acuteness. Indeed, it is with the

Wolfian theory that we have chiefly to deal, and with the following

bold hypothesis, which we will detail in the words of Grote:—

"Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A.

Wolf, turning to account the Venetian Scholia, which had then been

recently published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the

history of the Homeric text. A considerable part of that dissertation

(though by no means the whole) is employed in vindicating the

position, previously announced by Bentley, amongst others, that the

separate constituent portions of the Iliad and Odyssey had not been

cemented together into any compact body and unchangeable order, until

the days of Peisistratus, in the sixth century before Christ. As a

step towards that conclusion, Wolf maintained that no written copies

of either poem could be shown to have existed during the earlier

times, to which their composition is referred; and that without

writing, neither the perfect symmetry of so complicated a work could

have been originally conceived by any poet, nor, if realized by him,

transmitted with assurance to posterity. The absence of easy and

convenient writing, such as must be indispensably supposed for long

manuscripts, among the early Greeks, was thus one of the points in

Wolf's case against the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey.

By Nitzsch, and other leading opponents of Wolf, the connection of

the one with the other seems to have been accepted as he originally

put it; and it has been considered incumbent on those who defended

the ancient aggregate character of the Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain

that they were written poems from the beginning.

"To me it appears, that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf

to Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric

poems, are nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained

towards that view of the question, if it could be shown, that, in

order to controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting

long written poems, in the ninth century before the Christian aera.

Few things, in my opinion, can be more improbable; and Mr. Payne

Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no

less than Wolf himself. The traces of writing in Greece, even in the

seventh century before the Christian aera, are exceedingly trifling.

We have no remaining inscription earlier than the fortieth Olympiad,

and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed; nor can

we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgus,

Kallinus Tyrtaeus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric

poets, committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the

practice of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground which

authorizes us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is

in the famous ordinance of Solon, with regard to the rhapsodies at

the Panathenaea: but for what length of time previously manuscripts

had existed, we are unable to say. "Those who maintain the Homeric

poems to have been written from the beginning, rest their case, not

upon positive proofs, nor yet upon the existing habits of society

with regard to poetry—for they admit generally that the Iliad and

Odyssey were not read, but recited and heard,—but upon the supposed

necessity that there must have been manuscripts to ensure the

preservation of the poems—the unassisted memory of reciters being

neither sufficient nor trustworthy. But here we only escape a smaller

difficulty by running into a greater; for the existence of trained

bards, gifted with extraordinary memory, is far less astonishing than

that of long manuscripts, in an age essentially non-reading and

non-writing, and when even suitable instruments and materials for the

process are not obvious. Moreover, there is a strong positive reason

for believing that the bard was under no necessity of refreshing his

memory by consulting a manuscript; for if such had been the fact,

blindness would have been a disqualification for the profession,

which we know that it was not, as well from the example of Demodokus,

in the Odyssey, as from that of the blind bard of Chios, in the Hymn

to the Delian Apollo, whom Thucydides, as well as the general tenor

of Grecian legend, identifies with Homer himself. The author of that

hymn, be he who he may, could never have described a blind man as

attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had been conscious

that the memory of the bard was onlv maintained by constant reference

to the manuscript in his chest."

The loss of the digamma, that crux of critics, that quicksand upon

which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove

beyond a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek language had

undergone a considerable change. Now it is certainly difficult to

suppose that the Homeric poems could have suffered by this change,

had written copies been preserved. If Chaucer's poetry, for instance,

had not been written, it could only have come down to us in a

softened form, more like the effeminate version of Dryden, than the

rough, quaint, noble original. "At what period," continues Grote,

"these poems, or indeed any other Greek poems, first began to be

written, must be matter of conjecture, though there is ground for

assurance that it was before the time of Solon. If, in the absence of

evidence, we may venture upon naming any more determinate period, the

question at once suggests itself, What were the purposes which, in

that state of society, a manuscript at its first commencement must

have been intended to answer? For whom was a written Iliad necessary?

Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was not only planted in the

memory, but also interwoven with the feelings, and conceived in

conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of voice, pauses,

and other oral artifices which were required for emphatic delivery,

and which the naked manuscript could never reproduce. Not for the

general public—they were accustomed to receive it with its rhapsodic

delivery, and with its accompaniments of a solemn and crowded

festival. The only persons for whom the written Iliad would be

suitable would be a select few; studious and curious men; a class of

readers capable of analyzing the complicated emotions which they had

experienced as hearers in the crowd, and who would, on perusing the

written words, realize in their imaginations a sensible portion of

the impression communicated by the reciter. Incredible as the

statement may seem in an age like the present, there is in all early

societies, and there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading

class existed. If we could discover at what time such a class first

began to be formed, we should be able to make a guess at the time

when the old epic poems were first committed to writing. Now the

period which may with the greatest probability be fixed upon as

having first witnessed the formation even of the narrowest reading

class in Greece, is the middle of the seventh century before the

Christian aera (B.C. 660 to B.C. 630), the age of Terpander,

Kallinus, Archilochus, Simenides of AmorgUs, &c. I ground this

supposition on the change then operated in the character and

tendencies of Grecian poetry and music—the elegiac and the iambic

measures having been introduced as rivals to the primitive hexameter,

and poetical compositions having been transferred from the epical

past to the affairs of present and real life. Such a change was

important at a time when poetry was the only known mode of

publication (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the

nearest approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of looking at

the old epical treasures of the people, as well as a thirst for new

poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it may well be

considered as desirous to study, and competent to criticize, from

their own individual point of view, the written words of the Homeric

rhapsodies, just as we are told that Kallinus both noticed and

eulogized the Thebais as the production of Homer. There seems,

therefore, ground for conjecturing that (for the use of this

newly-formed and important, but very narrow class), manuscripis of

the Homeric poems and other old epics,—the Thebaïs and the Cypria,

as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey,—began to be compiled towards

the middle of the seventh century B.C. I; and the opening of Egypt to

Grecian commerce, which took place about the same period, would

furnish increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to

write upon. A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly

increase, and the number of manuscripts along with it: so that before

the time of Solôn, fifty years afterwards, both readers and

manuscripts, though still comparatively few, might have attained a

certain recognized authority, and formed a tribunal of reference

against the carelessness of individual rhapsodies."

But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in possession

of the credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of the following

observations:—

"There are several incidental circumstances which, in our opinion,

throw some suspicion over the whole history of the Peisistratid

compilation, at least over the theory that the Iliad was cast into

its present stately and harmonious form by the directions of the

Athenian ruler. If the great poets, who flourished at the bright

period of Grecian song, of which, alas! we have inherited little more

than the fame, and the faint echo; if Stesichorus, Anacreon, and

Simonides were employed in the noble task of compiling the Iliad and

Odyssey, so much must have been done to arrange, to connect, to

harmonize, that it is almost incredible that stronger marks of

Athenian manufacture should not remain. Whatever occasional anomalies

may be detected, anomalies which no doubt arise out of our own

ignorance of the language of the Homeric age; however the irregular

use of the digamma may have perplexed our Bentleys, to whom the name

of Helen is said to have caused as much disquiet and distress as the

fair one herself among the heroes of her age; however Mr. Knight may

have failed in reducing the Homeric language to its primitive form;

however, finally, the Attic dialect may not have assumed all its more

marked and distinguishing characteristics:—still it is difficult to

suppose that the language, particularly in the joinings and

transitions, and connecting parts, should not more clearly betray the

incongruity between the more ancient and modern forms of expression.

It is not quite in character with such a period to imitate an antique

style, in order to piece out an imperfect poem in the character of

the original, as Sir Walter Scott has done in his continuation of Sir

Tristram.

"If, however, not even such faint and indistinct traces of Athenian

compilation are discoverable in the language of the poems, the total

absence of Athenian national feeling is perhaps no less worthy of

observation. In later, and it may fairly be suspected in earlier

times, the Athenians were more than ordinarily jealous of the fame of

their ancestors. But, amid all the traditions of the glories of early

Greece embodied in the Iliad, the Athenians play a most subordinate

and insignificant part. Even the few passages which relate to their

ancestors, Mr. Knight suspects to be interpolations. It is possible,

indeed, that in its leading outline, the Iliad may be true to

historic fact; that in the great maritime expedition of western

Greece against the rival and half-kindred empire of the

Laomedontiadae, the chieftain of Thessaly, from his valour and the

number of his forces, may have been the most important ally of the

Peloponnesian sovereign: the pre-eminent value of the ancient poetry

on the Trojan war may thus have forced the national feeling of the

Athenians to yield to their taste. The songs which spoke of their own

great ancestor were, no doubt, of far inferior sublimity and

popularity, or, at first sight, a Theseid would have been much more

likely to have emanated from an Athenian synod of compilers of

ancient song, than an Achilleid or an Odysseid. Could France have

given birth to a Tasso, Tancred would have been the hero of the

Jerusalem. If, however, the Homeric ballads, as they are sometimes

called, which related the wrath of Achilles, with all its direful

consequences, were so far superior to the rest of the poetic cycle,

as to admit no rivalry,—it is still surprising, that throughout the

whole poem the callida junctura should never betray the workmanship

of an Athenian hand; and that the national spirit of a race, who have

at a later period not inaptly been compared to our self-admiring

neighbours, the French, should submit with lofty self-denial to the

almost total exclusion of their own ancestors—or, at least, to the

questionable dignity of only having produced a leader tolerably

skilled in the military tactics of his age."

To return to the Wolfian theory. While it is to be confessed, that

Wolf's objections to the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey

have never been wholly got over, we cannot help discovering that they

have failed to enlighten us as to any substantial point, and that the

difficulties with which the whole subject is beset, are rather

augmented than otherwise, if we admit his hypothesis. Nor is

Lachmann's modification of his theory any better. He divides the

first twenty-two books of the Iliad into sixteen different songs, and

treats as ridiculous the belief that their amalgamation into one

regular poem belongs to a period earlier than the age of

Peisistratus. This as Grote observes, "ex-plains the gaps and

contradictions in the narrative, but it explains nothing else."

Moreover, we find no contradictions warranting this belief, and the

so-called sixteen poets concur in getting rid of the following

leading men in the first battle after the secession of Achilles:

Elphenor, chief of the Euboeans; Tlepolemus, of the Rhodians;

Pandarus, of the Lycians; Odins, of the Halizonians: Pirous and

Acamas, of the Thracians. None of these heroes again make their

appearance, and we can but agree with Colonel Mure, that "it seems

strange that any number of independent poets should have so

harmoniously dispensed with the services of all six in the sequel."

The discrepancy, by which Pylaemenes, who is represented as dead in

the fifth book, weeps at his son's funeral in the thirteenth, can

only be regarded as the result of an interpolation.

Grote, although not very distinct in stating his own opinions on the

subject, has done much to clearly show the incongruity of the Wolfian

theory, and of Lachmann's modifications, with the character of

Peisistratus. But he has also shown, and we think with equal success,

that the two questions relative to the primitive unity of these

poems, or, supposing that impossible, the unison of these parts by

Peisistratus, and not before his time, are essentially distinct. In

short, "a man may believe the Iliad to have been put together out of

pre-existing songs, without recognising the age of Peisistratus as

the period of its first compilation." The friends or literary

/employes/ of Peisistratus must have found an Iliad that was already

ancient, and the silence of the Alexandrine critics respecting the

Peisistratic "recension," goes far to prove, that, among the numerous

manuscripts they examined, this was either wanting, or thought

unworthy of attention.

"Moreover," he continues, "the whole tenor of the poems themselves

confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing, either in the Iliad

or Odyssey, which savours of modernism, applying that term to the age

of Peisistratus—nothing which brings to our view the alterations

brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined

money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and

republican governments, the close military array, the improved

construction of ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual

frequentation of religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins

of religion, &c., familiar to the latter epoch. These alterations

Onomakritus, and the other literary friends of Peisistratus, could

hardly have failed to notice, even without design, had they then, for

the first time, undertaken the task of piecing together many

self-existent epics into one large aggregate. Everything in the two

great Homeric poems, both in substance and in language, belongs to an

age two or three centuries earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even

the interpolations (or those passages which, on the best grounds, are

pronounced to be such) betray no trace of the sixth century before

Christ, and may well have been heard by Archilochus and Kallinus—in

some cases even by Arktinus and Hesiod—as genuine Homeric matter. As

far as the evidences on the case, as well internal as external,

enable us to judge, we seem warranted in believing that the Iliad and

Odyssey were recited substantially as they now stand (always allowing

for partial divergences of text and interpolations) in 776 B.C., our

first trustworthy mark of Grecian time; and this ancient date, let it

be added, as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the

most important attribute of the Homeric poems, considered in

reference to Grecian history; for they thus afford us an insight into

the anti-historical character of the Greeks, enabling us to trace the

subsequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive

contrasts between their former and their later condition."

On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the labours of

Peisistratus were wholly of an editorial character, although I must

confess that I can lay down nothing respecting the extent of his

labours. At the same time, so far from believing that the composition

or primary arrangement of these poems, in their present form, was the

work of Peisistratus, I am rather persuaded that the fine taste and

elegant, mind of that Athenian would lead him to preserve an ancient

and traditional order of the poems, rather than to patch and

reconstruct them according to a fanciful hypothesis. I will not

repeat the many discussions respecting whether the poems were written

or not, or whether the art of writing was known in the time of their

reputed author. Suffice it to say, that the more we read, the less

satisfied we are upon either subject.

I cannot, however, help thinking, that the story which attributes the

preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than a

version of the same story as that of Peisistratus, while its

historical probability must be measured by that of many others

relating to the Spartan Confucius.

I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories with an attempt,

made by an ingenious friend, to unite them into something like

consistency. It is as follows:—

"No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common

sailors of some fifty years ago, some one qualified to 'discourse in

excellent music' among them. Many of these, like those of the negroes

in the United States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to events

passing around them. But what was passing around them? The grand

events of a spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress

themselves, as the mystical legends of former times had done, upon

their memory; besides which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue

of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly in those ancient

times. Ballads at first, and down to the beginning of the war with

Troy, were merely recitations, with an intonation. Then followed a

species of recitative, probably with an intoned burden. Tune next

followed, as it aided the memory considerably.

"It was at this period, about four hundred years after the war, that

a poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or Moeonides, but most

probably the former. He saw that these ballads might be made of great

utility to his purpose of writing a poem on the social position of

Hellas, and, as a collection, he published these lays connecting them

by a tale of his own. This poem now exists, under the title of the

'Odyssea.' The author, however, did not affix his own name to the

poem, which, in fact, was, great part of it, remodelled from the

archaic dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads were found by

him. He therefore called it the poem of Homeros, or the Collector;

but this is rather a proof of his modesty and talent, than of his

mere drudging arrangement of other people's ideas; for, as Grote has

finely observed, arguing for the unity of authorship, 'a great poet

might have re-cast pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive

whole; but no mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do

so.'

"While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a ballad,

recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon. His noble mind

seized the hint that there presented itself, and the Achilleis grew

under his hand. Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the

poem under the same pseudonyme as his former work; and the disjointed

lays of the ancient bards were joined together, like those relating

to the Cid, into a chronicle history, named the Iliad. Melesigenes

knew that the poem was destined to be a lasting one, and so it has

proved; but, first, the poems were destined to undergo many

vicissitudes and corruptions, by the people who took to singing them

in the streets, assemblies, and agoras. However, Solon first, and

then Peisistratus, and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the

poems, and restored the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their

original integrity in a great measure."

Having thus given some general notion of the strange theories which

have developed themselves respecting this most interesting subject, I

must still express my conviction as to the unity of the authorship of

the Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions and interpolations

disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may

here and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the

negligence of the copyist, would be an absurd and captious

assumption; but it is to a higher criticism that we must appeal, if

we would either understand or enjoy these poems. In maintaining the

authenticity and personality of their one author, be he Homer or

Melesigenes, /quocunque nomine vocari eum jus fasque sit/, I feel

conscious that, while the whole weight of historical evidence is

against the hypothesis which would assign these great works to a

plurality of authors, the most powerful internal evidence, and that

which springs from the deepest and most immediate impulse of the

soul, also speaks eloquently to the contrary.

The minutiae of verbal criticism I am far from seeking to despise.

Indeed, considering the character of some of my own books, such an

attempt would be gross inconsistency. But, while I appreciate its

importance in a philological view, I am inclined to set little store

on its aesthetic value, especially in poetry. Three parts of the

emendations made upon poets are mere alterations, some of which, had

they been suggested to the author by his Maecenas or Africanus, he

would probably have adopted. Moreover, those who are most exact in

laying down rules of verbal criticism and interpretation, are often

least competent to carry out their own precepts. Grammarians are not

poets by profession, but may be so per accidens. I do not at this

moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated to substantially

improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass of remarks, from

Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the history of a thousand

minute points, without which our Greek knowledge would be gloomy and

jejune.

But it is not on words only that grammarians, mere grammarians, will

exercise their elaborate and often tiresome ingenuity. Binding down

an heroic or dramatic poet to the block upon which they have

previously dissected his words and sentences, they proceed to use the

axe and the pruning knife by wholesale; and, inconsistent in

everything but their wish to make out a case of unlawful affiliation,

they cut out book after book, passage after passage, till the author

is reduced to a collection of fragments, or till those who fancied

they possessed the works of some great man, find that they have been

put off with a vile counterfeit got up at second hand. If we compare

the theories of Knight, Wolf, Lachmann; and others, we shall feel

better satisfied of the utter uncertainty of criticism than of the

apocryphal position of Homer. One rejects what another considers the

turning-point of his theory. One cuts a supposed knot by expunging

what another would explain by omitting something else.

Nor is this morbid species of sagacity by any means to be looked upon

as a literary novelty. Justus Lipsius, a scholar of no ordinary

skill, seems to revel in the imaginary discovery, that the tragedies

attributed to Seneca are by four different authors. Now, I will

venture to assert, that these tragedies are so uniform, not only in

their borrowed phraseology—a phraseology with which writers like

Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were more charmed than ourselves—in

their freedom from real poetry, and last, but not least, in an

ultra-refined and consistent abandonment of good taste, that few

writers of the present day would question the capabilities of the

same gentleman, be he Seneca or not, to produce not only these, but a

great many more equally bad. With equal sagacity, Father Hardouin

astonished the world with the startling announcement that the AEneid

of Virgil, and the satires of Horace, were literary deceptions. Now,

without wishing to say one word of disrespect against the industry

and learning—nay, the refined acuteness—which scholars like Wolf

have bestowed upon this subject, I must express my fears, that many

of our modern Homeric theories will become matter for the surprise

and entertainment, rather than the instruction, of posterity. Nor can

I help thinking that the literary history of more recent times will

account for many points of difficulty in the transmission of the

Iliad and Odyssey to a period so remote from that of their first

creation.

I have already expressed my belief that the labours of Peisistratus

were of a purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason

why corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad

in his day, than that the poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus

should have given so much trouble to Poggio, Scaliger, and others.

But, after all, the main fault in all the Homeric theories is, that

they demand too great a sacrifice of those feelings to which poetry

most powerfully appeals, and which are its most fitting judges. The

ingenuity which has sought to rob us of the name and existence of

Homer, does too much violence to that inward emotion, which makes our

whole soul yearn with love and admiration for the blind bard of

Chios. To believe the author of the Iliad a mere compiler, is to

degrade the powers of human invention; to elevate analytical judgment

at the expense of the most ennobling impulses of the soul; and to

forget the ocean in the of a polypus. There is a

catholicity, so to speak, in the very name of Homer. Our faith in the

author of the Iliad may be a mistaken one, but as yet nobody has

taught us a better.

While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that has

nature herself for its mainspring; while I can join with old Ennius

in believing in Homer as the ghost, who, like some patron saint,

hovers round the bed of the poet, and even bestows rare gifts from

that wealth of imagination which a host of imitators could not

exhaust,—still I am far from wishing to deny that the author of

these great poems found a rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked

mythical storehouse, from whence he might derive both subject and

embellishment. But it is one thing to use existing romances in the

embellishment of a poem, another to patch up the poem itself from

such materials. What consistency of style and execution can be hoped

for from such an attempt? or, rather, what bad taste and tedium will

not be the infallible result?

A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other

bards, are features perfectly consistent with poetical originality.

In fact, the most original writer is still drawing upon outward

impressions—nay, even his own thoughts are a kind of secondary

agents which support and feed the impulses of imagination. But unless

there be some grand pervading principle—some invisible, yet most

distinctly stamped archetypus of the great whole, a poem like the

Iliad can never come to the birth. Traditions the most picturesque,

episodes the most pathetic, local associations teeming with the</