ment, and by the same rule makes the Iliad the more modern, not the more ancient, of the two. It is remarked, again, that βαλλω, κοπτω, πληγω, words of force, are always placed first in the sentence, not only throughout the Iliad, but when they occur in the Odyssey also. The application of epithets would of itself form a study. Their use seems to indicate a great unity of conception and consciousness. Ποδας ωκυς, ποδάρκης, ρηξήνωρ, &c., are expressly devoted to Achilles, while πολύμητις, πολυμήχανος, TOAUTλaç, &c., are as exclusively applied to Ulysses; and it is not without significance that the last epithet is applied to Ulysses, five times in the Iliad, and thirty-five in the Odyssey,-in which fact, we observe not only the natural difference in the number of times, between two Poems, in one of which he is the chief and in the other only one of several heroes, in one of which he is a large and in the other only a common sufferer-but the anticipatory employment of this epithet in the Iliad (supposing it to have been first composed), and its being taken up again with greater frequency in the Odyssey-or supposing the Odyssey to have been first composed (an idea on which we do not know that the invention of critics has yet much exerted itself), the selection and recovery of the same word, with the appropriate decrease in the frequency of its use. An instance occurs of apparent confusion in the epithets applied to Achilles and Ulysses, in the application in two cases to the latter of the word Ovuoλewv (Cœur-deLeon)-a peculiar epithet of Achilles. But in both these cases, it is his devoted Wife, who, in the enthusiasm of her admiration, calls her Ulysses "the lion-hearted." Kudioros, and εvpuкpɛlwv, as significant of the functions of command, are appropriated to Agamemnon.* In the Odyssey, express indications are given of the non-equestrian character of Ithaca. Throughout each Poem, accordingly, no epithet connected with horsemanship is given to an Ithacan or Cephalenian hero. The use of irodauos, generally however as applicable to Trojans, and not to Greeks; its frequent use in the Iliad, where battles are described, and the Trojans are

* When our author translates Bony ayabos, "good at need," we are much troubled at finding a new face put on an old friend, whom we used always to render "good at a shout." No doubt the two things went a good deal together in ancient warfare-more we suppose than in modern.

engaged; its infrequent use in the Odyssey, where voyages are the more usual movements, and its application then to precisely the exceptional Greek cases, allowed in the Iliad

is an instance of consistency of use, that among other examples may be fairly taken as indicating a unity in the composing power. The force, however, of such arguments lies entirely in the number of adducible instances, and these we have not now time to multiply. They are chiefly interesting to us as showing the skill, precision, and careful nicety of touch in the Poet. As arguments they substantively carry little weight with them to our minds, except when employed as counter-arguments, when they reach an importance, not their own, and become relatively of great value, and of sufficient force. Little, however, is needed for the destruction of most of these hypotheses, but the suicidal element they usually contain within them. They commonly, if left alone, lay violent hands on themselves. The Wolfian theory, which had something worthy at least of careful consideration when applied to the Iliad and the Odyssey, has sustained much damage by being carried out to the poor Batrachomyomachiæ by Hermann, who could not let one Poet be equal to describe the heroic struggles of Frogs and Mice, but must fain divide the glory of singing of the adventures of Lickdish, Crumbsnatcher and Cheesenibler among many bards, "discovering the existing Batrachomyomachia to be a compound of a number of other older Batrachomyomachiæ, by its own particular 'Pisistratus'—of what particular era he does not specify."

We would not have it supposed that our dislike of, and dissatisfaction with, this petty school of poetical criticism, which in the infinite division of this world's labour has the province assigned it of making, as its contribution to the necessities of mankind, needle-points for the world's use-leads us to any extravagant assertion of the existence of an autographic (or autolegic) and inviolate Homeric Text. We are fully alive to the difficulties respecting the transmission of the Poems, though some writer goes so far as to suggest that he who could originate the Iliad most probably originated also a very improved, and Homeric, style and mode of committing it to writing and perpetuating it. We should be at no pains to deny the probability

of large intermixtures of matter, modifications in the arrangement and other features, which now appear far more filed and perfect, than the much later Æneid in its unquestioned authenticity can boast of. But the whole of our scepticism is awake and active immediately on any modern writer pretending to set his finger on the specific passages, phrases or arrangements which are un-Homeric. The sleepy passages, which used to be thought unworthy of the special genius of the principal Bard, and were therefore attributed to some inferior hand in the Homeric club, Colonel Mure, on the old principle of Horace, vindicates, as especially and artistically Homeric. For he reminds us how a great Poet understands the necessity of mixing level land with hill and dale, and to allow the reader to recover his nerves from the last, and prepare them for the next, excitement of emotion and admiration.*

Neither would we be understood to extend our conservatism to the facts, even the main facts, of the Homeric Poems. That some Asiatic city was besieged by the Greeks, on the tradition of which siege were built these beautiful fictions, we believe. But this is nearly all that we should

When the Pandorean box of ingenuities, in its passage over Europe from Constantinople, let out its contents on Germany, one solitary subtlety remained, till it got to England. It then escaped, and lighted at Catherine Hall, Cambridge, on the head of Dr. Kenrick Prescott, the principal. That worthy scholar, being afflicted with the gout, or other disease contingent upon learning, and being thus disabled from the more active duties of his station, addressed a series of letters to his "men," through several of which he applies himself in a very clever and amusing effort to call in question the probability of Horace's famous, though good-natured, reproach of "quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus," being meant for the Ionic, or, according to our author, Æolic, Homer at all. The letters, though commenced as a jeu d'esprit, wax so serious in their progress, as at length, we think, to throw more than a little doubt upon the correctness of the general assumption, and to raise a suspicion that it may really have been, as these letters suppose, a Roman Homer-to whom Horace was alluding-no other than the Poet Ennius. The fact that Horace is criticizing Latin poetry, and illustrating it by Latin authors-that Ennius called himself Homer-and the quiz contained in the dormitat, when referring to a man who dreamt of interviews with Homer, and maintained that in the metempsychosis, it was a Peacock which had been the associative link between himself and the great Grecian Poet-added to Horace's own express declaration of the absolute perfection and faultlessness of the Grecian Homer -when he is really speaking of him-weigh, with other presumptions, we must confess with us a little in favour of the Prescott theory-quite as much, at least, and we are sure with as much reason, as any of Wolf's or his followers' arguments in favour of there being no Homer at all. To those who have not met with them, these Letters of Dr. Prescott's will afford a few hours of very amusing reading.

particularly like to pledge ourselves to. That there were three periods of precisely ten years each, connected with this event- that ten years were spent in preparing for the war, ten years in carrying it on, and ten years in getting home gain, by some at least of the warriors-is not among the articles of our faith. Nor do we believe that all the Greeks (which is throughout the consistent fancy of the Poems), young men and elderly gentlemen, were all inspired to amass this prodigious amount of effort, to leave their homes, and kingdoms, and wives and children, to recover a runaway lady, now some thirty or forty years of age. That such persons as Achilles, or Ulysses, or Hector, or such a gift as the Trojan Horse, ever existed at all, is more than we should like to have to prove. If the Greeks made such a war in Asia, whatever the pretext may have been (and such a one as this is not impossible), they had more solid political reasons for their expedition. It may have been the first of those awkward relations between the Asiatic and European sides of the Egean, which more than once, in the history of the Greeks, made it necessary in them to anticipate the honour of a visit, or to repent of the visit being first paid to them. We regard the two Poems as constituting two utter, gorgeous, unrivalled fictions-the creation of one gigantic mind-endowed with that truly God-like power, the power of creation. There, in the glittering caverns of that wonderful bosom, did all the forms that throng the Iliad and the Odyssey start into life and motion. There first rose the beautiful fabric of those Poems-faint and fair, like the hues of an incipient rainbow, but gathering in its grace, deepening and brightening in its colours, till by the laborious pencil of that genius which first originated the conception, the satisfying structure rose, wonderful and glorious, imperishable itself, peopled with imperishable beings. O tell us not of the Poets who sung the siege before Homer, any more than of the Dramatists who took their scenes and stories from Rome, and Italy, and Old England, before Shakespeare. Doubtless there were many such, alas, too many! Some stupid barbarian named Achilles very likely lived in several forms before the angry, proud, pathetic, affectionate, heroic creature, now called Achilles, sprung from the hand of Homer, and blotted the other out of the consciousness or knowledge of the human

race. Apollo's in abundance, we doubt not, stood and stared, till "The Beautiful to look upon" appeared, like the morning, and dazzled men out of the power of seeing any of his predecessors. The Circean caves, the gardens of Phœacia, the den of Polypheme, the sounding Trojan horse, a Helen and a Priam, a Penelope and a Nestor, had, it may be, all been sung before-what matters it now, whether they had been or not? Probably they could scarce be said to have lived before, certainly they first became immortal on the canvas of that unequalled maker, who, if the critics think proper, shall be without a name—we are content, for he scarcely can be named. We are heartily glad that Colonel Mure is not content to be one of those flies, to whom we have referred, as crawling over the pedestal of this great Statue. He writes like a feeling, understanding man about Homer. So anxious is he to impress the images he desires to create or to revive in the minds of his readers, that he does not scruple to analyse at length the material, to quote in full (a great virtue and accommodation) the passages-instead of trusting the too-often untrustworthy activity of his reader, and satisfying himself with a reference to book and line in a foot-note. We do not know any one work which presents the reader with so much that is at once instructive and interesting on Homer-in which critical labour and hearty æsthetic appreciation are so satisfactorily combined. Without any positive originality, and perhaps without much that is decidedly new in the work itself, it yet comes upon its readers with an air of freshness, from the happy union of what are so often, to the great disadvantage of classical exegetics, separated—a scholarlike attention to details of style and language and criticism, with an enthusiastic love of the ideas and pictures of the Poet. The descriptions of the characters are excellently done, and the selection of passages very happy.*

As we have not yet given our readers the opportunity of judging of Colonel Mure's style of writing, we now propose to subjoin a few extracts, indicating the more popular merits of these volumes; and as the subject which has so

How is it, that in so large an induction of these, one is omitted, in which Achilles, in a wonderful outburst of mingled ferocity and tenderness, challenges the attention of the young Trojan (whom he is about to sacrifice