BOOK XXIV.

CONCLUDING NOTE.

Illustrations

HOMER INVOKING THE MUSE

MARS

MINERVA REPRESSING THE FURY OF ACHILLES

THE DEPARTURE OF BRISEIS FROM THE TENT OF ACHILLES

THETIS CALLING BRIAREUS TO THE ASSISTANCE OF JUPITER

THETIS ENTREATING JUPITER TO HONOUR ACHILLES

VULCAN

JUPITER

THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER

JUPITER SENDING THE EVIL DREAM TO AGAMEMNON

NEPTUNE

VENUS, DISGUISED, INVITING HELEN TO THE CHAMBER OF PARIS

VENUS PRESENTING HELEN TO PARIS

VENUS

Map, titled “GRÆCIÆ ANTIQUÆ”

THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS

Map of the Plain of Troy

VENUS, WOUNDED IN THE HAND, CONDUCTED BY IRIS TO MARS

OTUS AND EPHIALTES HOLDING MARS CAPTIVE

DIOMED CASTING HIS SPEAR AT MARS

JUNO

HECTOR CHIDING PARIS

THE MEETING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE

BOWS AND BOW CASE

IRIS

HECTOR AND AJAX SEPARATED BY THE HERALDS

GREEK AMPHORA—WINE VESSELS

JUNO AND MINERVA GOING TO ASSIST THE GREEKS

THE HOURS TAKING THE HORSES FROM JUNO’S CAR

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

PLUTO

THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES

GREEK GALLEY

PROSERPINE

ACHILLES

DIOMED AND ULYSSES RETURNING WITH THE SPOILS OF RHESUS

THE DESCENT OF DISCORD

HERCULES

POLYDAMAS ADVISING HECTOR

GREEK ALTAR

NEPTUNE RISING FROM THE SEA

GREEK EARRINGS

SLEEP ESCAPING FROM THE WRATH OF JUPITER

GREEK SHIELD

BACCHUS

AJAX DEFENDING THE GREEK SHIPS

CASTOR AND POLLUX

Buckles

DIANA

SLEEP AND DEATH CONVEYING THE BODY OF SARPEDON TO LYCIA

ÆSCULAPIUS

FIGHT FOR THE BODY OF PATROCLUS

VULCAN FROM AN ANTIQUE GEM

THETIS ORDERING THE NEREIDS TO DESCEND INTO THE SEA

JUNO COMMANDING THE SUN TO SET

TRIPOD

THETIS AND EURYNOME RECEIVING THE INFANT VULCAN

VULCAN AND CHARIS RECEIVING THETIS

THETIS BRINGING THE ARMOUR TO ACHILLES

HERCULES

THE GODS DESCENDING TO BATTLE

CENTAUR

ACHILLES CONTENDING WITH THE RIVERS

THE BATH

ANDROMACHE FAINTING ON THE WALL

THE FUNERAL PILE OF PATROCLUS

CERES

HECTOR’S BODY AT THE CAR OF ACHILLES

THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS

IRIS ADVISES PRIAM TO OBTAIN THE BODY OF HECTOR

FUNERAL OF HECTOR

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 of 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 induction 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[1] 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 personæ_ 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 Cumæ in Æolia, 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

Critheïs. 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 Bœotia,

whither Critheïs 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 Critheïs 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.[2] 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 Colophomans make their

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

applied himself to the study of poetry.[3]

But poverty soon drove him to Cumæ. Having passed over the Hermæan

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

Here his misfortunes and poetical talent gained him the friendship of

one Tychias, an armourer. “And up to my time,” continued 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”.[4]

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.[5]

Arrived at Cumæ, he frequented the _converzationes_[6] 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 gloriously

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_.”[7] 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 Cumæa might never produce a poet

capable of giving it renown and glory.

At Phocœa, 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.”[8]

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

Phocœa, 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.[9]

“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[10] 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.[11]

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,[12] “the most curious remaining 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,[13] 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,[14] he

sent 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.[15]

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.”[16]

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?[17] 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.”[18]

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.’”[19]

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,[20]

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,[21] and, among a mass of ancient authors, whose very names[22]

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.”[23]

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:—[24]

“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 æra. 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 æra, 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, Simonidês of Amorgus, Kallinus,

Tyrtæus, 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 Solôn, with regard to the rhapsodies at the Panathenæa:

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,[25] 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 only 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

Solôn. 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 æra (B.C. 660 to B.C.

630), the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus, Simonidês 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 Thebaïs 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), manuscripts 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. 1); 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 rhapsodes.”[26]

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 Simonidês 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 Laomedontiadæ, 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

preeminent 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 Olysseid.

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.”[27]

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[28] 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, “explains 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 Eubœans;

Tlepolemus, of the Rhodians; Pandarus, of the Lycians; Odius, 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 Pylæmenes, 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 _employês_ 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.[29] 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.”[30]

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[31] would lead him to preserve an ancient

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

re-construct 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 Mœonides, 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 Achilleïs[32] 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, Solôn 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.”[33]

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 minutiæ 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 æsthetic 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 Mæcenas 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.[34] 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 Æneid 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

contemplation 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 thoughts of gods and

great men, may crowd in one mighty vision, or reveal themselves in more

substantial forms to the mind of the poet; but, except the power to

create a grand whole, to which these shall be but as details and

embellishments, be present, we shall have nought but a scrap-book, a

parterre filled with flowers and weeds strangling each other in their

wild redundancy: we shall have a cento of rags and tatters, which will

require little acuteness to detect.

Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware

as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief,

it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved

for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are not by nature

intended to know all things; still less, to compass the powers by which

the greatest blessings of life have been placed at our disposal. Were

faith no virtue, then we might indeed wonder why God willed our

ignorance on any matter. But we are too well taught the contrary

lesson; and it seems as though our faith should be especially tried

touching the men and the events which have wrought most influence upon

the condition of humanity. And there is a kind of sacredness attached

to the memory of the great and the good, which seems to bid us repulse

the scepticism which would allegorize their existence into a pleasing

apologue, and measure the giants of intellect by an homeopathic

dynameter.

Long and habitual reading of Homer appears to familiarize our thoughts

even to his incongruities; or rather, if we read in a right spirit and

with a heartfelt appreciation, we are too much dazzled, too deeply

wrapped in admiration of the whole, to dwell upon the minute spots

which mere analysis can discover. In reading an heroic poem we must

transform ourselves into heroes of the time being, we in imagination

must fight over the same battles, woo the same loves, burn with the

same sense of injury, as an Achilles or a Hector. And if we can but

attain this degree of enthusiasm (and less enthusiasm will scarcely

suffice for the reading of Homer), we shall feel that the poems of

Homer are not only the work of one writer, but of the greatest writer

that ever touched the hearts of men by the power of song.

And it was this supposed unity of authorship which gave these poems

their powerful influence over the minds of the men of old. Heeren, who

is evidently little disposed in favour of modern theories, finely

observes:—

“It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. No poet has

ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his countrymen.

Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character of other

nations; it was reserved to a poet to form that of the Greeks. This is

a feature in their character which was not wholly erased even in the

period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and sages appeared in

Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they

paid homage to his superior genius. He held up before his nation the

mirror, in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes no

less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity

and truth. His poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature;

on the love of children, wife, and country; on that passion which

outweighs all others, the love of glory. His songs were poured forth

from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of man; and

therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every breast which

cherishes the same sympathies. If it is granted to his immortal spirit,

from another heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down

on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia to the forests

of Hercynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic

wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him to view the vast

assemblage of grand, of elevated, of glorious productions, which had

been called into being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal

spirit may reside, this alone would suffice to complete his

happiness.”[35]

Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the “Apotheosis of

Homer”[36] is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing

association, how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to

our minds, is lost by the admittance of any theory but our old

tradition? The more we read, and the more we think—think as becomes the

readers of Homer,—the more rooted becomes the conviction that the

Father of Poetry gave us this rich inheritance, whole and entire.

Whatever were the means of its preservation, let us rather be thankful

for the treasury of taste and eloquence thus laid open to our use, than

seek to make it a mere centre around which to drive a series of

theories, whose wildness is only equalled by their inconsistency with

each other.

As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not

included in Pope’s translation, I will content myself with a brief

account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer

who has done it full justice[37]:—

“This poem,” says Coleridge, “is a short mock-heroic of ancient date.

The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and

corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to have been a juvenile

essay of Homer’s genius; others have attributed it to the same Pigrees,

mentioned above, and whose reputation for humour seems to have invited

the appropriation of any piece of ancient wit, the author of which was

uncertain; so little did the Greeks, before the age of the Ptolemies,

know or care about that department of criticism employed in determining

the genuineness of ancient writings. As to this little poem being a

youthful profusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the

beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the

general spirit, but of the numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and

even, if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the

objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque

to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse

that order in the development of national taste, which the history of

every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost

ascertained to be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society

much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that

any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is

contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three

other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as

much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of

them were of the Homeric age. Knight infers from the usage of the word

deltos, “writing tablet,” instead of διφθέρα, “skin,” which, according

to Herod. 5, 58, was the material employed by the Asiatic Greeks for

that purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic ingenuity;

and generally that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a

strong argument against so ancient a date for its composition.”

Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope’s

design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation,

and on my own purpose in the present edition.

Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been irregular, and his

earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of Ogilby.

It is not too much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a

disposition to be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive

deeply into the minute and delicate features of language. Hence his

whole work is to be looked upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a

translation. There are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes,

which prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical

attainments were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it

is probable that these examinations were the result rather of the

contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make a

perfect transcript of the original. And in those days, what is called

literal translation was less cultivated than at present. If something

like the general sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of

a practised poet; if the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing

fluency could be made consistent with a fair interpretation of the

poet’s meaning, his _words_ were less jealously sought for, and those

who could read so good a poem as Pope’s Iliad had fair reason to be

satisfied.

It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope’s translation by our own

advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be content to look at

it as a most delightful work in itself,—a work which is as much a part

of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not be torn

from our kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most

cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because

Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to

ἀμφικύπελλον being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from

us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman’s

fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from us to hold up his

translation as what a translation of Homer _might_ be. But we can still

dismiss Pope’s Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the

consciousness that they must have read a very great number of books

before they have read its fellow.

As to the Notes accompanying the present volume, they are drawn up

without pretension, and mainly with the view of helping the general

reader. Having some little time since translated all the works of Homer

for another publisher, I might have brought a large amount of

accumulated matter, sometimes of a critical character, to bear upon the

text. But Pope’s version was no field for such a display; and my

purpose was to touch briefly on antiquarian or mythological allusions,

to notice occasionally _some_ departures from the original, and to give

a few parallel passages from our English Homer, Milton. In the latter

task I cannot pretend to novelty, but I trust that my other

annotations, while utterly disclaiming high scholastic views, will be

found to convey as much as is wanted; at least, as far as the necessary

limits of these volumes could be expected to admit. To write a

commentary on Homer is not my present aim; but if I have made Pope’s

translation a little more entertaining and instructive to a mass of

miscellaneous readers, I shall consider my wishes satisfactorily

accomplished.

THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.

_Christ Church_.

POPE’S PREFACE TO THE ILIAD OF HOMER

Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any

writer whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested

with him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular

excellences; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a

wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most

excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. It is the

invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great geniuses:

the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which

masters everything besides, can never attain to this. It furnishes art

with all her materials, and without it judgment itself can at best but

“steal wisely:” for art is only like a prudent steward that lives on

managing the riches of nature. Whatever praises may be given to works

of judgment, there is not even a single beauty in them to which the

invention must not contribute: as in the most regular gardens, art can

only reduce beauties of nature to more regularity, and such a figure,

which the common eye may better take in, and is, therefore, more

entertained with. And, perhaps, the reason why common critics are

inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great and

fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to pursue

their observations through a uniform and bounded walk of art, than to

comprehend the vast and various extent of nature.

Our author’s work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see all the

beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the

number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery,

which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of

which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants,

each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things

are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if

others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because

they are overrun and oppressed by those of a stronger nature.

It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribute

that unequalled fire and rapture which is so forcible in Homer, that no

man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him.

What he writes is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing

moves, every thing lives, and is put in action. If a council be called,

or a battle fought, you are not coldly informed of what was said or

done as from a third person; the reader is hurried out of himself by

the force of the poet’s imagination, and turns in one place to a

hearer, in another to a spectator. The course of his verses resembles

that of the army he describes,

Οἵδ’ ἄῤ ἴσαν, ὡσεί τε πυρὶ χθὼν πἆσα νέμοιτο.

“They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth before it.” It

is, however, remarkable, that his fancy, which is everywhere vigorous,

is not discovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its

fullest splendour: it grows in the progress both upon himself and

others, and becomes on fire, like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity.

Exact disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers,

may have been found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this “vivida

vis animi,” in a very few. Even in works where all those are imperfect

or neglected, this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even

while we disapprove. Nay, where this appears, though attended with

absurdities, it brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing

but its own splendour. This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned

as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but

everywhere equal and constant: in Lucan and Statius it bursts out in

sudden, short, and interrupted flashes: In Milton it glows like a

furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: in

Shakspeare it strikes before we are aware, like an accidental fire from

heaven: but in Homer, and in him only, it burns everywhere clearly and

everywhere irresistibly.

I shall here endeavour to show how this vast invention exerts itself in

a manner superior to that of any poet through all the main constituent

parts of his work: as it is the great and peculiar characteristic which

distinguishes him from all other authors.

This strong and ruling faculty was like a powerful star, which, in the

violence of its course, drew all things within its vortex. It seemed

not enough to have taken in the whole circle of arts, and the whole

compass of nature, to supply his maxims and reflections; all the inward

passions and affections of mankind, to furnish his characters: and all

the outward forms and images of things for his descriptions: but

wanting yet an ampler sphere to expatiate in, he opened a new and

boundless walk for his imagination, and created a world for himself in

the invention of fable. That which Aristotle calls “the soul of

poetry,” was first breathed into it by Homer. I shall begin with

considering him in his part, as it is naturally the first; and I speak

of it both as it means the design of a poem, and as it is taken for

fiction.

Fable may be divided into the probable, the allegorical, and the

marvellous. The probable fable is the recital of such actions as,

though they did not happen, yet might, in the common course of nature;

or of such as, though they did, became fables by the additional

episodes and manner of telling them. Of this sort is the main story of

an epic poem, “The return of Ulysses, the settlement of the Trojans in

Italy,” or the like. That of the Iliad is the “anger of Achilles,” the

most short and single subject that ever was chosen by any poet. Yet

this he has supplied with a vaster variety of incidents and events, and

crowded with a greater number of councils, speeches, battles, and

episodes of all kinds, than are to be found even in those poems whose

schemes are of the utmost latitude and irregularity. The action is

hurried on with the most vehement spirit, and its whole duration

employs not so much as fifty days. Virgil, for want of so warm a

genius, aided himself by taking in a more extensive subject, as well as

a greater length of time, and contracting the design of both Homer’s

poems into one, which is yet but a fourth part as large as his. The

other epic poets have used the same practice, but generally carried it

so far as to superinduce a multiplicity of fables, destroy the unity of

action, and lose their readers in an unreasonable length of time. Nor

is it only in the main design that they have been unable to add to his

invention, but they have followed him in every episode and part of

story. If he has given a regular catalogue of an army, they all draw up

their forces in the same order. If he has funeral games for Patroclus,

Virgil has the same for Anchises, and Statius (rather than omit them)

destroys the unity of his actions for those of Archemorus. If Ulysses

visit the shades, the Æneas of Virgil and Scipio of Silius are sent

after him. If he be detained from his return by the allurements of

Calypso, so is Æneas by Dido, and Rinaldo by Armida. If Achilles be

absent from the army on the score of a quarrel through half the poem,

Rinaldo must absent himself just as long on the like account. If he

gives his hero a suit of celestial armour, Virgil and Tasso make the

same present to theirs. Virgil has not only observed this close

imitation of Homer, but, where he had not led the way, supplied the

want from other Greek authors. Thus the story of Sinon, and the taking

of Troy, was copied (says Macrobius) almost word for word from

Pisander, as the loves of Dido and Æneas are taken from those of Medea

and Jason in Apollonius, and several others in the same manner.

To proceed to the allegorical fable—If we reflect upon those

innumerable knowledges, those secrets of nature and physical philosophy

which Homer is generally supposed to have wrapped up in his allegories,

what a new and ample scene of wonder may this consideration afford us!

How fertile will that imagination appear, which was able to clothe all

the properties of elements, the qualifications of the mind, the virtues

and vices, in forms and persons, and to introduce them into actions

agreeable to the nature of the things they shadowed! This is a field in

which no succeeding poets could dispute with Homer, and whatever

commendations have been allowed them on this head, are by no means for

their invention in having enlarged his circle, but for their judgment

in having contracted it. For when the mode of learning changed in the

following ages, and science was delivered in a plainer manner, it then

became as reasonable in the more modern poets to lay it aside, as it

was in Homer to make use of it. And perhaps it was no unhappy

circumstance for Virgil, that there was not in his time that demand

upon him of so great an invention as might be capable of furnishing all

those allegorical parts of a poem.

The marvellous fable includes whatever is supernatural, and especially

the machines of the gods. If Homer was not the first who introduced the

deities (as Herodotus imagines) into the religion of Greece, he seems

the first who brought them into a system of machinery for poetry, and

such a one as makes its greatest importance and dignity: for we find

those authors who have been offended at the literal notion of the gods,

constantly laying their accusation against Homer as the chief support

of it. But whatever cause there might be to blame his machines in a

philosophical or religious view, they are so perfect in the poetic,

that mankind have been ever since contented to follow them: none have

been able to enlarge the sphere of poetry beyond the limits he has set:

every attempt of this nature has proved unsuccessful; and after all the

various changes of times and religions, his gods continue to this day

the gods of poetry.

We come now to the characters of his persons; and here we shall find no

author has ever drawn so many, with so visible and surprising a

variety, or given us such lively and affecting impressions of them.

Every one has something so singularly his own, that no painter could

have distinguished them more by their features, than the poet has by

their manners. Nothing can be more exact than the distinctions he has

observed in the different degrees of virtues and vices. The single

quality of courage is wonderfully diversified in the several characters

of the Iliad. That of Achilles is furious and intractable; that of

Diomede forward, yet listening to advice, and subject to command; that

of Ajax is heavy and self-confiding; of Hector, active and vigilant:

the courage of Agamemnon is inspirited by love of empire and ambition;

that of Menelaus mixed with softness and tenderness for his people: we

find in Idomeneus a plain direct soldier; in Sarpedon a gallant and

generous one. Nor is this judicious and astonishing diversity to be

found only in the principal quality which constitutes the main of each

character, but even in the under parts of it, to which he takes care to

give a tincture of that principal one. For example: the main characters

of Ulysses and Nestor consist in wisdom; and they are distinct in this,

that the wisdom of one is artificial and various, of the other natural,

open, and regular. But they have, besides, characters of courage; and

this quality also takes a different turn in each from the difference of

his prudence; for one in the war depends still upon caution, the other

upon experience. It would be endless to produce instances of these

kinds. The characters of Virgil are far from striking us in this open

manner; they lie, in a great degree, hidden and undistinguished; and,

where they are marked most evidently affect us not in proportion to

those of Homer. His characters of valour are much alike; even that of

Turnus seems no way peculiar, but, as it is, in a superior degree; and

we see nothing that differences the courage of Mnestheus from that of

Sergestus, Cloanthus, or the rest. In like manner it may be remarked of

Statius’s heroes, that an air of impetuosity runs through them all; the

same horrid and savage courage appears in his Capaneus, Tydeus,

Hippomedon, &c. They have a parity of character, which makes them seem

brothers of one family. I believe when the reader is led into this

tract of reflection, if he will pursue it through the epic and tragic

writers, he will be convinced how infinitely superior, in this point,

the invention of Homer was to that of all others.

The speeches are to be considered as they flow from the characters;

being perfect or defective as they agree or disagree with the manners,

of those who utter them. As there is more variety of characters in the

Iliad, so there is of speeches, than in any other poem. “Everything in

it has manner” (as Aristotle expresses it), that is, everything is

acted or spoken. It is hardly credible, in a work of such length, how

small a number of lines are employed in narration. In Virgil the

dramatic part is less in proportion to the narrative, and the speeches

often consist of general reflections or thoughts, which might be

equally just in any person’s mouth upon the same occasion. As many of

his persons have no apparent characters, so many of his speeches escape

being applied and judged by the rule of propriety. We oftener think of

the author himself when we read Virgil, than when we are engaged in

Homer, all which are the effects of a colder invention, that interests

us less in the action described. Homer makes us hearers, and Virgil

leaves us readers.

If, in the next place, we take a view of the sentiments, the same

presiding faculty is eminent in the sublimity and spirit of his

thoughts. Longinus has given his opinion, that it was in this part

Homer principally excelled. What were alone sufficient to prove the

grandeur and excellence of his sentiments in general, is, that they

have so remarkable a parity with those of the Scripture. Duport, in his

Gnomologia Homerica, has collected innumerable instances of this sort.

And it is with justice an excellent modern writer allows, that if

Virgil has not so many thoughts that are low and vulgar, he has not so

many that are sublime and noble; and that the Roman author seldom rises

into very astonishing sentiments where he is not fired by the Iliad.

If we observe his descriptions, images, and similes, we shall find the

invention still predominant. To what else can we ascribe that vast

comprehension of images of every sort, where we see each circumstance

of art, and individual of nature, summoned together by the extent and

fecundity of his imagination to which all things, in their various

views presented themselves in an instant, and had their impressions

taken off to perfection at a heat? Nay, he not only gives us the full

prospects of things, but several unexpected peculiarities and side

views, unobserved by any painter but Homer. Nothing is so surprising as

the descriptions of his battles, which take up no less than half the

Iliad, and are supplied with so vast a variety of incidents, that no

one bears a likeness to another; such different kinds of deaths, that

no two heroes are wounded in the same manner, and such a profusion of

noble ideas, that every battle rises above the last in greatness,

horror, and confusion. It is certain there is not near that number of

images and descriptions in any epic poet, though every one has assisted

himself with a great quantity out of him; and it is evident of Virgil

especially, that he has scarce any comparisons which are not drawn from

his master.

If we descend from hence to the expression, we see the bright

imagination of Homer shining out in the most enlivened forms of it. We

acknowledge him the father of poetical diction; the first who taught

that “language of the gods” to men. His expression is like the

colouring of some great masters, which discovers itself to be laid on

boldly, and executed with rapidity. It is, indeed, the strongest and

most glowing imaginable, and touched with the greatest spirit.

Aristotle had reason to say, he was the only poet who had found out

“living words;” there are in him more daring figures and metaphors than

in any good author whatever. An arrow is “impatient” to be on the wing,

a weapon “thirsts” to drink the blood of an enemy, and the like, yet

his expression is never too big for the sense, but justly great in

proportion to it. It is the sentiment that swells and fills out the

diction, which rises with it, and forms itself about it, for in the

same degree that a thought is warmer, an expression will be brighter,

as that is more strong, this will become more perspicuous; like glass

in the furnace, which grows to a greater magnitude, and refines to a

greater clearness, only as the breath within is more powerful, and the

heat more intense.

To throw his language more out of prose, Homer seems to have affected

the compound epithets. This was a sort of composition peculiarly proper

to poetry, not only as it heightened the diction, but as it assisted

and filled the numbers with greater sound and pomp, and likewise

conduced in some measure to thicken the images. On this last

consideration I cannot but attribute these also to the fruitfulness of

his invention, since (as he has managed them) they are a sort of

supernumerary pictures of the persons or things to which they were

joined. We see the motion of Hector’s plumes in the epithet

Κορυθαίολος, the landscape of Mount Neritus in that of Εἰνοσίφυλλος,

and so of others, which particular images could not have been insisted

upon so long as to express them in a description (though but of a

single line) without diverting the reader too much from the principal

action or figure. As a metaphor is a short simile, one of these

epithets is a short description.

Lastly, if we consider his versification, we shall be sensible what a

share of praise is due to his invention in that also. He was not

satisfied with his language as he found it settled in any one part of

Greece, but searched through its different dialects with this

particular view, to beautify and perfect his numbers he considered

these as they had a greater mixture of vowels or consonants, and

accordingly employed them as the verse required either a greater

smoothness or strength. What he most affected was the Ionic, which has

a peculiar sweetness, from its never using contractions, and from its

custom of resolving the diphthongs into two syllables, so as to make

the words open themselves with a more spreading and sonorous fluency.

With this he mingled the Attic contractions, the broader Doric, and the

feebler Æolic, which often rejects its aspirate, or takes off its

accent, and completed this variety by altering some letters with the

licence of poetry. Thus his measures, instead of being fetters to his

sense, were always in readiness to run along with the warmth of his

rapture, and even to give a further representation of his notions, in

the correspondence of their sounds to what they signified. Out of all

these he has derived that harmony which makes us confess he had not

only the richest head, but the finest ear in the world. This is so

great a truth, that whoever will but consult the tune of his verses,

even without understanding them (with the same sort of diligence as we

daily see practised in the case of Italian operas), will find more

sweetness, variety, and majesty of sound, than in any other language of

poetry. The beauty of his numbers is allowed by the critics to be

copied but faintly by Virgil himself, though they are so just as to

ascribe it to the nature of the Latin tongue: indeed the Greek has some

advantages both from the natural sound of its words, and the turn and

cadence of its verse, which agree with the genius of no other language.

Virgil was very sensible of this, and used the utmost diligence in

working up a more intractable language to whatsoever graces it was

capable of, and, in particular, never failed to bring the sound of his

line to a beautiful agreement with its sense. If the Grecian poet has

not been so frequently celebrated on this account as the Roman, the

only reason is, that fewer critics have understood one language than

the other. Dionysius of Halicarnassus has pointed out many of our

author’s beauties in this kind, in his treatise of the Composition of

Words. It suffices at present to observe of his numbers, that they flow

with so much ease, as to make one imagine Homer had no other care than

to transcribe as fast as the Muses dictated, and, at the same time,

with so much force and inspiriting vigour, that they awaken and raise

us like the sound of a trumpet. They roll along as a plentiful river,

always in motion, and always full; while we are borne away by a tide of

verse, the most rapid, and yet the most smooth imaginable.

Thus on whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us

is his invention. It is that which forms the character of each part of

his work; and accordingly we find it to have made his fable more

extensive and copious than any other, his manners more lively and

strongly marked, his speeches more affecting and transported, his

sentiments more warm and sublime, his images and descriptions more full

and animated, his expression more raised and daring, and his numbers

more rapid and various. I hope, in what has been said of Virgil, with

regard to any of these heads, I have no way derogated from his

character. Nothing is more absurd or endless, than the common method of

comparing eminent writers by an opposition of particular passages in

them, and forming a judgment from thence of their merit upon the whole.

We ought to have a certain knowledge of the principal character and

distinguishing excellence of each: it is in that we are to consider

him, and in proportion to his degree in that we are to admire him. No

author or man ever excelled all the world in more than one faculty; and

as Homer has done this in invention, Virgil has in judgment. Not that

we are to think that Homer wanted judgment, because Virgil had it in a

more eminent degree; or that Virgil wanted invention, because Homer

possessed a larger share of it; each of these great authors had more of

both than perhaps any man besides, and are only said to have less in

comparison with one another. Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the

better artist. In one we most admire the man, in the other the work.

Homer hurries and transports us with a commanding impetuosity; Virgil

leads us with an attractive majesty; Homer scatters with a generous

profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence; Homer, like the

Nile, pours out his riches with a boundless overflow; Virgil, like a

river in its banks, with a gentle and constant stream. When we behold

their battles, methinks the two poets resemble the heroes they

celebrate. Homer, boundless and resistless as Achilles, bears all

before him, and shines more and more as the tumult increases; Virgil,

calmly daring, like Æneas, appears undisturbed in the midst of the

action; disposes all about him, and conquers with tranquillity. And

when we look upon their machines, Homer seems like his own Jupiter in

his terrors, shaking Olympus, scattering the lightnings, and firing the

heavens: Virgil, like the same power in his benevolence, counselling

with the gods, laying plans for empires, and regularly ordering his

whole creation.

But after all, it is with great parts, as with great virtues, they

naturally border on some imperfection; and it is often hard to

distinguish exactly where the virtue ends, or the fault begins. As

prudence may sometimes sink to suspicion, so may a great judgment

decline to coldness; and as magnanimity may run up to profusion or

extravagance, so may a great invention to redundancy or wildness. If we

look upon Homer in this view, we shall perceive the chief objections

against him to proceed from so noble a cause as the excess of this

faculty.

Among these we may reckon some of his marvellous fictions, upon which

so much criticism has been spent, as surpassing all the bounds of

probability. Perhaps it may be with great and superior souls, as with

gigantic bodies, which, exerting themselves with unusual strength,

exceed what is commonly thought the due proportion of parts, to become

miracles in the whole; and, like the old heroes of that make, commit

something near extravagance, amidst a series of glorious and inimitable

performances. Thus Homer has his “speaking horses;” and Virgil his

“myrtles distilling blood;” where the latter has not so much as

contrived the easy intervention of a deity to save the probability.

It is owing to the same vast invention, that his similes have been

thought too exuberant and full of circumstances. The force of this

faculty is seen in nothing more, than in its inability to confine

itself to that single circumstance upon which the comparison is

grounded: it runs out into embellishments of additional images, which,

however, are so managed as not to overpower the main one. His similes

are like pictures, where the principal figure has not only its

proportion given agreeable to the original, but is also set off with

occasional ornaments and prospects. The same will account for his

manner of heaping a number of comparisons together in one breath, when

his fancy suggested to him at once so many various and correspondent

images. The reader will easily extend this observation to more

objections of the same kind.

If there are others which seem rather to charge him with a defect or

narrowness of genius, than an excess of it, those seeming defects will

be found upon examination to proceed wholly from the nature of the

times he lived in. Such are his grosser representations of the gods;

and the vicious and imperfect manners of his heroes; but I must here

speak a word of the latter, as it is a point generally carried into

extremes, both by the censurers and defenders of Homer. It must be a

strange partiality to antiquity, to think with Madame Dacier,[38] “that

those times and manners are so much the more excellent, as they are

more contrary to ours.” Who can be so prejudiced in their favour as to

magnify the felicity of those ages, when a spirit of revenge and

cruelty, joined with the practice of rapine and robbery, reigned

through the world: when no mercy was shown but for the sake of lucre;

when the greatest princes were put to the sword, and their wives and

daughters made slaves and concubines? On the other side, I would not be

so delicate as those modern critics, who are shocked at the servile

offices and mean employments in which we sometimes see the heroes of

Homer engaged. There is a pleasure in taking a view of that simplicity,

in opposition to the luxury of succeeding ages: in beholding monarchs

without their guards; princes tending their flocks, and princesses

drawing water from the springs. When we read Homer, we ought to reflect

that we are reading the most ancient author in the heathen world; and

those who consider him in this light, will double their pleasure in the

perusal of him. Let them think they are growing acquainted with nations

and people that are now no more; that they are stepping almost three

thousand years back into the remotest antiquity, and entertaining

themselves with a clear and surprising vision of things nowhere else to

be found, the only true mirror of that ancient world. By this means

alone their greatest obstacles will vanish; and what usually creates

their dislike, will become a satisfaction.

This consideration may further serve to answer for the constant use of

the same epithets to his gods and heroes; such as the “far-darting

Phœbus,” the “blue-eyed Pallas,” the “swift-footed Achilles,” &c.,

which some have censured as impertinent, and tediously repeated. Those

of the gods depended upon the powers and offices then believed to

belong to them; and had contracted a weight and veneration from the

rites and solemn devotions in which they were used: they were a sort of

attributes with which it was a matter of religion to salute them on all

occasions, and which it was an irreverence to omit. As for the epithets

of great men, Mons. Boileau is of opinion, that they were in the nature

of surnames, and repeated as such; for the Greeks having no names

derived from their fathers, were obliged to add some other distinction

of each person; either naming his parents expressly, or his place of

birth, profession, or the like: as Alexander the son of Philip,

Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Diogenes the Cynic, &c. Homer, therefore,

complying with the custom of his country, used such distinctive

additions as better agreed with poetry. And, indeed, we have something

parallel to these in modern times, such as the names of Harold

Harefoot, Edmund Ironside, Edward Longshanks, Edward the Black Prince,

&c. If yet this be thought to account better for the propriety than for

the repetition, I shall add a further conjecture. Hesiod, dividing the

world into its different ages, has placed a fourth age, between the

brazen and the iron one, of “heroes distinct from other men; a divine

race who fought at Thebes and Troy, are called demi-gods, and live by

the care of Jupiter in the islands of the blessed.”[39] Now among the

divine honours which were paid them, they might have this also in

common with the gods, not to be mentioned without the solemnity of an

epithet, and such as might be acceptable to them by celebrating their

families, actions or qualities.

What other cavils have been raised against Homer, are such as hardly

deserve a reply, but will yet be taken notice of as they occur in the

course of the work. Many have been occasioned by an injudicious

endeavour to exalt Virgil; which is much the same, as if one should

think to raise the superstructure by undermining the foundation: one

would imagine, by the whole course of their parallels, that these

critics never so much as heard of Homer’s having written first; a

consideration which whoever compares these two poets ought to have

always in his eye. Some accuse him for the same things which they

overlook or praise in the other; as when they prefer the fable and

moral of the Æneis to those of the Iliad, for the same reasons which

might set the Odyssey above the Æneis; as that the hero is a wiser man,

and the action of the one more beneficial to his country than that of

the other; or else they blame him for not doing what he never designed;

as because Achilles is not as good and perfect a prince as Æneas, when

the very moral of his poem required a contrary character: it is thus

that Rapin judges in his comparison of Homer and Virgil. Others select

those particular passages of Homer which are not so laboured as some

that Virgil drew out of them: this is the whole management of Scaliger

in his Poetics. Others quarrel with what they take for low and mean

expressions, sometimes through a false delicacy and refinement, oftener

from an ignorance of the graces of the original, and then triumph in

the awkwardness of their own translations: this is the conduct of

Perrault in his Parallels. Lastly, there are others, who, pretending to

a fairer proceeding, distinguish between the personal merit of Homer,

and that of his work; but when they come to assign the causes of the

great reputation of the Iliad, they found it upon the ignorance of his

times, and the prejudice of those that followed; and in pursuance of

this principle, they make those accidents (such as the contention of

the cities, &c.) to be the causes of his fame, which were in reality

the consequences of his merit. The same might as well be said of

Virgil, or any great author whose general character will infallibly

raise many casual additions to their reputation. This is the method of

Mons. de la Mott; who yet confesses upon the whole that in whatever age

Homer had lived, he must have been the greatest poet of his nation, and

that he may be said in his sense to be the master even of those who

surpassed him.

In all these objections we see nothing that contradicts his title to

the honour of the chief invention: and as long as this (which is indeed

the characteristic of poetry itself) remains unequalled by his

followers, he still continues superior to them. A cooler judgment may

commit fewer faults, and be more approved in the eyes of one sort of

critics: but that warmth of fancy will carry the loudest and most

universal applauses which holds the heart of a reader under the

strongest enchantment. Homer not only appears the inventor of poetry,

but excels all the inventors of other arts, in this, that he has

swallowed up the honour of those who succeeded him. What he has done

admitted no increase, it only left room for contraction or regulation.

He showed all the stretch of fancy at once; and if he has failed in

some of his flights, it was but because he attempted everything. A work

of this kind seems like a mighty tree, which rises from the most

vigorous seed, is improved with industry, flourishes, and produces the

finest fruit: nature and art conspire to raise it; pleasure and profit

join to make it valuable: and they who find the justest faults, have

only said that a few branches which run luxuriant through a richness of

nature, might be lopped into form to give it a more regular appearance.

Having now spoken of the beauties and defects of the original, it

remains to treat of the translation, with the same view to the chief

characteristic. As far as that is seen in the main parts of the poem,

such as the fable, manners, and sentiments, no translator can prejudice

it but by wilful omissions or contractions. As it also breaks out in

every particular image, description, and simile, whoever lessens or too

much softens those, takes off from this chief character. It is the

first grand duty of an interpreter to give his author entire and

unmaimed; and for the rest, the diction and versification only are his

proper province, since these must be his own, but the others he is to

take as he finds them.

It should then be considered what methods may afford some equivalent in

our language for the graces of these in the Greek. It is certain no

literal translation can be just to an excellent original in a superior

language: but it is a great mistake to imagine (as many have done) that

a rash paraphrase can make amends for this general defect; which is no

less in danger to lose the spirit of an ancient, by deviating into the

modern manners of expression. If there be sometimes a darkness, there

is often a light in antiquity, which nothing better preserves than a

version almost literal. I know no liberties one ought to take, but

those which are necessary to transfusing the spirit of the original,

and supporting the poetical style of the translation: and I will

venture to say, there have not been more men misled in former times by

a servile, dull adherence to the letter, than have been deluded in ours

by a chimerical, insolent hope of raising and improving their author.

It is not to be doubted, that the fire of the poem is what a translator

should principally regard, as it is most likely to expire in his

managing: however, it is his safest way to be content with preserving

this to his utmost in the whole, without endeavouring to be more than

he finds his author is, in any particular place. It is a great secret

in writing, to know when to be plain, and when poetical and figurative;

and it is what Homer will teach us, if we will but follow modestly in

his footsteps. Where his diction is bold and lofty, let us raise ours

as high as we can; but where his is plain and humble, we ought not to

be deterred from imitating him by the fear of incurring the censure of

a mere English critic. Nothing that belongs to Homer seems to have been

more commonly mistaken than the just pitch of his style: some of his

translators having swelled into fustian in a proud confidence of the

sublime; others sunk into flatness, in a cold and timorous notion of

simplicity. Methinks I see these different followers of Homer, some

sweating and straining after him by violent leaps and bounds (the

certain signs of false mettle), others slowly and servilely creeping in

his train, while the poet himself is all the time proceeding with an

unaffected and equal majesty before them. However, of the two extremes

one could sooner pardon frenzy than frigidity; no author is to be

envied for such commendations, as he may gain by that character of

style, which his friends must agree together to call simplicity, and

the rest of the world will call dulness. There is a graceful and

dignified simplicity, as well as a bold and sordid one; which differ as

much from each other as the air of a plain man from that of a sloven:

it is one thing to be tricked up, and another not to be dressed at all.

Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.

This pure and noble simplicity is nowhere in such perfection as in the

Scripture and our author. One may affirm, with all respect to the

inspired writings, that the Divine Spirit made use of no other words

but what were intelligible and common to men at that time, and in that

part of the world; and, as Homer is the author nearest to those, his

style must of course bear a greater resemblance to the sacred books

than that of any other writer. This consideration (together with what

has been observed of the parity of some of his thoughts) may, methinks,

induce a translator, on the one hand, to give in to several of those

general phrases and manners of expression, which have attained a

veneration even in our language from being used in the Old Testament;

as, on the other, to avoid those which have been appropriated to the

Divinity, and in a manner consigned to mystery and religion.

For a further preservation of this air of simplicity, a particular care

should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and

proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. They have

something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned

gravity and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which

would be utterly lost by endeavouring to give them what we call a more

ingenious (that is, a more modern) turn in the paraphrase.

Perhaps the mixture of some Græcisms and old words after the manner of

Milton, if done without too much affectation, might not have an ill

effect in a version of this particular work, which most of any other

seems to require a venerable, antique cast. But certainly the use of

modern terms of war and government, such as “platoon, campaign, junto,”

or the like, (into which some of his translators have fallen) cannot be

allowable; those only excepted without which it is impossible to treat

the subjects in any living language.

There are two peculiarities in Homer’s diction, which are a sort of

marks or moles by which every common eye distinguishes him at first

sight; those who are not his greatest admirers look upon them as

defects, and those who are, seemed pleased with them as beauties. I

speak of his compound epithets, and of his repetitions. Many of the

former cannot be done literally into English without destroying the

purity of our language. I believe such should be retained as slide

easily of themselves into an English compound, without violence to the

ear or to the received rules of composition, as well as those which

have received a sanction from the authority of our best poets, and are

become familiar through their use of them; such as “the

cloud-compelling Jove,” &c. As for the rest, whenever any can be as

fully and significantly expressed in a single word as in a compounded

one, the course to be taken is obvious.

Some that cannot be so turned, as to preserve their full image by one

or two words, may have justice done them by circumlocution; as the

epithet εἰνοσίφυλλος to a mountain, would appear little or ridiculous

translated literally “leaf-shaking,” but affords a majestic idea in the

periphrasis: “the lofty mountain shakes his waving woods.” Others that

admit of different significations, may receive an advantage from a

judicious variation, according to the occasions on which they are

introduced. For example, the epithet of Apollo, ἑκηβόλος or

“far-shooting,” is capable of two explications; one literal, in respect

of the darts and bow, the ensigns of that god; the other allegorical,

with regard to the rays of the sun; therefore, in such places where

Apollo is represented as a god in person, I would use the former

interpretation; and where the effects of the sun are described, I would

make choice of the latter. Upon the whole, it will be necessary to

avoid that perpetual repetition of the same epithets which we find in

Homer, and which, though it might be accommodated (as has been already

shown) to the ear of those times, is by no means so to ours: but one

may wait for opportunities of placing them, where they derive an

additional beauty from the occasions on which they are employed; and in

doing this properly, a translator may at once show his fancy and his

judgment.

As for Homer’s repetitions, we may divide them into three sorts: of

whole narrations and speeches, of single sentences, and of one verse or

hemistitch. I hope it is not impossible to have such a regard to these,

as neither to lose so known a mark of the author on the one hand, nor

to offend the reader too much on the other. The repetition is not

ungraceful in those speeches, where the dignity of the speaker renders

it a sort of insolence to alter his words; as in the messages from gods

to men, or from higher powers to inferiors in concerns of state, or

where the ceremonial of religion seems to require it, in the solemn

forms of prayers, oaths, or the like. In other cases, I believe the

best rule is, to be guided by the nearness, or distance, at which the

repetitions are placed in the original: when they follow too close, one

may vary the expression; but it is a question, whether a professed

translator be authorized to omit any: if they be tedious, the author is

to answer for it.

It only remains to speak of the versification. Homer (as has been said)

is perpetually applying the sound to the sense, and varying it on every

new subject. This is indeed one of the most exquisite beauties of

poetry, and attainable by very few: I only know of Homer eminent for it

in the Greek, and Virgil in the Latin. I am sensible it is what may

sometimes happen by chance, when a writer is warm, and fully possessed

of his image: however, it may reasonably be believed they designed

this, in whose verse it so manifestly appears in a superior degree to

all others. Few readers have the ear to be judges of it: but those who

have, will see I have endeavoured at this beauty.

Upon the whole, I must confess myself utterly incapable of doing

justice to Homer. I attempt him in no other hope but that which one may

entertain without much vanity, of giving a more tolerable copy of him

than any entire translation in verse has yet done. We have only those

of Chapman, Hobbes, and Ogilby. Chapman has taken the advantage of an

immeasurable length of verse, notwithstanding which, there is scarce

any paraphrase more loose and rambling than his. He has frequent

interpolations of four or six lines; and I remember one in the

thirteenth book of the Odyssey, ver. 312, where he has spun twenty

verses out of two. He is often mistaken in so bold a manner, that one

might think he deviated on purpose, if he did not in other places of

his notes insist so much upon verbal trifles. He appears to have had a

strong affectation of extracting new meanings out of his author;

insomuch as to promise, in his rhyming preface, a poem of the mysteries

he had revealed in Homer; and perhaps he endeavoured to strain the

obvious sense to this end. His expression is involved in fustian; a

fault for which he was remarkable in his original writings, as in the

tragedy of Bussy d’Amboise, &c. In a word, the nature of the man may

account for his whole performance; for he appears, from his preface and

remarks, to have been of an arrogant turn, and an enthusiast in poetry.

His own boast, of having finished half the Iliad in less than fifteen

weeks, shows with what negligence his version was performed. But that

which is to be allowed him, and which very much contributed to cover

his defects, is a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation,

which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have

writ before he arrived at years of discretion.

Hobbes has given us a correct explanation of the sense in general; but

for particulars and circumstances he continually lops them, and often

omits the most beautiful. As for its being esteemed a close

translation, I doubt not many have been led into that error by the

shortness of it, which proceeds not from his following the original

line by line, but from the contractions above mentioned. He sometimes

omits whole similes and sentences; and is now and then guilty of

mistakes, into which no writer of his learning could have fallen, but

through carelessness. His poetry, as well as Ogilby’s, is too mean for

criticism.

It is a great loss to the poetical world that Mr. Dryden did not live

to translate the Iliad. He has left us only the first book, and a small

part of the sixth; in which if he has in some places not truly

interpreted the sense, or preserved the antiquities, it ought to be

excused on account of the haste he was obliged to write in. He seems to

have had too much regard to Chapman, whose words he sometimes copies,

and has unhappily followed him in passages where he wanders from the

original. However, had he translated the whole work, I would no more

have attempted Homer after him than Virgil: his version of whom

(notwithstanding some human errors) is the most noble and spirited

translation I know in any language. But the fate of great geniuses is

like that of great ministers: though they are confessedly the first in

the commonwealth of letters, they must be envied and calumniated only

for being at the head of it.

That which, in my opinion, ought to be the endeavour of any one who

translates Homer, is above all things to keep alive that spirit and

fire which makes his chief character: in particular places, where the

sense can bear any doubt, to follow the strongest and most poetical, as

most agreeing with that character; to copy him in all the variations of

his style, and the different modulations of his numbers; to preserve,

in the more active or descriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the

more sedate or narrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches, a

fulness and perspicuity; in the sentences, a shortness and gravity; not

to neglect even the little figures and turns on the words, nor

sometimes the very cast of the periods; neither to omit nor confound

any rites or customs of antiquity: perhaps too he ought to include the

whole in a shorter compass than has hitherto been done by any

translator who has tolerably preserved either the sense or poetry. What

I would further recommend to him is, to study his author rather from

his own text, than from any commentaries, how learned soever, or

whatever figure they may make in the estimation of the world; to

consider him attentively in comparison with Virgil above all the

ancients, and with Milton above all the moderns. Next these, the

Archbishop of Cambray’s Telemachus may give him the truest idea of the

spirit and turn of our author; and Bossu’s admirable Treatise of the

Epic Poem the justest notion of his design and conduct. But after all,

with whatever judgment and study a man may proceed, or with whatever

happiness he may perform such a work, he must hope to please but a few;

those only who have at once a taste of poetry, and competent learning.

For to satisfy such a want either, is not in the nature of this

undertaking; since a mere modern wit can like nothing that is not

modern, and a pedant nothing that is not Greek.

What I have done is submitted to the public; from whose opinions I am

prepared to learn; though I fear no judges so little as our best poets,

who are most sensible of the weight of this task. As for the worst,

whatever they shall please to say, they may give me some concern as

they are unhappy men, but none as they are malignant writers. I was

guided in this translation by judgments very different from theirs, and

by persons for whom they can have no kindness, if an old observation be

true, that the strongest antipathy in the world is that of fools to men

of wit. Mr. Addison was the first whose advice determined me to

undertake this task; who was pleased to write to me upon that occasion

in such terms as I cannot repeat without vanity. I was obliged to Sir

Richard Steele for a very early recommendation of my undertaking to the

public. Dr. Swift promoted my interest with that warmth with which he

always serves his friend. The humanity and frankness of Sir Samuel

Garth are what I never knew wanting on any occasion. I must also

acknowledge, with infinite pleasure, the many friendly offices, as well

as sincere criticisms, of Mr. Congreve, who had led me the way in

translating some parts of Homer. I must add the names of Mr. Rowe, and

Dr. Parnell, though I shall take a further opportunity of doing justice

to the last, whose good nature (to give it a great panegyric), is no

less extensive than his learning. The favour of these gentlemen is not

entirely undeserved by one who bears them so true an affection. But

what can I say of the honour so many of the great have done me; while

the first names of the age appear as my subscribers, and the most

distinguished patrons and ornaments of learning as my chief

encouragers? Among these it is a particular pleasure to me to find,

that my highest obligations are to such who have done most honour to

the name of poet: that his grace the Duke of Buckingham was not

displeased I should undertake the author to whom he has given (in his

excellent Essay), so complete a praise:

“Read Homer once, and you can read no more;

For all books else appear so mean, so poor,

Verse will seem prose: but still persist to read,

And Homer will be all the books you need.”

That the Earl of Halifax was one of the first to favour me; of whom it

is hard to say whether the advancement of the polite arts is more owing

to his generosity or his example: that such a genius as my Lord

Bolingbroke, not more distinguished in the great scenes of business,

than in all the useful and entertaining parts of learning, has not

refused to be the critic of these sheets, and the patron of their

writer: and that the noble author of the tragedy of “Heroic Love” has

continued his partiality to me, from my writing pastorals to my

attempting the Iliad. I cannot deny myself the pride of confessing,

that I have had the advantage not only of their advice for the conduct

in general, but their correction of several particulars of this

translation.

I could say a great deal of the pleasure of being distinguished by the

Earl of Carnarvon; but it is almost absurd to particularize any one

generous action in a person whose whole life is a continued series of

them. Mr. Stanhope, the present secretary of state, will pardon my

desire of having it known that he was pleased to promote this affair.

The particular zeal of Mr. Harcourt (the son of the late Lord

Chancellor) gave me a proof how much I am honoured in a share of his

friendship. I must attribute to the same motive that of several others

of my friends: to whom all acknowledgments are rendered unnecessary by

the privileges of a familiar correspondence; and I am satisfied I can

no way better oblige men of their turn than by my silence.

In short, I have found more patrons than ever Homer wanted. He would

have thought himself happy to have met the same favour at Athens that

has been shown me by its learned rival, the University of Oxford. And I

can hardly envy him those pompous honours he received after death, when

I reflect on the enjoyment of so many agreeable obligations, and easy

friendships, which make the satisfaction of life. This distinction is

the more to be acknowledged, as it is shown to one whose pen has never

gratified the prejudices of particular parties, or the vanities of

particular men. Whatever the success may prove, I shall never repent of

an undertaking in which I have experienced the candour and friendship

of so many persons of merit; and in which I hope to pass some of those

years of youth that are generally lost in a circle of follies, after a

manner neither wholly unuseful to others, nor disagreeable to myself.

THE ILIAD.