I. PROLEGOMENA.[1]

I. PROLEGOMENA.[1]

Sect. 1.—On the State of the Homeric question.

We are told that, in an ancient city, he who had a new law to propose made his appearance, when about to discharge that duty, with a halter round his neck. It might be somewhat rigid to re-introduce this practice in the case of those who write new books on subjects, with which the ears at least of the world are familiar. But it is not unreasonable to demand of them some such reason for their boldness as shall be at any rate presumably related to public utility. Complying with this demand by anticipation, I will place in the foreground an explicit statement of the objects which I have in view.

These objects are twofold: firstly, to promote and extend the fruitful study of the immortal poems of Homer; and secondly, to vindicate for them, in an age of discussion, their just degree both of absolute and, more especially, of relative critical value. My desire is to indicate at least, if I cannot hope to establish, their proper place, both in the discipline of classical education, and among the materials of historical inquiry. When the world has been hearing and reading Homer, and talking and writing about him, for nearly three thousand years, it may seem strange thus to imply that he is still an ‘inheritor of unfulfilled renown,’[2] and not yet in full possession of his lawful throne. He who seems to impeach the knowledge and judgment of all former ages, himself runs but an evil chance, and is likely to be found guilty of ignorance and folly. Such, however, is not my design. There is no reason to doubt that Greece

knew right well her own noble child, and paid him all the homage that even he could justly claim. But in later times, and in most of the lands where he is a foreigner, I know not if he has ever yet enjoyed his full honour from the educated world. He is, I trust, coming to it; and my desire is to accelerate, if ever so little, the movement in that direction.

As respects the first portion of the design which has been described, I would offer the following considerations. The controversy de vitâ et sanguine, concerning the personality of the poet, and the unity and antiquity of the works, has been carried on with vigour for near a century. In default of extraneous testimony, the materials of warfare have been sedulously sought in the rich mine which was offered by the poems themselves. There has resulted from this cause a closer study of the text, and a fuller development of much that it contains, than could have been expected in times when the student of Homer had only to enjoy his banquet, and not to fight for it before he could sit down. It is not merely, however, in warmth of feeling that he may have profited; the Iliad and the Odyssey have been, from the absolute necessity of the case, put into the witness-box themselves, examined and cross-examined in every variety of temper, and thus, in some degree at least, made to tell their own story. The result has been upon the whole greatly in their favour. The more they are searched and tested, the more does it appear they have to say, and the better does their testimony hang together. The more plain does it become, that the arguments used on the side of scepticism and annihilation are generally of a technical and external character, and the greater is the mass of moral and internal evidence continually accumulated against them. In consequence, there has set in a strong reaction among scholars, even in Germany (in England the destructive theories never greatly throve), on behalf of the affirmative side of all, or nearly all, the main questions which had been raised. Mure,[3] the last and perhaps most distinguished of British writers on this subject, has left the debate in such a state that those who follow him may be excused, and may excuse their readers, from systematic preliminary discussion; and may proceed upon the assumption that the Iliad and Odyssey are in their substance the true offspring of the heroic age itself, and are genuine gifts not only of a remote antiquity but of a designing mind; as well as that he, to whom that mind belonged, has been justly declared by the verdict of all ages to be the patriarch of poets. These controversies have been ‘bolted to the bran;’ for us at least they are all but dead, and to me it seems little better than lost time to revive them.

Having then at the present day the title to the estate in some degree secured from litigation, we may enter upon the fruition of it, and with all the truer zest on account of the conflict, which has been long and keenly fought, and in the general opinion fairly won. It now becomes all those, who love Homer, to prosecute the sure method of inquiry and appreciation by close, continued, comprehensive study of the text; a study of which it would be easy to prove the need, by showing how inaccurately the poems are often cited in quarters, to which the general reader justifiably looks for trustworthy information. To this we have been exhorted by the writer already named:[4] and we have only to make his practice our model. That something has already been attained, we may judge by comparison. Let us take a single instance. In the year 1735 was published ‘Blackwell’s Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer.’ Bentley, as it would appear from Bishop Monk’s Life[5] of that extraordinary scholar, was not to be taken in by a book of this kind: but such men as Bentley are not samples of their time, they are living symbols and predictions of what it will require years or generations to accomplish. We may rather judge of the common impression made by this book, from the Notes to Pope’s Preface to the Iliad, where Warton[6] extols it as ‘a work that abounds in curious researches and observations, and places Homer in a new light.’ But no reader of Homer, in our own time, would really, I apprehend, be the poorer, if every copy of it could be burned.

Since the time of Blackwell’s work, important aids have been gained towards the study of Homer, by the researches of travellers, fruitful in circumstantial evidence, and by the discovery of the Venetian Scholia, as well as by the persevering labours of modern critics. We have been gradually coming to understand that these precious works, which may have formed the delight of our boyhood, have also been designed to instruct our maturer years. I do not here refer to their poetic power and splendour only. It is now time that we should recognise the truth, that they constitute a vast depository of knowledge upon subjects of deep interest, and of boundless variety; and that this is a knowledge, too, which can be had from them alone. It was the Greek mind transferred, without doubt, in some part through Italy, but yet only transferred, and still Greek both in origin and in much of its essence, in which was shaped and tempered the original mould of the modern European civilization. I speak now of civilization as a thing distinct from religion, but destined to combine and coalesce with it. The power derived from this source was to stand in subordinate conjunction with the Gospel, and to contribute its own share towards the training of mankind. From hence were to be derived the forms and materials of thought, of imaginative culture, of the whole education of the intellectual soul, which, when pervaded with an higher life from the Divine fountain, was thus to be secured from corruption, and both placed and kept in harmony with the world of spirits.

This Greek mind, which thus became one of the main factors of the civilized life of Christendom, cannot be fully comprehended without the study of Homer, and is nowhere so vividly or so sincerely exhibited as in his works. He has a world of his own, into which, upon his strong wing, he carries us. There we find ourselves amidst a system of ideas, feelings, and actions, different from what are to be found anywhere else; and forming a new and distinct standard of humanity. Many among them seem as if they were then shortly about to be buried under a mass of ruins, in order that they might subsequently reappear, bright and fresh for application, among later generations of men. Others of them almost carry us back to the early morning of our race, the hours of its greater simplicity and purity, and more free intercourse with God. In much that this Homeric world exhibits, we see the taint of sin at work, but far, as yet, from its perfect work and its ripeness; it stands between Paradise and the vices of later heathenism, far from both, from the latter as well as from the former; and if among all earthly knowledge, the knowledge of man be that which we should chiefly court, and if to be genuine it should be founded upon experience, how is it possible to over-value this primitive representation of the human race in a form complete, distinct, and separate, with its own religion, ethics, policy, history, arts, manners, fresh and true to the standard of its nature, like the form of an infant from the hand of the Creator, yet mature, full, and finished, in its own sense, after its own laws, like some masterpiece of the sculptor’s art.

The poems of Homer never can be put in competition with the Sacred Writings of the Old Testament, as regards the one invaluable code of Truth and Hope that was contained in them. But while the Jewish records exhibit to us the link between man and the other world in the earliest times, the poems of Homer show us the being, of whom God was pleased to be thus mindful, in the free unsuspecting play of his actual nature. The patriarchal and Jewish dispensations created, and sustained through Divine interposition, a state of things essentially special and exceptional: but here first we see our kind set to work out for itself, under the lights which common life and experience supplied, the deep problem of his destiny. Nor is there, perhaps, any more solemn and melancholy lesson, than that which is to be learned from its continual downward course. If these words amount to a begging of the question, at least, it is most important for us to know whether the course was continually downwards; whether, as man enlarged his powers and his resources, he came nearer to, or went farther from his happiness and his perfection. Now, this inquiry cannot, for Europe and Christendom at least, be satisfactorily conducted, except in commencing from the basis which the Homeric poems supply. As regards the great Roman people, we know nothing of them, which is at once archaic and veracious. As regards the Greeks, it is Homer that furnishes the point of origin from which all distances are to be measured. When the historic period began, Greece was already near its intellectual middle-age. Little can be learned of the relative movements of our moral and our mental nature severally, from matching one portion of that period with another, in comparison with what we may gather from bringing into neighbourhood and contrast the pristine and youthful Greece of Homer on the one hand, and, on the other, the developed and finished Greece of the age of the tragedians or the orators.

The Mosaic books, and the other historical books of the Old Testament, are not intended to present, and do not present, a picture of human society, or of our nature drawn at large. Their aim is to exhibit it in one master-relation, and to do this with effect, they do it, to a great extent, exclusively. The Homeric materials for exhibiting that relation are different in kind as well as in degree: but as they paint, and paint to the very life, the whole range of our nature, and the entire circle of human action and experience, at an epoch much more nearly analogous to the patriarchal time than to any later age, the poems of Homer may be viewed, in the philosophy of human nature, as the complement of the earliest portion of the Sacred Records.

Although the close and systematic study of the Homeric text has begun at a date comparatively recent, yet the marked development of riches from within which it has produced, has already been a real, permanent, and vast addition to the mental wealth of mankind. We can now better understand than formerly much that relates to the fame and authority of this great poet in early times, and that we may formerly have contemplated as fanciful, exaggerated, or unreal. It was, we can now see, with no idle wonder that, while Greek philosophers took texts from him so largely in their schools, the Greek public listened to his strains in places of thronged resort, and in their solemn assemblages, and Greek warriors and statesmen kept him in their cabinets and under their pillows; and, for the first and last time in the history of the world, made the preservation of a poet’s compositions an object of permanent public policy.

Sect. 2.—The Place of Homer in Classical Education.

Now, from these considerations may arise the important question, Does Homer hold in our English education the place which is his due, and which it would be for our advantage to give him? An immense price is paid by the youth of this country for classical acquirement. It is the main effort of the first spring-tide of their intellectual life. It is to be hoped that this price will continue to be paid by all those, who are qualified to profit by the acquisition; and that though of other knowledge much more will hereafter be gained than heretofore, yet of this there shall on no account be less. Still, viewing the greatness of the cost, which consists in the chief energies of so many precious years, it highly concerns us to see that what we get in return is good both in measure and in quality. What, then, are the facts with respect to the study of Homer in England at the present day?

I must here begin with the apology due from one who feels himself to be far from perfectly informed on the case of which it is necessary to give an outline. But even if I understate both the amount of Homeric study, and its efficiency, there will, I am confident, remain, after every due allowance shall have been made for error, ample room for the application of the general propositions that I seek to enforce. They are these: that the study of Homer in our Universities is as yet below the point to which it is desirable that it should be carried, and that the same study, carried on at our public Schools, neither is, nor can be made, a fitting substitute for what is thus wanting at the Universities.

In my own day, at Oxford, now a full quarter of a century ago, the poems of Homer were read chiefly by way of exception, and in obedience to the impulse of individual tastes. They entered rather materially into those examinations by which scholarship was principally to be tested, but they scarcely formed a substantive or recognised part of the main studies of the place, which were directed to the final examination in the Schools for the Bachelor’s degree. I do not recollect to have ever heard at that time of their being used as the subject matter of the ordinary tutorial lectures; and if they were so, the case was certainly a rare one. Although the late Dr. Gaisford, in the estimation of many the first scholar of his age, during his long tenure of the Deanery of Christ Church, gave the whole weight of his authority to the recommendation of Homeric study, it did not avail to bring about any material change. The basis of the Greek classical instruction lay chiefly in the philosophers, historians, and later poets; and when Homer was, in the academical phrase, ‘taken up,’ he was employed ornamentally, and therefore superficially, and was subjected to no such searching and laborious methods of study as, to the great honour and advantage of Oxford, were certainly applied to the authors who held the first rank in her practical system. I am led to believe that the case at Cambridge was not essentially different, although, from the greater relative space occupied there by examinations in pure scholarship, it is probable that Homer may, under that aspect at least, have attracted a greater share of attention.

When, however, the University of Oxford brought to maturity, in the year 1850, a new Statute of examinations, efforts were made to promote an extended study of Homer. Those efforts, it happily appears, have produced a considerable effect. Provision was made by that statute for dividing the study of the poets from the philosophical and historical studies, and for including the former in the intermediate, or, as it is termed, ‘first public’ examination, while both the latter were reserved for the final trial, with which the period of undergraduateship is usually wound up. All candidates for honours in this intermediate examination are now required to present not less than twelve Books of Homer on the list of works in which they are to be examined. And I understand that he has also taken his place among the regular subjects of the tutorial lectures. This is a great sign of progress; and it may confidently be hoped that, under these circumstances, Homer will henceforward hold a much more forward position in the studies of Oxford. There remains something to desire, and that something, I should hope, any further development of the Examination Statute of the University will supply.

It is clear, that the study of this great master should not be confined to preparation for examinations which deal principally with language, or which cannot enter upon either primitive history, or philosophy, or policy, or religion, except by way of secondary illustration. Better far that he should be studied simply among the poets, than that he should not be studied at all. But as long as he is read only among the poets, he cannot, I believe, be read effectively for the higher and more varied purposes of which Homeric study is so largely susceptible.

The grammar, metre, and diction, the tastes, the whole poetic handling and qualities of Homer, do, indeed, offer an assemblage of objects for our consideration at once and alike singular, attractive, extended, and profitable. The extraneous controversies with which his name has so long been associated as to his personality and date, and as to the unity and transmission of his works, although they are for us, I trust, in substance nearly decided, yet are not likely to lose their literary interest, were it only on account of the peculiarly convenient and seductive manner in which they open up many questions of primitive research; presenting these questions to us, as they do, not in the dull garb pieced out of antiquarian scraps, but alive, and in the full movement of vigorous debate. All this is fit for delightful exercise; but much more lies behind.

There is an inner Homeric world, of which his verse is the tabernacle and his poetic genius the exponent, but which offers in itself a spectacle of the most profound interest, quite apart from him who introduces us to it, and from the means by which we are so introduced. This world of religion and ethics, of civil policy, of history and ethnology, of manners and arts, so widely severed from all following experience, that we may properly call them palæozoic, can hardly be examined and understood by those, who are taught to approach Homer as a poet only.

Indeed, the transcendency of his poetical distinctions has tended to overshadow his other claims and uses. As settlers in the very richest soils, saturated with the fruits which they almost spontaneously yield, rarely turn their whole powers to account, so they, that are taught simply to repair to Homer for his poetry, find in him, so considered, such ample resources for enjoyment, that, unless summoned onwards by a distinct and separate call, they are little likely to travel further. It was thus that Lord Bacon’s brilliant fame as a philosopher diverted public attention from his merits as a political historian.[7] It was thus, to take a nearer instance, that most readers of Dante, while submitting their imaginations to his powerful sway, have been almost wholly unconscious that they were in the hands of one of the most acute and exact of metaphysicians, one of the most tender, earnest, and profound among spiritual writers. Here, indeed, the process has been simpler in form; for the majority, at least, of readers, have stopped with the striking, and, so to speak, incorporated imagery of the ‘Inferno,’ and have not so much as read the following, which are also the loftier and more ethereal, portions of the ‘Divina Commedia.’ It may be enough for Homer’s fame, that the consent of mankind has irrevocably assigned to him a supremacy among poets, without real competitors or partners, except Dante and Shakspeare; and that, perhaps, if we take into view his date, the unpreparedness of the world for works so extraordinary as his, the comparative paucity of the traditional resources and training he could have inherited, he then becomes the most extraordinary, as he is also the most ancient, phenomenon in the whole history of purely human culture. In particular points he appears to me, if it be not presumptuous to say so much, to remain to this day unquestionably without an equal in the management of the poetic art. If Shakspeare be supreme in the intuitive knowledge of human nature and in the rapid and fertile vigour of his imagination, if Dante have the largest grasp of the ‘height and depth’ of all things created, if he stand first in the power of exhibiting and producing ecstasy, and in the compressed and concentrated energy[8] of thought and feeling, Homer, too, has his own peculiar prerogatives. Among them might perhaps be placed the faculty of high oratory; the art of turning to account epithets and distinctive phrases; the production of indirect or negative effects; and the power of creating and sustaining dramatic interest without the large use of wicked agents, in whom later poets have found their most indispensable auxiliaries. But all this is not enough for us who read him. If the works of Homer are, to letters and to human learning, what the early books of Scripture are to the entire Bible and to the spiritual life of man; if in them lie the beginnings of the intellectual life of the world, then we must still recollect that that life, to be rightly understood, should be studied in its beginnings. There we may see in simple forms what afterwards grew complex, and in clear light what afterwards became obscure; and there we obtain starting-points, from which to measure progress and decay along all the lines upon which our nature moves.

Over and above the general plea here offered for the study of Homer under other aspects than such as are merely poetical, there is something to be said upon his claims in competition with other, and especially with other Greek poets. The case of the Latin poets, nearer to us historically, more accessible in tongue, more easily retained in the mind under the pressure of after-life, more readily available for literary and social purposes, must stand upon its own grounds.

In considering what is the place due to Homer in education, we cannot altogether exclude from view the question of comparative value, as between him and his now successful and overbearing rivals, the Greek tragedians. For we are not to expect that of the total studies, at least of Oxford and Cambridge, any larger share, speaking generally, can hereafter be given to Greek poetry, as a whole, than has heretofore been so bestowed. It is rather a question whether there should be some shifting, or less uniformity, in the present distribution of time and labour, as among the different claimants within that attractive field.

I do not dispute the merits of the tragedians as masters in their noble art. As long as letters are cultivated among mankind, for so long their honours are secure. I do not question the advantage of studying the Greek language in its most fixed and most exact forms, which they present in perfection; nor their equal, at least, if not greater value than Homer, as practical helps and models in Greek composition. But, after all allowances on these, or on any other score, they cannot, even in respect of purely poetic titles, make good a claim to that preference over Homer, which they have, nevertheless, extensively enjoyed. I refer far less to Æschylus than to the others, because he seems more to resemble Homer not only in majesty, but in nature, reality, and historical veracity: and far less again to Sophocles, than to Euripides. But it may be said of them, generally, though in greatly differing degrees, that while with Homer everything is pre-eminently fresh and genuine, with them, on the contrary, this freshness and genuineness, this life-likeness, are for the most part wanting. We are reminded, by the matter itself, of the masks in which the actors appeared, of the mechanical appliances with the aid of which they spoke. The very existence of the word, ἐκτραγῳδεῖν,[9] and other[10] like compounds, shows us that, in the Greek tragedy, human nature and human life were not represented at large; they were got up; they were placed in the light of certain peculiar ideas, with a view to peculiar effects. The dramas were magnificent and also instructive pictures, but they taught, as it were, certain set lessons only: they were pictures sui generis, pictures marked with a certain mannerism, pictures in which the artist follows a standard which is neither original, nor general, nor truly normal. Let us try the test of an expression somewhat kindred in etymology: such a word as ἐξομηροῦν would carry upon its face a damning solecism. Again, let us mark the difference which was observed by the sagacity of Aristotle.[11] With the speeches in the Iliad, he compares the speeches in the tragedians; those most remarkable and telling compositions, which we have occasion so often to admire in Euripides. But, as he says, the Characters of the ancients, doubtless meaning Homer, speak πολιτικῶς, those of the moderns, ῥητορικῶς. I know no reason why the speeches of Achilles should not be compared with the finest passages of Demosthenes: but no one could make such a comparison between Demosthenes and the speeches, though they are most powerful and effective harangues, which we find in the Troades, or the Iphigenia in Aulide. This contrast of the earnest and practical with the artificial, runs, more or less, along the whole line which divides Homer from the tragedians, particularly from Euripides.

When we consider the case in another point of view, and estimate these poets with reference to what they tell, and not to the mere manner of their telling it, the argument for assigning to Homer a greater share of the attention of our youth, becomes yet stronger. For it must be admitted that the tragedians, especially the two later of the three, teach us but very little of the Greek religion, history, manners, arts, or institutions. At the period when they wrote, the religion of the country had become political or else histrionic in its spirit, and the figures it presented were not only multiplied, but were also hopelessly confused: while morals had sunk into very gross corruption, of which, as we have it upon explicit evidence, two at least of them largely partook. The characters and incidents of their own time, and of the generations which immediately preceded it, were found to be growing less suitable for the stage. They were led, from this and other causes, to fetch their themes, in general, from the remote period of the heroic or pre-historic ages. But of the traditions of those ages they were no adequate expositors; hence the representations of them are, for the most part, couched in altered and degenerate forms. This will be most clearly seen upon examining the Homeric personages, as they appear in the plays of Euripides. Here they seem often to retain no sign of identity except the name. The ‘form and pressure,’ and also the machinery or physical circumstances of the Greek drama, were such as to keep the tragedians, so to speak, upon stilts, while its limited scope of necessity excluded much that was comprised in the wide circle of the epic action; so that they open to us little, in comparison with Homer, of the Greek mind and life: of that cradle wherein lie, we are to remember, the original form and elements, in so far as they are secular, of European civilization.

If I may judge in any degree of the minds of others by my own experience, nothing is more astonishing in Homer, than the mass of his matter. Especially is this true of the Iliad, which most men suppose to be little more than a gigantic battle-piece. But that poem, battle-piece as it is, where we might expect to find only the glitter and the clash of arms, is rich in every kind of knowledge, perhaps richest of all in the political and historical departments. It is hardly too much to say, in general, that besides his claims as a poet, Homer has, for himself, all the claims that all the other classes of ancient writers can advance for themselves, each in his separate department. And, excepting the works of Aristotle and Plato, on either of which may be grafted the investigation of the whole philosophy of the world, I know of no author, among those who are commonly studied at Oxford, offering a field of labour and inquiry either so wide or so diversified, as that which Homer offers.

But, if Homer is not fully studied in our universities, there is no adequate consolation to be found in the fact, that he is so much read in our public schools.

I am very far indeed from lamenting that he is thus read. His free and genial temperament gives him a hold on the sympathies of the young. The simple and direct construction of almost all his sentences allows them easy access to his meaning; the examination of the sense of single words, so often requisite, is within their reach; while it may readily be believed that the large and varied inflexions of the Greek tongue, in his hands at once so accurate and so elastic, make him peculiarly fit for the indispensable and invaluable work of parsing. It may be, that for boyhood Homer finds ample employment in his exterior and more obvious aspects. But neither boyhood nor manhood can read Homer effectively for all purposes at once, if my estimate of those purposes be correct. The question therefore is, how best to divide the work between the periods of life severally best suited to the different parts of it.

It is, indeed, somewhat difficult, as a general rule, beneficially and effectively to use the same book at the same time as an instrument for teaching both the language in which it is written, and the subject of which it treats. What is given honestly to the one purpose, will ordinarily be so much taken or withheld from the other. For the one object, the mind must be directed upon the thought of the author; for the other, upon the material organ through which it is conveyed; or, in other words, for the former of these two aims his language must be regarded on its material, for the latter on its intellectual, side. The difficulty of combining these views, taken of necessity from opposite quarters, increases in proportion as the student is young, the language subtle, copious, and elaborate, the subject diversified and extended. In some cases it may be slight, or, at least, easily surmountable; but it is raised nearly to its maximum in the instance of Homer. There are few among us who can say that we learned much of the inward parts of Homer in our boyhood; while perhaps we do not feel that our labours upon him were below the average, such as it may have been, of our general exertions; and though other generations may greatly improve upon us, they cannot, I fear, master the higher properties of their author at that early period of life. Homer, if read at our public schools, is, and probably must be, read only, or in the main, for his diction and poetry (as commonly understood), even by the most advanced; while to those less forward he is little more than a mechanical instrument for acquiring the beginnings of real familiarity with the Greek tongue and its inflexions. If, therefore, he is to be read for his theology, history, ethics, politics, for his skill in the higher and more delicate parts of the poetic calling, for his never-ending lessons upon manners, arts, and society, if we are to study in him the great map of that humanity which he so wonderfully unfolds to our gaze,—he must be read at the universities, and read with reference to his deeper treasures. He is second to none of the poets of Greece as the poet of boys; but he is far advanced before them all, even before Æschylus and Aristophanes, as the poet of men.

But no discussion upon the general as well as poetical elevation of Homer, can be complete or satisfactory without a more definite consideration of the question—What is the historical value of his testimony? This is not settled by our showing either his existence, or his excellence in his art. No man doubts Ariosto’s, or Boiardo’s, or Virgil’s personality, or their high rank as poets; but neither would any man quote them as authorities on a point of history. To arrive at a right view of this further question, we must be reasonably assured alike of the nature of Homer’s original intention, of his opportunities of information, and of the soundness of his text. To these subjects I shall now proceed; in the meantime, enough may have been said to explain the aim of these pages so far as regards the more fruitful study of the works of Homer, the contemplation of them on the positive side in all their bearings, and the clearing of a due space for them in the most fitting stages of the education of the youth of England.

Sect. 3.—On the Historic Aims of Homer.

For the purposes of anatomy every skeleton may be useful, and may sufficiently tell the tale of the race to which it belongs. But when we come to seek for high beauty and for approaches to perfection, of how infinite a diversity, of what countless degrees, does form appear to be susceptible! How difficult it is to find these, except in mere fragments; and how dangerous does it prove, in dealing with objects, to treat the whole as a normal specimen, simply because parts are fine, or even superlative. When, again, we pass onward, and with the body regard also the mind of man, still greater is the range of differences, and still more rare is either the development of parts in a degree so high as to bring their single excellence near the ideal standard, or the accurate adjustment of their relations to one another, or the completeness of the aggregate which they form.

Now, it appears to me, that in the case of Homer, together with the breadth and elevation of the highest genius, we have before us, and in a yet more remarkable degree, an even more rare fulness and consistency of the various instruments and organs which make up the apparatus of the human being—constituted as he is, in mind and body, and holding, as he does, on the one side of the Deity, and on the other, of the dust. Among all the qualities of the poems, there is none more extraordinary than the general accuracy and perfection of their minute detail, when considered with reference to the standards at which from time to time they aim. Where other poets sketch, Homer draws; and where they draw, he carves. He alone, of all the now famous epic writers, moves (in the Iliad especially) subject to the stricter laws of time and place; he alone, while producing an unsurpassed work of the imagination, is also the greatest chronicler that ever lived, and presents to us, from his own single hand, a representation of life, manners, history, of morals, theology, and politics, so vivid and comprehensive, that it may be hard to say whether any of the more refined ages of Greece or Rome, with their clouds of authors and their multiplied forms of historical record, are either more faithfully or more completely conveyed to us. He alone presents to us a mind and an organization working with such precision that, setting aside for the moment any question as to the genuineness of his text, we may reason in general from his minutest indications with the confidence that they belong to some consistent and intelligible whole.

It may be right, however, to consider more circumstantially the question of the historical authority of Homer. It has been justly observed by Wachsmuth[12], that even the dissolution of his individuality does not get rid of his authority. For if the works reputed to be his had proceeded from many minds, yet still, according to their unity of colour, and their correspondence in ethical and intellectual tone with the events of the age they purport to describe, there would arise an argument, founded on internal evidence, for the admissibility of the whole band into the class of trustworthy historical witnesses.

But, first of all, may we not ask, from whence comes the presumption against Homer as an historical authority? Not from the fact that he mixes marvels with common events; for this, to quote no other instance, would destroy along with him Herodotus. Does it not arise from this—that his compositions are poetical—that history has long ceased to adopt the poetical form—that an old association has thus been dissolved—that a new and adverse association has taken its place, which connects poetry with fiction—and that we illogically reflect this modern association upon early times, to which it is utterly inapplicable?

If so, there is no burden of proof incumbent upon those, who regard Homer as an historical authority. The presumptions are all in favour of their so regarding him. The question will, of course, remain—In what proportions has he mixed history with imaginative embellishment? And he has furnished us with some aids towards the consideration of this question.

The immense mass of matter contained in the Iliad, which is beyond what the action of the poem requires, and yet is in its nature properly historical, of itself supplies the strongest proof of the historic aims of the poet. Whether, in the introduction of all this matter, he followed a set and conscious purpose of his own mind, or whether he only fed the appetite of his hearers with what he found to be agreeable to them, is little material to the question. The great fact stands, that there was either a design to fulfil, or, at least, an appetite to feed—an intense desire to create bonds and relations with the past—to grasp its events, and fasten them in forms which might become, and might make them become, the property of the present and the future. Without this great sign of nobleness in their nature, Greeks never could have been Greeks.

I have particularly in view the great multitude of genealogies; their extraordinary consistency one with another, and with the other historical indications of the poems; their extension to a very large number, especially in the Catalogue, of secondary persons; I take again the Catalogue itself, that most remarkable production, as a whole; the accuracy with which the names of the various races are handled and bestowed throughout the poems; the particularity of the demands regularly made upon strangers for information concerning themselves, and especially the constant inquiry who were their parents, what was, for each person as he appears, his relation to the past? and further, the numerous legends or narratives of prior occurrences with which the poems, and particularly the more historic Iliad, is so thickly studded. Even the national use of patronymics as titles of honour is in itself highly significant of the historic turn. Nay, much that touches the general structure of the poem may be traced in part to this source; for all the intermediate Books between the Wrath and the Return of Achilles, while they are so contrived as to heighten the military grandeur of the hero, are so many tributes to the special and local desires in each state or district for commemoration of their particular chiefs, which Homer would, of course, have to meet, as he itinerated through the various parts of Greece.

Now, this appetite for commemoration does not fix itself upon what is imaginary; it may tolerate fiction by way of accessory and embellishment, but in the main it must, from its nature, rely upon what it takes to be solid food. The actions of great men in all times, but especially in early times, afford it suitable material; and there is nothing irrational in believing that the race which in its infancy produced so marvellous a poet as Homer, should also in its infancy have produced great warriors and great statesmen. Composing, with such powers as his, about his own country, and for his own countrymen, he could scarcely fail, even independently of conscious purpose, to convey to us a great mass of such matter as is in reality of the very highest historic truth and value. If, indeed, we advance so far as to the conviction that his hearers believed him to be reciting historically, the main question may speedily be decided. For each generation of men, possessed of the mental culture necessary in order to appreciate Homer, knows too much of the generations immediately preceding to admit of utter and wholesale imposition. But it is a fair inference from the Odyssey, that the Trojan War was thus sung to the men and the children of the men who waged it. Four lays of bards[13] are mentioned in that poem; one of Phemius, three of Demodocus; and out of the four, three relate to the War, which appears to show clearly that its celebrity must have been both instantaneous and overpowering; the more so, as the only remaining one has reference not to any human transaction, but to a scene in Olympus. And I shall shortly advert to the question, whether the Homeric poems themselves were in all probability composed not later than within two generations of the War itself.

It may be true that, with respect to some parts of his historical notices, the poet, adapting himself to the wishes and tastes of his hearers, might take liberties without fear of detection, most of all where he has filled in accessories, in order to complete a picture; but I think we should be wrong in supposing that in the interest of his art he would have occasion to make this a general practice, or to carry it in historical subjects beyond matters of detail. Nor can I wholly disregard the analogy between his history and his equally copious and everywhere intermixed geographical notices: such of them, I mean, as lay within the sphere of Greek experience. These indeed, he could not, under the eyes of the men who heard him, cast into the mould of fiction; yet there could be no call of popular necessity for his unequalled and most minute precision, and it can only be accounted for by the belief that accurate record was a great purpose of his poems. If he was thus careful to record both classes of particulars alike, and if, as to the one, we absolutely know that he has recorded them with exemplary fidelity, that fact raises a corresponding presumption of some weight as to the other.

But there is, I think, another argument to the same effect, of the highest degree of strength which the nature of the case admits. It is to be found in the fact that Homer has not scrupled to make some sacrifices of poetical beauty and propriety to these historic aims. For if any judicious critic were called upon to specify the chief poetical blemish of the Iliad, would he not reply by pointing to the multitude of stories from the past, having no connexion, or at best a very feeble one, with the War, which are found in it? Such brief and minor legends as occur in the course of the Catalogue, may have a poetical purpose; it appears not improbable that they may be introduced by way of relief to the dryness of topographical and local enumeration. But in general the narratives of prior occurrences are (so to speak) rather foisted in, and we must therefore suppose for them a purpose over and above that, which as a mere poet Homer would have in view. It is hard to conceive that he would have indulged in them, if he had not been able to minister to this especial aim by its means. Thus, again, the curious and important genealogy of the Dardanian House[14] is given by Æneas, in answer to Achilles, who had just shown by his taunt that he, at least, did not want the information, but knew very well[15] the claims and pretensions of his antagonist. Again, the long story told by Agamemnon, in the assembly held for the Reconciliation, when despatch was of all things requisite, may best be accounted for by the desire to relate the circumstances attending the birth of the great national hero, Hercules. It certainly impedes the action of the poem, which seems to be confessed in the rebuke insinuated by the reply of Achilles:—

Still more is this the case when Patroclus, sent in a hurry for news by a man of the most fiery impatience, is (to use the modern phrase) button-held by Nestor, in the eleventh Book, and, though he has ‘no time to sit down,’ yet is obliged to endure a speech of a hundred and fifty-two lines, ninety-three of which, containing the account of the Epean contest with Pylos, are absolutely and entirely irrelevant. It may be said, that these effusions are naturally referable to the garrulous age of Nestor, and to false shame and want of ingenuousness in Agamemnon. In part, too, we may compare them with the modern fashion among Orientals of introducing parables in common discourse. But many of these have no parabolic force whatever: and from all of them poetical beauty suffers. On the other hand, the historic matter introduced is highly curious and interesting for the Greek races: why, then, should we force upon Homer the charge of neglect, folly, or drowsiness,[17] when an important purpose for these interpolations appears to lie upon the very face of them?

It will be observed, that if this reasoning in reference to the interlocutory legends be sound, it supplies an historical character to the poem just in the places where the general argument for it would have been weakest; inasmuch as these legends generally relate to times one or two generations earlier than the Troica, and are farther removed, by so much of additional interval, from the knowledge and experience of his hearers.

But, over and above the episodes, which seem to owe their place in the poem to the historic aim, there are a multitude of minor shadings which run through it, and which, as Homer could have derived no advantage from feigning them, we are compelled to suppose real. They are part of the graceful finish of a true story, but they have not the showy character of what has been invented for effect. Why, for instance, should Homer say of Clytæmnestra, that till corrupted by Ægisthus she was good?[18] Why should it be worth his while to pretend that the iron ball offered by Achilles for a prize was the one formerly pitched by Eetion?[19] Why should he spend eight lines in describing the dry trunk round which the chariots were to drive?[20] Why should he tell us that Tydeus was of small stature?[21] Why does Menelaus drive a mare?[22] Why has Penelope a sister Iphthime, ‘who was wedded to Eumelus,’ wanted for no other purpose than as a persona for Minerva in a dream?[23] These questions, every one will admit, might be indefinitely multiplied.

But, after all, there can be no point more important for the decision of this question, than the general tone of Homer himself. Is he, for ethical and intellectual purposes, the child of that heroic age which he describes? Does he exhibit its form and pressure? Does he chant in its key? Are there a set of ideas of the writer which are evidently not those of his heroes, or of his heroes which are not those of the writer, or does he sing, in the main, as Phemius and Demodocus might themselves have sung? Wachsmuth says well, that Homer must be regarded as still within the larger boundaries of the heroic age. There are, perhaps, signs, particularly in the Odyssey, of a first stage of transition from it; but the poet is throughout identified with it in heart, soul, speech, and understanding. I would presume to argue thus; that Homer never would have ventured to dispense with mere description, and to adopt action as his sole resource—to dramatise his poem as he has dramatised it—unless he had been strong in the consciousness of this identity. It is no answer to say that later writers—namely, the tragedians—dramatised the subject still more, and presented their characters on the stage without even those slender aids from interjected narrative towards the comprehension of them, which Homer has here and there, at any rate, permitted himself to use. For the consequence has been in their case, that they entirely fail to represent the semblance of a picture of the heroic age, or indeed of any age at all. They produce remote occurrences or fables in a dress of feelings, language, and manners suited to their own time, as far as it is suited to any. Besides, as dramatists, they had immense aids and advantages of other kinds; not to mention their grand narrative auxiliary, the Chorus. But Homer enjoyed little aid from accessories, and has notwithstanding painted the very life. And yet, seeking to paint from the life, he commits it to his characters to paint themselves and one another. Surely he never could have confined himself to this indirect process, unless he had been emboldened by the consciousness of his own essential unity with them all. He would have done as most other epic poets have done, whose personages we feel that we know, not from themselves, but from what the poet in the character of intelligencer has been kind enough to tell us; whereas we learn Achilles by means of Achilles, Ulysses by means of Ulysses, and so with the rest. Next to their own light, is the light they reflect on one another; but we never see the poet, so to speak, holding the candle. Still, in urging all this, I feel that more remains and must remain unspoken. The question, whether Homer speaks and paints essentially in the spirit of his own age, or whether he fetches from a distance both his facts and a manner so remarkably harmonizing with them, must after all our discussions continue one to be settled in the last resort not by arguments, which can only play a subsidiary part, but first by the most thorough searching and sifting of the text; then by the application of that inward sense and feeling, to which the critics of the destructive schools, with their ἀναποδεικταὶ φάσεις, make such copious appeals.

But the assumption by an effort of mind of the manners and tone of a remote age, joined with the consistent support of this character throughout prolonged works, is of very rare occurrence. In Greek literature there is nothing, to my knowledge, which at all approaches it; and this I think may fairly be urged as of itself almost conclusive against ascribing it to Homer. The later tragedians, in whose compositions we should look for it, do not apparently so much as think of it; and it is most difficult to suppose a poet so national as Homer to be in this cardinal respect entirely different from all others of his race. Indeed the supposition is radically at variance with the idea of his poetical character; of which the very groundwork lies in a childlike unconsciousness, and in the unity of Art with Nature[24].

May we not, however, go a good deal further, and say boldly that the faculty of assuming in literary compositions an archaic costume, voice, and manner, does not belong at all either to an age like that of Homer, or to any age of which the literary conditions at all resemble it?

In the first place, an inventor, working like Homer for the general public, must, by departing altogether from the modes of thought, expression, and action current in his own day, pro tanto lose his hold upon those on whose approval he depends. It seems to follow that this will not be seriously attempted, except in an age which has ceased to afford a liberal supply of the materials of romance. Is not this presumption made good by experience? The Greek tragedians, it is indisputable, did not find it necessary to aim, and did not aim, at reproducing the whole contemporary apparatus, which was in strictness appropriate and due to their characters. Virgil made no such attempt in the Æneid, of which, notwithstanding the manners abound in anachronisms of detail. The romance poets of Italy idealize their subject, not, however, by the revival of antique manners with their proper apparatus of incidents, but by means of an abundant preternatural machinery. Even in Shakespeare’s King John, Henry IV, or Henry VIII, how little difference can be detected from the Elizabethan age, or (in this point) from one another[25]. Again, in Macbeth or Lear, enough is done to prevent our utterly confounding their ages with the common life of the hearers; but there is nothing that approaches to a complete characteristic representation of the respective times to which the personages are supposed to belong. So, again, in Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar, or Antony and Cleopatra, there is a sort of Roman toga thrown loosely over the figures; but we do not feel ourselves amidst Roman life when we read them. And, in truth, what is done at all in these cases is not done so much by reproducing as by generalizing, in the same sense as a painter generalizes his draperies. A great instance of the genuine process of reproduction is to be found in Sir Walter Scott. He, however, besides being a man of powerful genius, cast not in the mould of his own age, but in one essentially belonging to the past, was a master of antiquarian knowledge. And this leads me to name what seems to be the second condition of serious and successful attempts (I need not here speak of burlesques, of which all the touches must be broad ones) at disinterring and reviving bygone ages in the whole circle and scheme of their life. The first, as has been already said, is to live in an age itself socially old, so as not to abound in proper materials for high invention. The second is, to live in an age possessed of such abundant documents and records of a former time as to make it practicable to explore it in all points by historical data. This condition was wanting to Virgil, even supposing him to have had the necessary tastes and qualifications. It was not wanting to Scott, with reference especially to the period of the Stuarts, who, besides a vast abundance of oral and written traditions, had laws, usages, architecture, arms, coins, utensils, every imaginable form of relic and of testimony at his command, so that he could himself first live in the age of his works, and then, when himself acclimatised, invent according to it.

In all this it is not forgotten that a certain amount of archaism is indispensable in all works purporting to draw their subject from a long-past age. But this minimum need only be slight and general, as in the Æneid; and it consists rather in the exclusion of modern accessories, than in the revival of the original tone. And again, the very choice of subject, as it is grave and severe or light and gay, will to some extent influence the manners: the former will spontaneously lean towards the past, the latter, depending on the zest of novelty, will be more disposed to clothe itself in the forms of the present. Thus we have a more antique tone in Henry the Fifth, than in the Merry Wives of Windsor. But archaic colouring within limits such as these is broadly different from such systematic representation of the antique as Homer must have practised, if he had practised it at all.

As in romance and poetry, so in the progress of the drama, this method appears to be the business of a late age. The strength of dramatic imagination is always when the drama itself is young. It then confidently relies upon its essential elements for the necessary illusion; it knows little, and cares less, about sustaining it by elaborate attention to minor emblems and incidents. But when it has lived into the old age of civilized society, when the critical faculty has become strong and the imagination weak, then it strengthens itself by minute accuracy in scenery and costume,—in fact, by exact reproduction. This is indeed the novel gift of our own time: and by means of it theatrical revivals are now understood and practised among ourselves in a manner which former generations could not emulate, but did not require.

Nor must we forget the importance, with reference to this discussion, of Homer’s minuteness, precision, and multitude of details. Every one of these, be it remembered, if we suppose him not to be painting from the life, affords an additional chance of detection, by the discrepancy between the life habitually present to the poet’s experience, and that which he is representing by effort. But the voice of the Homeric poems is in this respect, after all, unisonous, like that of the Greeks, and not multiform, like that of the Trojan army[26]. We are driven, therefore, to suppose that Homer practised this art of reproduction on a scale, as well as with a success, since unheard of, and this at a period when, according to all likelihood and all other experience, it could only in a very limited sense be possible to practice it at all. The extravagance of these suppositions tells powerfully against them, and once more throws us back on the belief that the objects which he painted were, in the main, those which his own age placed beneath his view.

This view of the historical character of Homer, I believe, substantially agrees with that taken by the Greeks in general. If I refer to Strabo, in his remarkable Prolegomena[27], it is because he had occasion to consider the point particularly. Eratosthenes had treated the great sire of poets as a fabulist. Strabo confutes him. Eratosthenes had himself noticed the precision of the geographical details: Thisbe, with its doves; Haliartus and its meadows; Anthedon, the boundary; Lilæa by the sources of Cephissus; and Strabo retorts upon him with force—πότερον οὖν ὁ ποιῶν ταῦτα ψυχαγωγοῦντι ἔοικεν ἢ διδάσκοντι; his general conclusion is, that Homer used fiction, as his smith in the Odyssey used gold for plating silver:—

that so Homer adjoined mythical ornaments to true events. But history was the basis:—ἔλαβεν οὖν παρὰ τῆς ἱστορίας τὰς ἀρχάς[28]. And, in adopting the belief that Homer is to be taken generally for a most trustworthy witness to facts, I am far from saying that there are no cases of exception, where he may reasonably be suspected of showing less than his usual fidelity. The doctrine must be accepted with latitude: the question is not whether it is absolutely safe, but whether it is the least unsafe. We may most reasonably, perhaps, view his statements and representations with a special jealousy, when they are such as appear systematically contrived to enhance the distinctive excellencies of his nation. Thus, for instance, both in the causes and incidents of the war, and in the relative qualities and merits of Greeks and Trojans, we may do well to check the too rapid action of our judgments, and to allow some scope to the supposition, that the historical duties of the bard might here naturally become subordinate to his patriotic purpose in glorifying the sires of his hearers, that immortal group who became through him the fountain head to Greece, both of national unity and of national fame.

Indeed, while I contend keenly for the historic aim and character of Homer, I understand the terms in a sense much higher than that of mere precision in the leading narration. We may, as I am disposed to think, even if we should disbelieve the existence of Helen, of Agamemnon, or of Troy, yet hold, in all that is most essential, by the historical character of Homer. For myself, I ask to be permitted to believe in these, and in much besides these; yet I also plead that the main question is not whether he has correctly recorded a certain series of transactions, but whether he has truly and faithfully represented manners and characters, feelings and tastes, races and countries, principles and institutions. Here lies the pith of history; these it has for its soul, and fact for its body. It does not appear to me reasonable to presume that Homer idealized his narration with anything like the license which was permitted to the Carlovingian romance; yet even that romance did not fail to retain in many of the most essential particulars a true historic character; and it conveys to us, partly by fact and partly through a vast parable, the inward life of a period pregnant with forces that were to operate powerfully upon our own characters and condition. Even those who would regard the cases as parallel should, therefore, remember that they too must read Homer otherwise than as a poet in the vulgar and more prevailing sense, which divests poetry of its relation to reality. The more they read him in that spirit the higher, I believe, they will raise their estimate of his still unknown and unappreciated treasures.

Sect. 4.—The probable Date of Homer.

In employing such a phrase as the date of Homer, I mean no reference to any given number of years before the Olympiads, but simply his relation in the order of history to the heroic age; to the events, and, above all, to the living type of that age.

When asserting generally the historic aims and authority of the poet, I do not presume to pronounce confidently upon the difficult question of the period at which he lived. I prefer to dwell upon the proposition that he is an original witness to manners, characters, and ideas such as those of his poems. It is not necessary, to make good this proposition, that we should determine a given number of years as the maximum that could have passed between the Trojan war and the composition of the Iliad or Odyssey. But the internal evidence seems to me very strongly to support the belief, that he lived before the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus. That he was not an eye-witness of the war, we absolutely know from the Invocation before the Catalogue[29]. It also appears[30] that he must have seen the grandchildren of Æneas reigning over the land of Priam. It is no extravagant supposition that forty or fifty years after the siege, perhaps even less, might have brought this to pass.

The single idea or form of expression in the poems, which at first sight tends to suggest a very long interval, is that quoted by Velleius Paterculus[31], the οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσι[32]. But the question arises, whether this is an historical land-mark, or a poetical embellishment? In the former sense, as implying a great physical degeneracy of mankind, it would require us to suppose nothing less than a lapse of centuries between the Troica and the epoch of the poet. This hypothesis, though Heyne speaks of the eighth or ninth generation[33], general opinion has rejected. If it be dismissed, and if we adopt the view of this formula as an ornament, it loses all definite chronological significance. Thus it is lost in the phrase, common in our own time with respect to the intellectual characters of men now no more, but yet not removed from us, perhaps, by more than from a quarter to half a century—‘there were giants in those days.’ Nay, the observation of Paterculus, especially as he was an enthusiastic admirer, itself exemplifies the little care with which these questions have been treated. For the Iliad itself supplies a complete answer in the speech of Nestor, who draws the very same contrast between the heroes of the Troica and those of his own earlier days:

And it is curious that we have in these words a measure, supplied by Homer himself, of the real force of the phrase, which seems to fix it at something under half a century, and thus makes it harmonise with the indication afforded by the passage relating to the descendants of Æneas. The argument of Mitford[35] on the age of Homer appears to me to be of great value: and, while it is rejected, it is not answered by Heyne[36]. Nor is it easy to conceive the answer to those who urge that, so far as the poet’s testimony goes, the years from Pirithous to the siege are as many as from the siege to his own day[37]. But Pirithous was the father of Polypætes, who led a Thessalian division in the war.[38]

If this view of Homer’s meaning in the particular case be correct, we can the better understand why it is that the poet, who uses this form of enhancement four times in the Iliad, does not employ it in the Odyssey, though it is the later poem, and though he had opportunities enough; such as the athletic exploits of Ulysses in Phæacia, and especially the handling of the Bow in Ithaca. For in the Iliad a more antique tone of colouring prevails, as it is demanded by the loftier strain of the action.

There is one passage, and one only, which is just capable of being construed as an allusion to the great Dorian conquest: it is that in the Fourth Book of the Iliad, where Juno tells Jupiter that she well knows he can destroy in spite of her, whensoever he may choose, her three dearest cities, Argos, Sparta, and Mycenæ[39]. It is probable that the passage refers to sacking such as had been practised by Hercules[40], and such as is pathetically described by Phœnix[41]. But, in the first place, we do not know that these cities were in any sense destroyed by the Dorian conquest, more than they had been by previous dynastic and territorial changes. If, on the other hand, it be contended, that we need not construe the passage as implying more than revolution independent of material destruction, then we need not introduce the idea of the Dorian conquest at all to sustain the propriety of the passage, for Homer already knew by tradition how those cities, and the territory to which they belonged, had changed hands from Danaïds to Perseids, and from Perseids to Pelopids.

But indications even far less equivocal from an isolated passage would be many times outweighed, in a case like that of Homer, by any conclusion justly drawn from features, whether positive or negative, that are rooted in the general body of the poems. Now such a conclusion arises from the admitted and total absence of any allusion in Homer to the general incidents of the great Dorian conquest, and to the consequent reconstruction of the old or European Greece, or to the migrations eastward, or to the very existence of the new Asiatic Greece which it is supposed to have called into being. Respecting the conquest itself, he might by a sustained effort of deliberate intention have kept silence: but is it possible that he could have avoided betraying by reference to results, on a thousand occasions, his knowledge of a change which had drawn anew the whole surface of society in Greece? It would be more rational, were we driven to it (which is not the case), even to suppose that the passage in question had been tampered with, than to imagine that the poet could have forborne through twenty-eight thousand lines, to make any other reference to, or further betray his knowledge of, events which must on this supposition have occupied for him so large a part of the whole horizon of life and experience.

Again, the allusions to the trumpet and the riding-horse found in illustrative passages, but not as used in the war, are by far too slight and doubtful, to sustain the theory that Homer saw around him a system of warfare different from that which he recorded; and require us to adopt no supposition for the explanation of them, beyond the very natural one that the heroic poet, without essentially changing manners, yet, within certain limits, insensibly projects himself and his subject from the foreground of every-day life into the mellowness of distance; and, therefore, that he may advisedly have excluded from his poem certain objects or practices, which notwithstanding he knew to have been more or less in use. Again, what are we to say to the minute knowledge of Greece proper and the Peloponnesus, which Homer has displayed? Why does he (apparently) know it so much better than he knew Asia Minor? How among the rude Dorians, just emerged from comparative barbarism, could he learn it at all? How strange, that Lycurgus should have acquired the fame of having first introduced the poems to the Peloponnesus, unless a great revolution and a substitution of one dominant race for another had come between, to obliterate or greatly weaken the recollection of them in the very country, which beyond all others they covered with a blaze of glory.

Of the very small number of passages in the poems which contain a reference to events later than the action, there are two, both relating to the same subject, for which at first sight it appears difficult to account. Why does Neptune obtrude upon the Olympian Court his insignificant and rather absurd jealousy, lest the work of defence, hastily thrown up by the Achæan army, should eclipse the wall built around Troy by Apollo and himself? Evidently in order to obtain from Jupiter the suggestion, that he should subsequently himself efface all traces of it. But why does Homer show this anxiety to account for its non-appearance? Why does he return subsequently to the subject, and most carefully relate how Jupiter by raining, and Apollo by turning the mouths of eight rivers, and Neptune with his trident, all cooperated to destroy the work, and make the shore smooth and even again? Had Homer lived many generations after the Trojan war, these passages would have been entirely without purpose, for he need not then have given reasons to show, why ages had left no trace still visible of the labour of a day. But if he lived near the period of the war, the case is very different. He might then be challenged by his maritime hearers, who, if they frequented the passage into the Sea of Marmora, would have had clear views of the camp of Agamemnon, and who would naturally require him to assign a cause for the disappearance even of such a work as a day’s labour of the army could produce, and as the Trojan soldiery could make practicable for their chariots to drive over[42].

These particular indications appear to be worth considering: but the great reasons for placing the date of Homer very near to that of the War are, his visible identity with the age, the altering but not yet vanished age, of which he sings, and the broad interval in tone and feeling between himself, and the very nearest of all that follows him.

Sect. 5.—The Probable Trustworthiness of the Text of Homer.

Let us now proceed to consider the question, what assumption is it, on the whole, safest to make, or what rule can we most judiciously follow, as our guide in Homeric studies, with reference to the text of the Poems?

Shall we adopt a given form of completely reconstructed text, like that of Mr. Payne Knight?

Shall we, without such adherence to a particular pattern, assume it to be either indisputable or, at least, most probable that an extensive corruption of the text can hardly have been avoided[43]; and shall we, in consequence, hold the received text provisionally, and subject to excision or to amendment according to any particular theory concerning Homer, his age, its manners and institutions, which we may ourselves have thought fit to follow or construct?

Shall we admit as authoritative, the excisions of Aristarchus or the Alexandrian critics, and the obeli which he has placed against verses which he suspected?

Or shall we proceed, as a general rule, upon the belief, that the received text of Homer is in general sound and trustworthy, so far, at least, as to be very greatly preferable to any reconstructed or altered form whatever, in which it has hitherto been produced or proposed for our acceptance?

My decided preference is for the fourth and last of these alternatives: with the observation, however, in passing, that the third does not essentially differ from it with respect to the great body of the Poems, so far as we know what the Alexandrian text really was.

I prefer this course as by far the safest: as the only one which can be entered upon with such an amount of preliminary assent, as to secure a free and unbiassed consideration of Homeric questions upon a ground held in common: and as, therefore, the only one, by means of which it can be hoped to attain to solid and material results as the reward of inquiry. In order fairly to raise the issue, the two following propositions may be stated as fitting canons of Homeric study:—

1. That we should adopt the text itself as the basis of all Homeric inquiry, and not any preconceived theory, nor any arbitrary standard of criticism, referable to particular periods, schools, or persons.

2. That as we proceed in any work of construction by evidence drawn from the text, we should avoid the temptation to solve difficulties found to lie in our way, by denouncing particular portions of it as corrupt or interpolated: should never set it aside except upon the closest examination of the particular passage questioned; should use sparingly the liberty even of arraying presumptions against it; and should always let the reader understand both when and why it is questioned.

Now, let us consider these rules, and the method which it is proposed by means of them to apply,

a. With reference to the failure of other methods.

b. With reference to the antecedent probabilities for or against the general soundness of the text.

c. With reference to the internal evidence of soundness or unsoundness afforded by the text itself.

The first of the two rules has been brought more and more into operation by the believers in Homer as the Poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, in self-defence against the sceptical theories: and it has been both announced and acted upon by Mure with such breadth and completeness, as to leave to those, who adopt it, simply the duty of treading in his footsteps.

Again, as to the second, it may now be hoped that by the force of circumstances it is gradually coming into vogue, though perhaps less, as yet, by a distinct conviction of its reasonableness, than through the utter failure and abortiveness of all other methods. First to theorise rashly (with or without consciousness), and then rudely to excise from the Homeric text whatever clashes with our crude conceptions, is, after all, an essentially superficial and vulgar method of proceeding: and if it was excusable before the evidence touching the Poet and the text had been so greatly confirmed, as it has recently been, by closer scrutiny, it can hardly be forgiven now. The text of Homer cannot be faultless: but, in the first place, it is plain, as far as general consent can make it so, that the poems, as they stand, afford a far better and surer foundation than any other form of them which has been proposed, whether curtailed in their principal members, as by the destructive school, or only amended by free handling in detail. All the recasting processes which have yet been tried, have begotten ten solecisms, or another solecism of tenfold magnitude, for every one that they did away. In fact, the end of schemes, such as that of Lachmann[44], has been not to achieve any thing like real progress in a continuous work, but simply to launch so many distinct speculations, isolated, conflicting, each resting on its author’s own hearty approval, and each drawing from the rest of the world no other sign than the shrug or the smile, which seems to be the proper reward of perverted ingenuity.

It would be presumptuous and unjust to treat the remarkable performance of Mr. Payne Knight as one of what may be called—to borrow a phrase from the commercial world—the Homeric bubble-schemes. It was anticipated with eagerness by Heyne. It was hailed by the calm judgment and refined taste of Lord Aberdeen. Yet this was not enough.

The ordeal of time has not destroyed the value of Mr. Payne Knight’s Prolegomena, but it has been decidedly unfavourable to his text as a practical attempt at reconstruction. With the old text in the right hand, and Mr. Knight’s in the left, who would doubt in which to look for the nearest likeness to Homer? Or who will ever again venture to publish an abridged or re-modelled Iliad?

Apart, however, from the unsatisfactoriness of the results of attempts at reconstruction, have we reason to believe that the text of Homer has, as a whole, been seriously vitiated by interpolation or corruption? The difficulties attending its transmission from the time of the poet are not to be denied. But I think we have scarcely enough considered the amount of means which were available, and which were actually employed, in order to neutralize those difficulties, and achieve the task. Although writing of some description appears to have existed at the epoch of the Poems, it can be probably proved, and may at any rate be fully admitted, that Homer did not write, but recited only. This is the first step: now for the second. I pass by the argument with those, who deny that poems of this length could be transmitted orally at all, as one already disposed of by the general verdict of the world. So, likewise, I leave behind me, at the point where Mure has placed them, all the reasonings of the piecers, who say that there were originally a number of Iliadic and Odyssean songs, afterwards made up into the poems such as we now have them: of the amplifiers, who look upon them as expanded respectively by gradual interpolations and additions from an original of small dimensions; of the separators, who will have just two Homers and no more, one for the Iliad, and one for the Odyssey. I assume for the present purpose the contrary of all these three propositions: and simply invite those who disbelieve them, but who also conceive that the text is generally unsafe and untrustworthy in its detail, to some consideration of that subject.

In attempting to weigh retrospectively the probable fortunes of the Homeric text, I presume that we may establish as our point of departure the judgment delivered by Heyne[46], that the manuscripts of Homer are satisfactory: that we possess all, or nearly all, that the Alexandrian critics possessed; and that by the advance of the critical art, we have now probably, on the whole, a better and truer Homer than that of Aristarchus, which is the basis of the modern text. The imperfect state of notation when writing first began to be used, and the changes in pronunciation, have not, we may also suppose with Heyne[47], done more than trifling or secondary damage to the copies.

The first serious question is this; how far was Homer mutilated, first, by the rhapsodists, or reciters, before he was put into writing, and secondly, by those who, in order to bring the lays of the Iliad into one body, must, it is assumed, have added and altered much, even if they had no whims of their own, and only sought to do what was needful nexûs et juncturæ causâ. It is, of course, admitted that these lays, even though ideally one as they came from their framer, were in many cases actually separated. And Heyne quotes the Scholiast of Pindar[48], complaining by report that Cinæthus and his school had interpolated largely, as well as the passage in which Josephus[49] (so he states) gives it as his opinion that the Iliad, from having been pieced together long after it was composed, presented many discrepancies. Now, even if this were the opinion of Josephus, it would have no more pretension to historical authority, than if it had been delivered yesterday. But the fact is, that Josephus mentions it simply as a current notion; φασὶν οὐδὲ τοῦτον ... ἀλλὰ διαμνημονευομένην ... καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πολλὰς ἐν αὐτῇ σχεῖν τὰς διαφωνίας. Indeed, it cannot be too carefully borne in mind, that if the positive notices of Homer in early times are slight, so as to throw us back very much upon the poems for their own vindication, yet, on the other hand, all the authorities cited on the sceptical side, are chronologically so remote from the question in debate, that they are but opinions and not proofs, and that we may canvass and question them without the smallest scruple, or fear that we are pitting mere theory against legitimate evidence.

It is not to be denied that the condition of the Homeric poems, before they were committed to writing, was one of great danger. But the question may well be asked, how came poems of such length to be preserved at all by mere oral transmission through a period of undefined, and possibly of very great, length? It is plain that nothing but an extraordinary celebrity, and a passionate attachment on the part of the people, could have kept them alive. Now, if we suppose this celebrity and this attachment, let us inquire further, whether they may not have supplied the means of neutralizing and counteracting, in the main, the dangers to which the poems were exposed; and whether it is unreasonable to say, That which could have preserved them in their unity at all, must, in all likelihood, have preserved them in a tolerably genuine state. Fully admitting that the evidence in the case is imperfect, and can only lead to disputable conclusions, I nevertheless ask, What is the most probable supposition respecting the condition of the Homeric poems in the pre-historic times of Greece? Is it not this—that, with due allowance for a different state of circumstances, they were then, what they were in later times; the broad basis of mental culture; the great monument of the glory of the nation, and of each particular State or race; the prime entertainment of those prolonged festive gatherings which were so characteristic of early Greece; that they were not only the special charge and pride of particular poetical schools, but distinct objects of the care of legislators and statesmen; that in this manner they were recognised as among the institutions of the country, and that they had thus to depend for their transmission, not only on the fire of national and poetic feeling, but upon a jealous custody much resembling that which even a comparatively rude people gives to its laws?

I shall attempt a summary of the arguments and testimonies which appear to me to recommend, if they do not compel, the adoption of these conclusions.

1. Heraclides Ponticus, a pupil of Plato, in a fragment περὶ πολιτειῶν, declares that Lycurgus was the first to bring the poetry of Homer into Peloponnesus: τὴν Ὁμήρου ποίησιν, παρὰ τῶν ἀπογόνων Κρεοφύλου λαβὼν, πρῶτος διεκόμισεν εἰς Πελοπόννησον. This testimony is late with reference to the fact it reports, but not late in the history of Greek literature. Of the source from which it was derived by the author who gives it us, we know nothing. No light is thrown upon it by Ælian,[50] who adds the epithet ἀθρόαν to ποίησιν. Plutarch enlarges the expression of the tradition, but seems to add little to its matter, except that some portions of Homer were known before Lycurgus brought the whole from Crete.[51] It is stated in the Republic of Plato,[52] that Creophylus was a companion of Homer. Strabo[53] informs us that he was a Samian; and Hermodamas, the master of Pythagoras, is said by Diogenes Laertius[54] to have been his descendant. Now, we cannot call any part of these statements history; but they exhibit a body of tradition, of which the members, drawn from scattered quarters, agree with one another, and agree also with the general probability that arises out of a fact so astonishing as is in itself the actual preservation of the poems of Homer. It is in truth this fact that lays the best ground for traditions such as the one in question. If they came before us artificially complete and embellished, that might be made a ground of suspicion. But appearing, as this one does, with an evident absence of design, there is every presumption of its truth. Before considering the full force which attaches to it if it be true, we will draw out the kindred traditions.

2. Of these, the next, and a most important one, is the statement of Herodotus respecting Clisthenes, the ruler of Sicyon, who, when he had been at war with Argos, ῥαψῳδοὺς ἔπαυσε ἐν Σικυῶνι ἀγωνίζεσθαι, τῶν Ὁμηρείων ἐπέων εἵνεκα, ὅτι Ἀργεῖοί τε καὶ Ἄργος τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑμνέαται[55]. He proceeds to say, that Clisthenes sought to banish the memory of Adrastus, as being an Argive hero, from Sicyon. It is not necessary to inquire what these Homeric poems may have included; but the conclusion of Grote, that they were ‘the Thebais and the Epigoni, not the Iliad[56],’ seems to me incredible. Nor is it correct that the Iliad fails to supply matter to which the statement may refer. In the Iliad, the name of Argos, though meaning it is true the country rather than a city, is nearly associated with the chief seat of power, and becomes representative of the whole Hellenic race in its heroic infancy. This is surely honour infinitely higher, than any local fame it could derive from the civil feud with Thebes. The Iliad, too, marks most clearly the connexion of Adrastus with Argos—for it names Diomed as the husband of his daughter or granddaughter, Ægialea[57]; it also marks the subordinate position of Sicyon,

by making it a mere town in the dominions of Agamemnon, while Argos figures as a sovereign and powerful city. There may therefore perhaps be room to doubt whether Herodotus meant even to include the Thebais or Epigoni in the phrase ‘Homeric poems.’

But the importance of the passage is not wholly dependent on these considerations. It shows,

a. That there were, at Sicyon, State-recitations of Homer six centuries before the Christian era, attended with rewards for the successful performers.

b. That these recitations were in conformity with common use; for they are named as something ordinary and established, which was then set aside, not as a custom peculiar to Sicyon.

c. That the recitations depended upon the Homeric poems, since they were entirely stopped on account of exceptionable matter which the Homeric poems were deemed to contain.

d. That these recitations were in the nature of competitive contests among the rhapsodists, when the best and most approved, of course, would obtain prizes. This implies that the recitations were not single, as if by poet laureates, but that many shared in them.

3. Next to this tradition, and nearly coeval with it, but reported by later authority, is that respecting Solon and Athens. Dieuchidas of Megara, an author of uncertain age, placed by Heyne[59] later than Alexander, is quoted in Diogenes Laertius[60] as testifying to the following effect concerning Solon: τά τε Ὁμήρου ἐξ ὑποβολῆς γέγραφε ῥαψῳδεῖσθαι. οἷον ὅπου ὁ πρῶτος ἔληξεν, ἐκεῖθεν ἄρχεσθαι τὸν ἐχόμενον. μᾶλλον οὖν Σόλων Ὅμηρον ἐφώτισεν, ἢ Πεισίστρατος. But we have also a better witness, I think, in Lycurgus the orator, contemporary with Demosthenes,[61] who gives a most striking account of the political and martial use of the Homeric songs. He says, οὕτω γὰρ ὑπέλαβον ὑμῶν οἱ πατέρες σπουδαῖον εἶναι ποιήτην, ὥστε νόμον ἔθεντο καθ’ ἑκάστην πενταετηρίδα τῶν Παναθηναίων μόνου τῶν ἄλλων ποιήτων ῥαψωδεῖσθαι τὰ ἔπη. ‘It was with these songs in their ears,’ he proceeds, ‘that your fathers fought at Marathon; and so valiant were they then, that from among them their brave rivals, the Lacedæmonians, sought a general, Tyrtæus.’

a. Now, these words appear to carry the traditional origin of this law, as far as the authority of Lycurgus will avail, back to the early part of the seventh century, when Tyrtæus lived.[62]

b. Thus, at the period when Athens is just beginning to rise towards eminence, she enacts a law that the poems of Homer shall be recited at her greatest festival.

c. This honour she accords to Homer (whatever that name may have imported) alone among poets.

d. This appears, from the connexion with Tyrtæus, to be a tradition of a matter older still than the one mentioned by Dieuchidas. But the two are in thorough accordance. For Dieuchidas does not say that Solon introduced the recitations of Homer, nor does he refer simply to the Panathenaica. He pretty clearly implies, that Solon did not begin the recitations, but that he reformed—(by bringing them into regular succession, which implies a fixed order of the songs)—what had been introduced already; while Lycurgus seems to supply the notice of the original introduction as having occurred before the time even of Tyrtæus.

4. The argument from the sculptures on the chest of Cypselus, representing subjects taken out of the Iliad, refers to a period nearly corresponding with that of Tyrtæus, as Cypselus was probably born about B. C. 700: and tends to show that the Iliad was famous in Corinth at that date.[63]

5. The next of the specific traditions is that relating to Pisistratus. To his agency it has been the fashion of late years to assign an exaggerated, or even an exclusive, importance. But whereas the testimonies respecting Lycurgus, Clisthenes, and Solon, (as well as the Athenian legislators before him,) are derived from authors probably, or certainly, of the fourth and fifth centuries B. C., we have none at all respecting Pisistratus earlier than the Augustan age.[64] Cicero says he first disposed the Homeric books in their present order; Pausanias,[65] that he collected them, διεσπασμένα τε καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ μνημονευόμενα; Josephus,[66] who, as we have seen, merely refers to the report that the Iliad was not committed to writing until after Homer’s time, is wrongly quoted[67] as a witness to the labours of Pisistratus. An ancient Scholion, recently discovered,[68] names four poets who worked under that prince. And it may be admitted, that the traditions respecting Pisistratus have this distinctive mark—that they seem to indicate the first accomplishment of a critical and literary task upon Homer’s text under the direct care and responsibility of the sovereign of the country.

Thus, the testimony concerning Pisistratus is of an order decidedly inferior to that which supports the earlier traditions, and cannot with propriety be put into the scale against them where they are in conflict with it; but there is no reason to reject the report that he fixed the particular order of the poems, which the law of Solon may have left open in some degree to the judgment of the reciters, although they were required by it to recite in order.

6. The dialogue, doubtfully ascribed to Plato under the name of Hipparchus, states that that sovereign—

τὰ Ὁμήρου πρῶτος ἐκόμισεν ἐς τὴν γῆν ταυτηνὶ, καὶ ἠνάγκασε τοὺς ῥαψῳδοὺς Παναθηναίοις ἐξ ὑπολήψεως ἐφεξῆς αὐτὰ διιέναι, ὥσπερ νῦν ἔτι οἵδε ποιοῦσι[69].

As regards the matter of original introduction, this passage contradicts all the foregoing ones. From the uncertainty who is its author, it must yield to them as of less authority. But this is not all. It is on the very face of it incredible: for it asserts, not that his poetry was first arranged or adjusted, but first brought into the country by Hipparchus. This is in itself absurd: and it is also directly in the teeth of the statement, which can hardly be a pure fiction, that Solon by law required the poems of Homer to be recited at the Panathenæa. As regards the succession in reciting, it is quite possible that he may have put the last hand to the work of his father.

However, the passage may deserve notice as a sign of the general belief that the care of the poems of Homer, and provision for their orderly publication in the only mode then possible, was a fit and usual part of the care of States and their rulers.

The whole mass of the passages which have been cited may be thought to bear primarily on the controversies which I have waived. But they have a most important, even if secondary, bearing upon the question, whether the received text is generally sound in its structure. The dangers which menaced that text of course were referable to two sources: the one, want of due care; and the other, falsification for a purpose: and it is necessary to bring into one view the whole positive evidence with respect to the preservation and publication of the Homeric poems, in order to estimate the amount both of these dangers and of the safeguards against them. I resume the prosecution of this task.