At sea,

O Father, by thy chastening hand that now is laid on me,
In weakness and in wandering upon this wintry sea,

In absence from thy holy house, to which I loved to go,
And from my home, my happy home, and them who make it so,

By all this discipline of thine - all which, I know, is just
Shall I be made a wiser man, and worthier of my trust?
An answer, O my guardian God, thy wisdom will prepare;
And what thy wisdom shall appoint, it will be mine to bear.

Sunday, 14th February, 1836.

HOMER, AND EPIC POETRY.

MUCH has, in all ages since he lived, been written respecting Homer. After the multitudes of commentaries which have illustrated his works, and the great number of critics who have elucidated his merits and his defects, there still remain a few gleanings to reward the industry of a humble laborer in that extensive vineyard.

It need scarcely be stated in the outset, that the works of Homer are far from being polished and perfect specimens of the art of poetry. They are considered by all who are willing to regard them favorably, as affording proofs of stupendous genius. But they were undoubtedly the work of a rude age, and exhibit many of the faults which arise from the want of critical skill, in the use of his materials, and from the infant state of the art in which he was the first great practitioner. There existed then no critical rules by which he could be guided, and but few, if any, specimens which could serve as examples to direct him. He drew from the resources of his own powerful genius, from the impetus of his own natural emotions. Carried along by these guides, he composed poems which have often been excelled in judgment of selection and discrimination, in smoothness, polish, and correctness; but never have, and in all probability never will be excelled, in grandeur of conception, in matchless simplicity of diction, as well as several others of the most essential qualities of a great poet.

One of the most striking instances of the decided superiority of Homer to almost all other poets, is his faithful and consistent representation of character. No other poet whatever introduces his readers so completely to an intimate acquaintance with all the personages that appear in his works. We become as familiar with the heroes of the Iliad as if we saw them acting, and heard them speaking in real life. They come in and act before us, each in his appropriate character, so that we seem to have lived for years in intimacy with them, and can never mistake the speeches and actions of one for those of another.

There appears in his writings a vast variety of characters, and they all act their part with the utmost propriety and discrimination. Virgil, who far surpasses Homer in judgment and elegance of taste, falls far below him in the extensive representation of character. His descriptions are grand, the situations of his principal personages interesting and pathetic in the utmost degree; but he introduces but comparatively few characters that are minutely and clearly discriminated. At the same time, nothing can be better executed than the characters he

has brought forward, as nothing can exceed the grandeur or the interest of the situations into which he has brought them.

But the circumstance which appears to me most worthy of particular notice in the works of Homer, is the general truth of his narrations and descriptions. I am well aware how paradoxical this assertion will appear, when compared with the fabulous structure that is considered as essential to epic poetry, and especially of Homer's epics as a series of fables. In what view then, it will be asked, do I assign truth as a characteristic of these poems? They contain true descriptions of the manners and of the opinions of those ages. In this respect they are even more valuable in a historical than in a poetical view. They are the sole remaining records of man, in these ancient times, that we have obtained through the hands of that nation, and they are every way worthy of close attention.

The manners he describes, are undoubtedly the manners of the people among whom he lived; the sentiments he ascribes to his heroes, are those of his countrymen; and the religious opinions and impressions he puts into their speeches, contain the theological creed of the men of that primitive race.

Homer did not, like Virgil, undertake to describe the actions of men who had lived a thousand years before, whose manners it was therefore necessary to borrow from more ancient authors; nor, like Milton, attempt to describe those of another race of beings, whose manners he must therefore invent from his own fertile imagination. He describes to us the manners which he saw existing, and characters, which had been handed down through only three or four generations, and whose actions had therefore not been too much deformed by fable, or obscured by long tradition. If he lived, as is generally supposed, about a century and a half after the period of the great events which he describes, he then lived just at the time, or at that degree of remoteness from it, which is calculated to give the greatest interest to the events narrated, without obscuring them in the mists of fable, to any great degree.

At all events, he describes the actions of his heroes as they were reported by his countrymen, and at a time when the same manners were still followed, and perfectly understood.

Doubts have been entertained, indeed, as to the reality of the events described in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but without any very certain evidence. But even if I were to admit that the actions and events were all fabulous, this would not detract from the authenticity of Homer as to his descriptions of manners and of sentiments. His evidence will still remain unimpeachable as to all that we would wish to know of the religious impressions, as to the moral persuasions, or to the modes of thinking, and acting, and reasoning, which characterized the men of that distant age.

The same remark applies to the whole of the arts, and knowledge, and domestic habits of that remote race. It is in the works of this Father of Poetry alone, that we can obtain any information of these interesting particulars. His testimony, as far as it goes, may be received with complete security. The private life and domestic economy he describes, are those he witnessed, and those he practised. They describe the life led by those among whom he lived, and by whom he was surrounded.

The following passage, for example, taken from the sixth book of

the Odyssey, deserves attention not only for its poetical beauties, but likewise for the picture which it affords of the simplicity of ancient manners, of female industry, and domestic economy:

Now came bright charioted Aurora forth

And waken'd fair Nausicaa; she her dreams
Remembered wondering, and her parents sought,
Anxious to tell them. Them she found within:
Beside the hearth her royal mother sat,
Spinning soft purple, with sea purple dy'd,
Among her menial maidens; but she met
Her father, whom the nobles of the land
Had summon'd, issuing forth to join
The illustrious chiefs in council. At his side
She stood, and thus her filial suit preferr'd:

'Sir, wilt thou lend me of the royal wains
A sumpter carriage? for our costly robes,
All sullied now, the cleansing stream require :
And thine especially, when thou appear'st
In council, with the princes of the land,
Had need be pure. Thy sons are also five,
Two wedded, and the rest of age to wed,
Who go not to the dance unless adorn'd
With fresh attire - all which is my concern.'

So spake Nausicaa; for she dared not name
Her own glad nuptials to her father's ear,
Who, conscious yet of all her drift, replied:

'I grudge thee neither mules, my child, nor aught
That thou canst ask beside. Go, and my train
Shall furnish thee a sumpter-carriage forth,

High-built, strong-wheeled, and of capacious size.'

The whole of that book, containing the discovery of Ulysses, in his miserable flight after his shipwreck, to Nausicaa and her female attendants, and his proceeding with them to the palace of her father, is peculiarly worthy of perusal. It may be remarked that the translation of Cowper, from its strict idiomatical English, and freedom from all attempts to improve upon Homer, gives a much closer and better representation of the original than that of Pope. No writer, since the time of Addison, is so strictly and purely Anglican, as Cowper.

An instance of the liberties which Pope has taken in modernizing his author, we have in the first book of the Odyssey. Homer represents Jupiter as reproving the wilfulness of mankind in charging their crimes and misfortunes upon the gods, according to the absurd practice of the heathens, in which they are but too closely imitated by ignorant and unthinking persons among ourselves, who bring the same charge against fate or destiny. Jupiter is introduced in the original, saying among the heavenly powers:

How strangely mankind act, while they ascribe to us their misfortunes, which arise more frequently from their preposterous rashness! As for instance, Orestes brought destruction upon himself, after having first murdered Agamemnon, and seduced his wife.' This is rendered by Pope:

'Perverse mankind, whose wills created free,
Charge all their woes on absolute decree;
All to the dooming gods their guilt translate,
And follies are miscall'd the crimes of fate."

*The more recent translation by Sotheby, is entitled to great praise.

Here, beside the manifest loquacity ascribed to the ancient poet, an allusion is absurdly introduced to the disputes of philosophers and theologians of following ages, respecting free will, and absolute decrees.

The works of Homer abound to excess with tales of the most extrava gant and incredible kind. In this he followed the credulous state of the human mind during the pristine ages of society. If he had done otherwise, he might have been more pleasing to philosophical readers; but he would not have presented us with a faithful picture of his countrymen and contemporaries.

It is rather singular that the practice of Homer, who was in this case guided by the strictest regard to propriety, has been followed by the great majority of epic poets who had no justifiable reason for this imitation. In doing so, they did not correctly describe the sentiments of their contemporaries.

In all other departments of poetry, the writer entertains no doubt of creating interest, if he can only succeed in bringing forward apt descriptions of natural scenes, of human passion, and human feeling and character. He limits his invention to probable and possible situations; and never dreams that he can increase the interest of his piece, by travelling beyond the bounds of probability, and introducing his hero into scenes that never could exist.

Above all, considering the great lights of modern times, it seems peculiarly unsuitable to load the productions of the modern epic muse with the whole machinery of ancient gods and goddesses. These are perfectly proper and suitable in the works where they originated; but, to say the least, exceedingly misplaced in a poem describing the sentiments and feelings of modern nations, in which they are not even believed by the vulgar.

Among the ancient writers of this description, Lucan is the only one who has not judged it necessary to make use of the same incredible machinery with Homer. He has entirely discarded the battles, and quarrels, and intrigues of the gods. He has, with the greatest propriety, retained the superstitious observance of dreams and omens, because these were still objects of peculiar reverence to his countrymen and contemporaries, and calculated to produce no slight influence on public affairs. Along with these ornaments of his narrative, he has joined lively talent for geographical description, farther enlivened by frequent allusions to ancient history, and the struggles for the liberties of mankind, that had given lustre to many of the fields through which he traces their extinction among the Romans. When to all these is added the description of the deepest feelings of the human mind, in the most arduous of all struggles, we cannot wonder that he has succeeded in producing an admirable poem without the aid of incredible machinery. He has been blamed, but without sufficient reason, for choosing a theme too recent for the introduction of fable. He knew how to create interest, by strong feelings and ardent passion, in the case even of late events.

Even among the moderns, the generality of those who have aimed at possessing a name among epic writers, have still thought it necessary to adopt the incredible machinery* which, with all its extravagance,

was exceedingly proper in the hands of Homer. Tasso is censurable in this respect; and the fault is more glowing, by being mixed up with a great deal of Christian theology.

The Lusiad of Camoens, otherwise a poem of great merit and uncommon interest, is exposed to this censure in no small degree. The error of this author is the less excusable, as his poem is founded on a modern event, which occurred at a time when the belief in the power of Bacchus, Venus, and Mercury, could not possibly have any influence on the actions of men.

The Epigoniad is professedly written in imitation of Homer, and therefore we are not surprised at finding the same machinery employed. And the use of it is the more reasonable, because the scene is laid in the siege of Thebes, at least a whole generation anterior to the war of Troy, at a time when the marvellous mythology of Greece was at the height of its extravagance, and at the height of its motive power.

In the Leonidas written by Glover, and in the Henriade by Voltaire, the machinery of the marvellous is entirely laid aside; and the lovers of the simplicity of Nature will generally admit that the omission is greatly to the advantage of these beautiful poems. In the Leonidas, the two great superstitions of oracles and omens have their appropriate place, as possessing a conspicuous influence on the actions, and consequently on the destinies of the heroes engaged. Both these poems deserve to be more read.

The most celebrated production of the epic muse, in English, is unquestionably Paradise Lost.' It has been generally admitted to excel all works of the same kind, ancient or modern, in sublimity. The structure of the fable is also, for the most part, regular; and many portions of it are eminent for pathos. The verse is for the most part extremely smooth and musical; and, in not a few places, majestic. Those who agree, or nearly agree with the theological sentiments of the author, will admit the structure, scenes, and incidents to be perfectly consistent with probability; unless, perhaps, we except the battles of the angels, which are too material for the contentions of spiritual beings. Yet it would be difficult to say, how else they could have been imagined. Imagination was here stretched to the utmost limits of her power. Milton's poem has the singular advantage of being in the highest degree marvellous, without being in any great degree improbable.

In one point of view, this poem possesses a higher dignity than is aimed at by any other of the same description. It is to be considered not only as a poetical effusion of the highest order, but as an attempt to satisfy the great philosophical inquiry which has occupied the utmost ingenuity of men in all ages that which respects the origin of evil. That this was the intention of the work, we learn from the close of the invocation, of which the majestic cadence has been felt by every discriminating ear, though the intimation which it gives of the author's intention, appears to have been sometimes unobserved.

*

This intention, according to the generally received systems of theology, has been served, and the account clothed in the highest beauties of poetry.

And justify the ways of God to man.'

D. W.