The Iliad
their one author, be he Homer or Melesigenes, _quocunque nomine vocari
eum jus fasque sit_, I feel conscious that, while the whole weight of
historical evidence is against the hypothesis which would assign these
great works to a plurality of authors, the most powerful internal
evidence, and that which springs from the deepest and most immediate
impulse of the soul, also speaks eloquently to the contrary.
The minutiæ of verbal criticism I am far from seeking to despise.
Indeed, considering the character of some of my own books, such an
attempt would be gross inconsistency. But, while I appreciate its
importance in a philological view, I am inclined to set little store on
its æsthetic value, especially in poetry. Three parts of the
emendations made upon poets are mere alterations, some of which, had
they been suggested to the author by his Mæcenas or Africanus, he
would probably have adopted. Moreover, those who are most exact in
laying down rules of verbal criticism and interpretation, are often
least competent to carry out their own precepts. Grammarians are not
poets by profession, but may be so _per accidens_. I do not at this
moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated to substantially
improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass of remarks, from
Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the history of a thousand minute
points, without which our Greek knowledge would be gloomy and jejune.
But it is not on words only that grammarians, mere grammarians, will
exercise their elaborate and often tiresome ingenuity. Binding down an
heroic or dramatic poet to the block upon which they have previously
dissected his words and sentences, they proceed to use the axe and the
pruning knife by wholesale, and inconsistent in everything but their
wish to make out a case of unlawful affiliation, they cut out book
after book, passage after passage, till the author is reduced to a
collection of fragments, or till those, who fancied they possessed the
works of some great man, find that they have been put off with a vile
counterfeit got up at second hand. If we compare the theories of
Knight, Wolf, Lachmann, and others, we shall feel better satisfied of
the utter uncertainty of criticism than of the apocryphal position of
Homer. One rejects what another considers the turning-point of his
theory. One cuts a supposed knot by expunging what another would
explain by omitting something else.
Nor is this morbid species of sagacity by any means to be looked upon
as a literary novelty. Justus Lipsius, a scholar of no ordinary skill,
seems to revel in the imaginary discovery, that the tragedies
attributed to Seneca are by _four_ different authors.[34] Now, I will
venture to assert, that these tragedies are so uniform, not only in
their borrowed phraseology—a phraseology with which writers like
Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were more charmed than ourselves—in their
freedom from real poetry, and last, but not least, in an ultra-refined
and consistent abandonment of good taste, that few writers of the
present day would question the capabilities of the same gentleman, be
he Seneca or not, to produce not only these, but a great many more
equally bad. With equal sagacity, Father Hardouin astonished the world
with the startling announcement that the Æneid of Virgil, and the
satires of Horace, were literary deceptions. Now, without wishing to
say one word of disrespect against the industry and learning—nay, the
refined acuteness—which scholars, like Wolf, have bestowed upon this
subject, I must express my fears, that many of our modern Homeric
theories will become matter for the surprise and entertainment, rather
than the instruction, of posterity. Nor can I help thinking, that the
literary history of more recent times will account for many points of
difficulty in the transmission of the Iliad and Odyssey to a period so
remote from that of their first creation.
I have already expressed my belief that the labours of Peisistratus
were of a purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason
why corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad in
his day, than that the poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus should
have given so much trouble to Poggio, Scaliger, and others. But, after
all, the main fault in all the Homeric theories is, that they demand
too great a sacrifice of those feelings to which poetry most powerfully
appeals, and which are its most fitting judges. The ingenuity which has
sought to rob us of the name and existence of Homer, does too much
violence to that inward emotion, which makes our whole soul yearn with
love and admiration for the blind bard of Chios. To believe the author
of the Iliad a mere compiler, is to degrade the powers of human
invention; to elevate analytical judgment at the expense of the most
ennobling impulses of the soul; and to forget the ocean in the
contemplation of a polypus. There is a catholicity, so to speak, in the
very name of Homer. Our faith in the author of the Iliad may be a
mistaken one, but as yet nobody has taught us a better.
While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that has nature
herself for its mainspring; while I can join with old Ennius in
believing in Homer as the ghost, who, like some patron saint, hovers
round the bed of the poet, and even bestows rare gifts from that wealth
of imagination which a host of imitators could not exhaust,—still I am
far from wishing to deny that the author of these great poems found a
rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked mythical storehouse from whence
he might derive both subject and embellishment. But it is one thing to
_use_ existing romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to
patch up the poem itself from such materials. What consistency of style
and execution can be hoped for from such an attempt? or, rather, what
bad taste and tedium will not be the infallible result?
A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other
bards, are features perfectly consistent with poetical originality. In
fact, the most original writer is still drawing upon outward
impressions—nay, even his own thoughts are a kind of secondary agents
which support and feed the impulses of imagination. But unless there be
some grand pervading principle—some invisible, yet most distinctly
stamped archetypus of the great whole, a poem like the Iliad can never
come to the birth. Traditions the most picturesque, episodes the most
pathetic, local associations teeming with the thoughts of gods and
great men, may crowd in one mighty vision, or reveal themselves in more
substantial forms to the mind of the poet; but, except the power to
create a grand whole, to which these shall be but as details and
embellishments, be present, we shall have nought but a scrap-book, a
parterre filled with flowers and weeds strangling each other in their
wild redundancy: we shall have a cento of rags and tatters, which will
require little acuteness to detect.
Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware
as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief,
it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved
for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are not by nature
intended to know all things; still less, to compass the powers by which
the greatest blessings of life have been placed at our disposal. Were
faith no virtue, then we might indeed wonder why God willed our
ignorance on any matter. But we are too well taught the contrary
lesson; and it seems as though our faith should be especially tried
touching the men and the events which have wrought most influence upon
the condition of humanity. And there is a kind of sacredness attached
to the memory of the great and the good, which seems to bid us repulse
the scepticism which would allegorize their existence into a pleasing
apologue, and measure the giants of intellect by an homeopathic
dynameter.
Long and habitual reading of Homer appears to familiarize our thoughts
even to his incongruities; or rather, if we read in a right spirit and
with a heartfelt appreciation, we are too much dazzled, too deeply
wrapped in admiration of the whole, to dwell upon the minute spots
which mere analysis can discover. In reading an heroic poem we must
transform ourselves into heroes of the time being, we in imagination
must fight over the same battles, woo the same loves, burn with the
same sense of injury, as an Achilles or a Hector. And if we can but
attain this degree of enthusiasm (and less enthusiasm will scarcely
suffice for the reading of Homer), we shall feel that the poems of
Homer are not only the work of one writer, but of the greatest writer
that ever touched the hearts of men by the power of song.
And it was this supposed unity of authorship which gave these poems
their powerful influence over the minds of the men of old. Heeren, who
is evidently little disposed in favour of modern theories, finely
observes:—
“It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. No poet has
ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his countrymen.
Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character of other
nations; it was reserved to a poet to form that of the Greeks. This is
a feature in their character which was not wholly erased even in the
period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and sages appeared in
Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they
paid homage to his superior genius. He held up before his nation the
mirror, in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes no
less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity
and truth. His poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature;
on the love of children, wife, and country; on that passion which
outweighs all others, the love of glory. His songs were poured forth
from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of man; and
therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every breast which
cherishes the same sympathies. If it is granted to his immortal spirit,
from another heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down
on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia to the forests
of Hercynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic
wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him to view the vast
assemblage of grand, of elevated, of glorious productions, which had
been called into being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal
spirit may reside, this alone would suffice to complete his
happiness.”[35]
Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the “Apotheosis of
Homer”[36] is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing
association, how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to
our minds, is lost by the admittance of any theory but our old
tradition? The more we read, and the more we think—think as becomes the
readers of Homer,—the more rooted becomes the conviction that the
Father of Poetry gave us this rich inheritance, whole and entire.
Whatever were the means of its preservation, let us rather be thankful
for the treasury of taste and eloquence thus laid open to our use, than
seek to make it a mere centre around which to drive a series of
theories, whose wildness is only equalled by their inconsistency with
each other.
As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not
included in Pope’s translation, I will content myself with a brief
account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer
who has done it full justice[37]:—
“This poem,” says Coleridge, “is a short mock-heroic of ancient date.
The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and
corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to have been a juvenile