there are, however, far more internal grounds for doubting than of Homer's), and after all their ingenuity and observation, much more grateful to any stupid commentator, who will take Homer in bonam partem, and touch upon, if he cannot bring out, the material of his author, than to those who concern themselves, however acutely and ingeniously, with the how, and where, and when, of his material-thinking with Wordsworth, that

"Benjamin with clouded brains,

Is worth the rest with all their pains."

We have to confess ourselves, therefore, as belonging to the class rather of Poet-lovers than Critic-lovers, two classes of men whose characteristics we alluded to at the beginning of this article, as being so different. What wellinformed and studious men, whose passion for a special hypothesis has imparted an almost supernatural acuteness to their critical vision, enabling them to discern, with wonderful readiness and penetration, in any work, even the most hidden features which favour that hypothesiswhat such men have to say is always worth attentively perusing-not so much on account of the support which it gives to their notion, as for the amount of attention it draws to, and light it throws upon, the staple of the work itself. The full sight into which their united labours bring every peculiarity of the work under their criticism, every power and weakness, every beauty and defect, every fact and error, is the result which will endure, when their respective theories shall have been destroyed, by being simply left to the tender mercies of each other. Except for this most valuable result, we should feel something approaching to shame, for the kind of criticism which has been bestowed on Homer for the last fifty years. When we reflect upon Aristotle's faith in the unity of this Autho and his Material, of the manner in which he takes his illustrations of great natural facts or critical canons (albeit often in the syllogistic vein) from the living nature and beauty of the Poems themselves, and contrast such expository and ever-during criticism with that which sees the greatest as the most trifling things principally in the light of so much grist. for the mill of its theory, so much proof pro or contra, that the Iliad was one or twenty, and Homer a man or a cycle—we are deeply impressed with

the conviction that the true modern Critic of Homer is the man who, now nearly neglecting these contests, takes the Poems themselves as at least certainly existing and indisputable phenomena, and gladdens the heart of youth and manhood, with the display of the ever-increasing number of their perceived wonders and beauties.

Colonel Mure is surprised that there should exist no complete history of Grecian literature, either handed down to us by the Greeks, or accomplished by ourselves. He truly says that a nation is first engaged with its own thoughts and it is not till later, often not until the period of its decline, that it begins to comment upon its thoughts, or the thoughts of other nations. He thinks that the political annals of society often exhibit human character in a most offensive aspect, and that it would be much more alluring to trace the history of a nation's mind, record and review its intellectual productions, than perpetuate its feats of valour or political enterprise. That the Greeks themselves should have shown so great an indifference to the value of this species of history, "appears the more remarkable," he says, "when we consider the infinite number of channels in which, during their latter days, their over-exuberant genius found vent, and the voluminous library of works which it produced in the kindred class of subjects. Yet, among their legion of commentators and grammarians, there is no record of an historian of literature in the wider sense. Similar was the case with the Romans."

We

We have no difficulty in discovering the reason of this. The absence of this tendency in ancient literature, and its presence in modern, is not to the advantage or to the honour of the last. The individual study of an original work has many times the worth of the study of that original. There is far too much derived literature among us. go cooking and eating, over and over again, the same viands in every variety of form; but each less nutritious and less wholesome than the form in which they are originally presented to us. The bulk of our learned works unhappily consist of these mere accretions and repetitions. Our time is occupied-is wasted-with the infinite quantity of this unimpressive iteration. The man of true scholarly courage would and does pass over these inter

vening shadows, and goes to the substances themselves, which form the foundation of the mass. To use Carlyle's image, he penetrates through and sweeps aside these Augean accumulations, and gets down to the marble pavement that underlies them all. And how small do we often find the apex of that inverted cone to be which has become top-heavy with the weight of the accumulations of subsequent historians and critics! Men of an average education will go on their lives through, reading volumes founded mainly on a few pages of Philo and Josephus, essays without end on matters which hang, after all, on a few sentences of Livy or Polybius—and lectures in a neverending, still beginning succession, on Homer-without, unless they are going to write, thinking it at all necessary to turn to the fons et origo-to the real basis of all the wide-spreading, and high-reaching, and weary-climbing edifices that rise upon it. It were really almost easier and surely much more satisfactory, to read through all the principal authors in the early centuries of the Christian Church, than a quarter of the modern historians and theologians upon them. We would speak with respect of the labours of such men as Gillies, and Mitford, and Thirlwall, and Grote; but would not the time, which the scholar bestows on these, be better bestowed on a careful re-perusal of Thucydides and Herodotus? A man who would take the short trouble of learning to repeat the Shield of Achilles would possibly have a sounder and more enduring knowledge of the state of the arts thus at firsthand, in the times of Homer, than by reading the treatises and chapters on them which he does read.

We are quite aware of the advantage and the necessity of learned men communicating to the world and to each other their own conclusions and discoveries on all such interesting matters; giving, with the increasing light of increasing knowledge, their own versions of them. They are necessary, too, on the ground of mutual correction and mutual supplementing. But it is the supercession and virtual concealment of the materials on which they labour from the uninitiated public that we deplore, and we are quite convinced that to the bulk of readers the simplicity of the original staple on which many of these learned lucubrations are hung, and the clearness which a direct refer

ence to that staple would impart to their own apprehension of the questions or the facts at issue, is utterly unknown. They go on wandering hopelessly in the mist of the everdeepening thicket, till at last they cannot see the wood for trees. They trust to their hierophants, the critics and the historians, and know not how a little more direct inspection by their own eyes of the adytum would clear up their mysteries.

"Voracious learning, often over-fed,

Digests not into sense her motley meal."

The absence, then, of this incalculable load of derived literature, of borrowings and recoctions and repetitions, was one of the greatest privileges enjoyed, and most marked signs of strength and originality exhibited by the Grecian mind-and its increasing presence among ourselves, though an indication of the thought and labour increasingly bestowed on some of the most interesting materials of the human mind, a sign, also, of the increasing extent of popular sympathy and interest in the same class of subjects, and thus together showing the activity of the national mind, must not be regarded as one of the great desiderata of a literature, but rather as an indication of the increasing demand for dispensaries of literature, where the physician may administer his drugs according to the best of his own knowledge and experience, and the necessities and capacities of those who seek them. Accordingly, in reading Colonel Mure's volumes, interesting and able though they are, and notwithstanding the zest and spirit with which he throws himself into the material of his criticism, thus showing himself a man of taste and feeling, as well as learning, we must confess to a perpetual craving, with difficulty repressed, to leave his page for the page of him whom he is principally celebrating. Why, we have asked ourselves, more than once, should we go on reading the critic's account-and the better the account the more we ask the question-of the Phoacian visit, the Domus Priami, the character of Achilles, the Ithacan court, and the Return of the Wanderer-and not substitute the scenes themselves, and "live o'er again that happy hour"? We calculate that we could have read, in an enjoying, if not a critical way, either the Iliad or the Odyssey, in a space of

time little exceeding that which it has taken us to read Colonel Mure's three volumes; and with all respect for the critic and his long labour, we are deliberately of opinion that it would have been better for us to have done so. A better plan still, however, is to read both-and our author, from his evidently glowing interest in the great Bard, would wish no better result than that the reading of his work should lead to a revived interest in that literature of which he is so enthusiastic and appreciating an admirer. The First Book of Colonel Mure's Work, occupying about a third part of the first volume, is principally devoted to the history and characteristics of the Greek language and literature; from its origin to the period of the mythical poets, -Amphion, Orpheus, Linus, &c. The Second Book, occupying the remaining two-thirds of the first volume, and the whole of the second volume, is devoted to Greek Epic Poetry, including dissertations on the Cyclic Poets, on Hesiod, and on the miscellaneous Epic Poetry of the same period, but otherwise almost exclusively dealing with the great Poems of Homer. The Third Book, forming also the third volume, treats on Lyric Poetry, with the biography of the principal Lyric Poets, and has two chapters subjoined on the history of Writing in Greece.

We are interested, and the public will be interested, for the present at least, chiefly in that part of the work which relates to the light, all other lights absorbing, which still and for ever gathers round the Iliad and the Odyssey. Colonel Mure possesses, as a scholar, a sufficient interest in and knowledge of the various arguments which have been adduced by critics both in this country and in Germany, in reference to the real or merely mythical existence of such a person as Homer-to the unity or duality or multiplicity of the authorship of the Homeric Poems -to enable him to give them an adequate consideration: at the same time that he decides without hesitation in favour of the old orthodox view, and quietly turns back from the page in criticism which Wolf has marked with his name, to that in which Aristotle pronounced or rather assumed his judgment twenty-two hundred years ago. We could, indeed, have wished that our author had arranged his matter a little more in the style, and therefore with something more of the condensation, of an argument. He seems to have had