rate work of Thirlwall, notwithstanding its learning, its fulness, and its honesty, is dull and tedious, and inadequate as a representation of the evolution of Greek civilization. Nor is this the sole objection. The harmony of Greek life is undetected; and the actions of the Greeks are thus left without satisfactory explanation, or are represented in a questionable, and frequently in an erroneous manner. To a large class of readers, too listless to engage voluntarily in the ponderation of conflicting evidences and arguments, too indifferent to attach themselves to any of the antagonist parties in former ages, too apprehensive of the danger of decided opinions, Thirlwall will still offer the most acceptable history of Greece. He presents all the important facts, arranged in orderly and intelligible sequence; he is critical, without being exigently acute; he is a mild antidote to Mitford; he is never betrayed into extreme opinions, whether in regard to the mysterious Pelasgi, or to the measures of politicians. It is not possible to fix upon him the imputation of either Philo-Laconism or Philo-demism. Medio tutissimus ibis,' is his motto; and it is a device which in these days will attract shoals of followers in any branch of inquiry. Admirable as this prescription may have been as a caution to Phaethon in driving the horses of the sun, it is not the surest path to truth in estimating the motives and policy of the contending factions which struggled for supremacy in the Greek cities, or in determining the historical enigmas connected with ancient Greece. Without a decided choice, it is impossible to establish any communion of feeling with the actors in the great drama of Greece, in which every change was intimately connected with intense personal action and virulent personal opposition, and in which the remarkable unity of popular sentiments produced the closest interdependence between all questions, mythological or political; antiquarian, religious, legendary, literary, or philosophical. In studying the chronicles of such a people, there is no prospect of approximating to a just judgment by endeavouring to discover a compromise between dissenting tenets, and by seeking a steady footing at the imaginary centre of an oscillating equilibrum. Yet this is, in great measure, the course pursued by Thirlwall, and approved by those who are content with his delineations. Such labours obviously invite further competition. In a classical, or even satisfactory history of Greece, the nineteenth century should require such an exhibition of the successive and varying phenomena, as would enable us to comprehend clearly and sympathetically the whole process of Greek civilization. The origin of the race and of its institutions, may be hopelessly concealed in the darkness of unrecorded time for every nation passes through a long twilight and a gradual dawn, of which no accurate traditions are preserved-but, after the simple acceptance of the earliest facts of their history, the further development of the people should be represented in such a manner that we may perceive how every separate change was generated by, or, at least, in strict accordance with, the previous phases of their fortune, and the concomitant influences of their genius and position. The actions, and the social changes, which modified the career of the separate nationalities composing the Hellenic aggregate, should be presented as the results of the general laws of historical progress, transpiring under certain definite conditions; and the history of Greece should exhibit the regular sequence and evolution of natural effects from recognized laws. It is only recently that history has attempted to assume this scientific form. Mr. Grote is entitled to the credit of being the first to treat the history of Greece in accordance with these elevated considerations; and to this mode of contemplating the ages and race described, he is largely indebted for the fulness, verisimilitude, and sagacity of his delineations. The Positive Philosophy of Comte has won the admiration, and has secured, we have reason to believe, the adhesion of Mr. Grote. We continually discern in his pages the spirit, and sometimes the peculiar views of Positivism. Whatever objections may be justly entertained to that scheme of speculation as a complete and exclusive interpretation of the mysteries of the universe, its distinguished author has given eminent aid to the due appreciation of social problems and historical phenomena, by analysing the processes of human evolution, and insisting on the necessity of recognizing the regular operation of uniform laws in the successions of national change. If, at times, Mr. Grote yields to the infection of M. Comte's philosophical and theological heresies, and espouses opinions more consonant with their special aim than with the acknowledgment of the Divine government, the general effect of his inclination to Positivism has been to enable him to expound the movement of Greek civilization with a coherence, harmony, and perspicacity entirely foreign to the labours of his predecessors, and competent to redeem from tedium his awkward style, his constant neoterisms, his Hellenic and Teutonic involutions of expression, and his endless dissertations. His work bristles throughout with heresies of all sorts-heresies philosophical, heresies theological, heresies political, heresies historical, heresies philological, heresies æsthetical, heresies literary, and heresies biographical; but it is essentially a true portraiture of the Greek people, their feelings, motives, and achievements, and it presents the incidents of their history in an intelligible and luminous concatenation. The soil, the climate, and the seed being given, the history of Greece grows under Mr. Grote's pen like a selfexpanding, self-determining organism. This is a triumph, not merely different from anything accomplished by any of his predecessors, but very far superior to anything they have imagined. Ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα : "The song descends from Jove." An elaborate exposition of the early theology and legendary story of Greece, forms a grand and appropriate introduction to the main history of the Greeks. This occupies the whole of the first, and nearly half of the second volume, and includes a careful examination of the Homeric tion.* It may be too long, too minute, perhaps too intricate and confused; but, whatever its offences in these respects may be, and they could scarcely have been altogether avoided, it is a fitting vestibule to the temple. ἀρχομένου δ' ἔργου πρόσωπον χρὴ θέμεν τηλαυγές. ques But it is not simply as an ornament that it is admirable; it is useful also as an introduction. It inspires those emotions, sympathies, and associations, which are an indispensable preparation to the intelligent appreciation of the ancient Greeks. The intimate communion of the mythological and heroic legends of Greece, with the actions, the feelings, the literature, the art, the domestic and the public life of the Greeks, had been either insufficiently apprehended or imperfectly indicated by former inquirers. A real service is rendered by placing us in the position, and by the cradle of the Hellenic race, by recording the tales familiar to its infancy, and less tenaciously accredited in its riper years, and by infusing into our minds the delusive fancies and the superstitious imaginations which attended and coloured its carcer. We are thus put in sympathetic relation with the sentiments of the old and wondrous Hellenes: we are subjected to the breath of the same inspiration which rested in its plenitude upon them; we are initiated into the same creed, and made participants in the same mysteries which governed their development; and we are rendered sensitive to the operation of the long-forgotten influences which impelled their hopes, their fears, and their endeavours. The incessant and often undistinguishable communion of things, human and divine, constituted the rarefied atmosphere in which * Grote, Hist. Greece, pt. i, chap. xxi, vol. ii, pp. 118-229. We are disposed to assent to the views of Grote in regard to the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey. They are discreet and moderate, and accord with the conclusions of Fauriel. Mure's voluminous criticism (Crit. Hist. Lit. Greece, b. ii, chap. ii–xviii, vol. i, p. 176; vol. ii, p. 247) is inapposite, and defaced with continual fallacies, though marked by patient diligence. Pindar, Olymp. vi, vv. 3-4, ed. Bergkh. an ancient Greek habitually breathed.* Pantheism and Panhylism were not more characteristic of the Eleatic and Ionic schemes of philosophy than the combination of divinity and humanity was of the popular faith. It is impossible to separate these elements by any logical or philosophical device; no alchemy can overcome their mutual affinities, or precipitate the one without precipitating the other also. Hence, if the divine ingredient, albeit a vain poetic imagination, be at any time withdrawn in our interpretations, or obscured in our apprehensions, the motives and impulses by which the race was guided cease to be intelligible. The Greeks lived in frequent familiarity with their gods; their divinities attended them on their streets, accompanied them in their shady walks, visited them by day and by night, and aided or resisted their enterprises. Every breeze wafted a voice from heaven; every meteorological change imported a divine message; every convulsion of nature-and they were numerous and grand, especially in the earlier periods of their history+-revealed the physical intervention of a personal God. The streams were tenanted by divine shapes; the mountains were sacred as the habitual dwelling-place of gods; the seas were filled with naïads and attendants on the rulers of the great deep: the rustling leaves trembled with the whispers of Pan, or were brushed aside by Artemis and her hunting train; the separate trees of the forest sheltered celestial creatures within their rugged barks, like Tasso's enchanted woods. Supreme over all were the Olympic immortals, who condescended to mix and converse with men, and with the daughters of men; and whose progeny was more numerous than the natives of the skies. In the middle of the fifth century before Christ, Pindar enounced the popular creed, when he exclaimed,‡ Εν ἀνδρῶν, ἓν θεῶν γένος· ἐκ μιᾶς δὲ πνέομεν ματρὸς ἀμφότεροι. As late as the tenth century after Christ, the Venetian scholiast Μεσταὶ δὲ Διὸς πᾶσαι μὲν αγυιαί, πᾶσαι δ' ἀνθρώπων ἀγοραί· μεστὴ δὲ θάλασσα, Arati. Phænomena, vv. 2-5. The last hemistich is quoted by St. Paul, Acts xvii 28. Wachsmuth, Hist. Ant. Greece, § i, vol. i, pp. 1-4. Thirlwall, Hist. Greece, c. i, vol. i, pp. 34-42. Hermann, Pol. Ant. Greece, c. i, § 6, note 2, p. 13. Pindar, Olymp. vii, vv. 55–63, ed. Bergkh. Aristoph. Acharn. vv. 484-5, et Comm. ad loc. Thucyd. I, xxiii, cxxviii; III, Ixxxix. Ovid, Metamorph. xv, 296. Procopius, De Bello Gothico, iv, xxv, vol. ii, p. 594-5. Humboldt, Aspects of Nature, p. 216; pp. 262-6, ed. Bohn. Pindar, Nem. vi, vv. 1-2, ed. Bergkh, who dates its composition about A. D. 460 (01. lxxx); cf. Hesiod, Op. et Dier. i, v. 108. Orphica, ap. Clem. Alexandr. Cohort. ad Gentes, c. vii. Thucyd., v, cv. on the Iliad revealed the traces of the same persistent belief.* The Greeks claimed to be the children of the gods. In their estimation, their lineage ascended to Jove, or to the brothers of Jove. Every subdivision of the Hellenic name, and every illustrious family, traced back its pedigree to some hero who was recognized as the offspring of celestial blood. We reject the principal means of explaining the loftiest triumphs of Greek genius, and the noblest achievements of Greek gallantry, if we exclude from contemplation the heroic ancestry, and the incumbent divinities in whom they believed, and whom they emulated and enthusiastically loved, in consequence of their peculiar belief. Lifeless, indeed, are the rhapsodies of Homer, and the masterpieces of Attic tragedy, and of lyric song, if the celestial personages introduced are regarded as a conscious poetic fiction, and not as an earnest superstition. Ridiculous is the veneration anciently accorded to the Homeric poems, and absurd the influence ascribed, and ascribed with truth, to them, if they are not welcomed as the record of the actions of gods and demigods. Homer was the Greek Bible. Greek society was erected on the basis of Homer, as distinctly, if not as consciously and conscientiously, as the Jewish polity was raised on the sacred substratum of the Pentateuch. This is utterly incomprehensible, and its allegation is almost reprehensible, unless we enter into the feelings which inspired, sustained, and welcomed the ancient mythology of Greece. In the decay of heathenism, when the temples of the former occupants of Olympus were deserted by their votaries, or closed against them; when the effete dreams of Paganism were cherished by its forlorn adherents with the pertinacity of blind superstition, the anger of the offended gods was still recognized in the portents and miseries which attended the decline of the Roman empire, and the establishment of Christianity. The auguries and the lamentations of Zosimus, Lymmachus, and their pagan contemporaries, are utterly imbecile and inexplicable, unless we are previously familiarized with the daily faith of the Greeks in the legends of their mythology. As we ascend the stream of time, and depart further from the expiring embers of the superannuated religion, its connection with the career of its believers becomes more intimate and more influential. "I venture to forewarn the reader," justly says Mr. Grote,§ "that there will occur numerous circumstances in the after political life of the Greeks, which he will not comprehend unless he be initiated into the course of their legendary associations." Zeus, Poseidon, and Demeter were in * Schol. Venet. ad Il. i, v. 222, cited by Heyne. Grote, Hist. Greece, pt. i, ch. xvi, vol. i, pp. 446-450. Vide Grote, Hist. Greece, pt. i, ch. xx, vol. ii, pp. 57-118. |