The Iliad
accordingly employed them as the verse required either a greater
smoothness or strength. What he most affected was the Ionic, which has
a peculiar sweetness, from its never using contractions, and from its
custom of resolving the diphthongs into two syllables, so as to make
the words open themselves with a more spreading and sonorous fluency.
With this he mingled the Attic contractions, the broader Doric, and the
feebler Æolic, which often rejects its aspirate, or takes off its
accent, and completed this variety by altering some letters with the
licence of poetry. Thus his measures, instead of being fetters to his
sense, were always in readiness to run along with the warmth of his
rapture, and even to give a further representation of his notions, in
the correspondence of their sounds to what they signified. Out of all
these he has derived that harmony which makes us confess he had not
only the richest head, but the finest ear in the world. This is so
great a truth, that whoever will but consult the tune of his verses,
even without understanding them (with the same sort of diligence as we
daily see practised in the case of Italian operas), will find more
sweetness, variety, and majesty of sound, than in any other language of
poetry. The beauty of his numbers is allowed by the critics to be
copied but faintly by Virgil himself, though they are so just as to
ascribe it to the nature of the Latin tongue: indeed the Greek has some
advantages both from the natural sound of its words, and the turn and
cadence of its verse, which agree with the genius of no other language.
Virgil was very sensible of this, and used the utmost diligence in
working up a more intractable language to whatsoever graces it was
capable of, and, in particular, never failed to bring the sound of his
line to a beautiful agreement with its sense. If the Grecian poet has
not been so frequently celebrated on this account as the Roman, the
only reason is, that fewer critics have understood one language than
the other. Dionysius of Halicarnassus has pointed out many of our
author’s beauties in this kind, in his treatise of the Composition of
Words. It suffices at present to observe of his numbers, that they flow
with so much ease, as to make one imagine Homer had no other care than
to transcribe as fast as the Muses dictated, and, at the same time,
with so much force and inspiriting vigour, that they awaken and raise
us like the sound of a trumpet. They roll along as a plentiful river,
always in motion, and always full; while we are borne away by a tide of
verse, the most rapid, and yet the most smooth imaginable.
Thus on whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us
is his invention. It is that which forms the character of each part of
his work; and accordingly we find it to have made his fable more
extensive and copious than any other, his manners more lively and
strongly marked, his speeches more affecting and transported, his
sentiments more warm and sublime, his images and descriptions more full
and animated, his expression more raised and daring, and his numbers
more rapid and various. I hope, in what has been said of Virgil, with
regard to any of these heads, I have no way derogated from his
character. Nothing is more absurd or endless, than the common method of
comparing eminent writers by an opposition of particular passages in
them, and forming a judgment from thence of their merit upon the whole.
We ought to have a certain knowledge of the principal character and
distinguishing excellence of each: it is in that we are to consider
him, and in proportion to his degree in that we are to admire him. No
author or man ever excelled all the world in more than one faculty; and
as Homer has done this in invention, Virgil has in judgment. Not that
we are to think that Homer wanted judgment, because Virgil had it in a
more eminent degree; or that Virgil wanted invention, because Homer
possessed a larger share of it; each of these great authors had more of
both than perhaps any man besides, and are only said to have less in
comparison with one another. Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the
better artist. In one we most admire the man, in the other the work.
Homer hurries and transports us with a commanding impetuosity; Virgil
leads us with an attractive majesty; Homer scatters with a generous
profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence; Homer, like the
Nile, pours out his riches with a boundless overflow; Virgil, like a
river in its banks, with a gentle and constant stream. When we behold
their battles, methinks the two poets resemble the heroes they
celebrate. Homer, boundless and resistless as Achilles, bears all
before him, and shines more and more as the tumult increases; Virgil,
calmly daring, like Æneas, appears undisturbed in the midst of the
action; disposes all about him, and conquers with tranquillity. And
when we look upon their machines, Homer seems like his own Jupiter in
his terrors, shaking Olympus, scattering the lightnings, and firing the
heavens: Virgil, like the same power in his benevolence, counselling
with the gods, laying plans for empires, and regularly ordering his
whole creation.
But after all, it is with great parts, as with great virtues, they
naturally border on some imperfection; and it is often hard to
distinguish exactly where the virtue ends, or the fault begins. As
prudence may sometimes sink to suspicion, so may a great judgment
decline to coldness; and as magnanimity may run up to profusion or
extravagance, so may a great invention to redundancy or wildness. If we
look upon Homer in this view, we shall perceive the chief objections
against him to proceed from so noble a cause as the excess of this
faculty.
Among these we may reckon some of his marvellous fictions, upon which
so much criticism has been spent, as surpassing all the bounds of
probability. Perhaps it may be with great and superior souls, as with
gigantic bodies, which, exerting themselves with unusual strength,
exceed what is commonly thought the due proportion of parts, to become
miracles in the whole; and, like the old heroes of that make, commit
something near extravagance, amidst a series of glorious and inimitable
performances. Thus Homer has his “speaking horses;” and Virgil his
“myrtles distilling blood;” where the latter has not so much as
contrived the easy intervention of a deity to save the probability.
It is owing to the same vast invention, that his similes have been
thought too exuberant and full of circumstances. The force of this
faculty is seen in nothing more, than in its inability to confine
itself to that single circumstance upon which the comparison is
grounded: it runs out into embellishments of additional images, which,
however, are so managed as not to overpower the main one. His similes
are like pictures, where the principal figure has not only its
proportion given agreeable to the original, but is also set off with
occasional ornaments and prospects. The same will account for his
manner of heaping a number of comparisons together in one breath, when
his fancy suggested to him at once so many various and correspondent
images. The reader will easily extend this observation to more
objections of the same kind.
If there are others which seem rather to charge him with a defect or
narrowness of genius, than an excess of it, those seeming defects will
be found upon examination to proceed wholly from the nature of the
times he lived in. Such are his grosser representations of the gods;
and the vicious and imperfect manners of his heroes; but I must here
speak a word of the latter, as it is a point generally carried into
extremes, both by the censurers and defenders of Homer. It must be a
strange partiality to antiquity, to think with Madame Dacier,[38] “that
those times and manners are so much the more excellent, as they are
more contrary to ours.” Who can be so prejudiced in their favour as to
magnify the felicity of those ages, when a spirit of revenge and
cruelty, joined with the practice of rapine and robbery, reigned
through the world: when no mercy was shown but for the sake of lucre;
when the greatest princes were put to the sword, and their wives and
daughters made slaves and concubines? On the other side, I would not be
so delicate as those modern critics, who are shocked at the servile
offices and mean employments in which we sometimes see the heroes of
Homer engaged. There is a pleasure in taking a view of that simplicity,
in opposition to the luxury of succeeding ages: in beholding monarchs
without their guards; princes tending their flocks, and princesses
drawing water from the springs. When we read Homer, we ought to reflect
that we are reading the most ancient author in the heathen world; and
those who consider him in this light, will double their pleasure in the
perusal of him. Let them think they are growing acquainted with nations
and people that are now no more; that they are stepping almost three
thousand years back into the remotest antiquity, and entertaining
themselves with a clear and surprising vision of things nowhere else to
be found, the only true mirror of that ancient world. By this means
alone their greatest obstacles will vanish; and what usually creates
their dislike, will become a satisfaction.
This consideration may further serve to answer for the constant use of
the same epithets to his gods and heroes; such as the “far-darting
Phœbus,” the “blue-eyed Pallas,” the “swift-footed Achilles,” &c.,
which some have censured as impertinent, and tediously repeated. Those
of the gods depended upon the powers and offices then believed to
belong to them; and had contracted a weight and veneration from the
rites and solemn devotions in which they were used: they were a sort of
attributes with which it was a matter of religion to salute them on all
occasions, and which it was an irreverence to omit. As for the epithets
of great men, Mons. Boileau is of opinion, that they were in the nature
of surnames, and repeated as such; for the Greeks having no names
derived from their fathers, were obliged to add some other distinction
of each person; either naming his parents expressly, or his place of
birth, profession, or the like: as Alexander the son of Philip,
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Diogenes the Cynic, &c. Homer, therefore,
complying with the custom of his country, used such distinctive
additions as better agreed with poetry. And, indeed, we have something
parallel to these in modern times, such as the names of Harold
Harefoot, Edmund Ironside, Edward Longshanks, Edward the Black Prince,
&c. If yet this be thought to account better for the propriety than for
the repetition, I shall add a further conjecture. Hesiod, dividing the
world into its different ages, has placed a fourth age, between the
brazen and the iron one, of “heroes distinct from other men; a divine
race who fought at Thebes and Troy, are called demi-gods, and live by
the care of Jupiter in the islands of the blessed.”[39] Now among the
divine honours which were paid them, they might have this also in
common with the gods, not to be mentioned without the solemnity of an
epithet, and such as might be acceptable to them by celebrating their
families, actions or qualities.
What other cavils have been raised against Homer, are such as hardly
deserve a reply, but will yet be taken notice of as they occur in the
course of the work. Many have been occasioned by an injudicious
endeavour to exalt Virgil; which is much the same, as if one should
think to raise the superstructure by undermining the foundation: one
would imagine, by the whole course of their parallels, that these
critics never so much as heard of Homer’s having written first; a