suaded that the whole is an ironical exposure of a spirit of conceit and affectation prevalent at the time. (See Schoell, Geschichte der Griechischen Litteratur, i., p. 511.) We have never been able to understand the grounds upon which critics have doubted that the bulk of the poems existed before the Hellenic immigration, commonly called the return of the Heraclidæ. 6 These are Mr. Coleridge's words: Heyne remarks, that, in the first place, a poet, who was cele. brating heroes of the Pelopid race, had no occasion to notice a revolution by which their families were expatriated and their kingdoms abolished; and next, which seems an insurmountable objection, that the Ionic migration took place sixty years later than the return of the Heraclidæ, yet that Homer was an Ionian, and a resident in, or at least perfectly conversant with, Ionian Asia, is admitted on all hands, and is indeed perfectly incontestable; and as he never notices this migration, though it was certainly a very remarkable event, and which he must have known, he may just as well, for other or the same reasons, have been silent on the subject of a revolution, by which that migration was caused.'-p. 65. Now, as to the first reason, it is difficult to believe that no hint should have occurred in the whole poems of the great revolution, which totally subverted the dynasties of the Peninsula; and it seems to us perfectly incredible, that the geographical allusions-which, we believe, invariably relate to the state of things existing before the Dorian immigration-should be unaccompanied by any explanations of any kind, connecting the former state of things with the more recent. Is it possible, that a reader can go through the second book of the Iliad, and believe that it was composed after the destruction of the Achæan predominance? Again, the objection which strikes Mr. Coleridge as insurmountable, really does appear to us to be altogether without weight. In the first place, we do not believe that the poems were composed by an Ionian Greek. If we must fix upon any branch, we should say that the author was an Achæan, in the sense in which the word would have been used from the time of the Achæan predominance at Mycena down to the Dorian immigration. It is, indeed, probable that he was familiar with that part of Asia which was ultimately called Ionia; but why are we to suppose that this could not have taken place before the Ionian or Æolian emigrations? Were those the first settlements of Greeks on the coast of Asia ? Such settlements, though perhaps not very large inundations of colonists or invaders, must have been common during the age to which the Iliad relates. Indeed, it does not appear improbable, that something of this sort should have been the consequence of the destruction of the Trojan empire. But, after all, the residence of the poet in Asia does not necessarily imply a settlement of his countrymen there; neither do we believe that any descendant of the Ionian colonists of Asia would have treated Athens with the neglect which is apparent in the Iliad, and which the Athenians of later days resented. Among the instances of similarity between the heroic manners and those described in the Old Testament, Mr. Coleridge mentions, that stoning seems to have been the Trojan punishment for adultery. The passage in Homer (y. 57) admits of another interpretation. Besides this, stoning was not a punishment peculiar to adultery in the Hebrew law. We think that we perceive a deficiency in the remarks upon the Homeric similes*. Those circumstances in the descriptions, which depend upon climate and other local peculiarities, might have been more distinctly pointed out. In some cases, a want of acquaintance with these peculiarities embarrasses our view of the poetry. After Ares is wounded by Diomedes, these lines follow : “Οιη δ ̓ ἐκ νεφέων ἐρεβέννη φαινεται ἀὴρ, II. Ε. 864. This we believe is descriptive of the usual prelude to a hurricane in a hot climate. Pope has been obliged to have recourse to a hornet, in order to give sufficient dignity to the comparison in the following passage: by means of which he has made the fourth line unmeaning, besides contributing, from his own stores, the absurdity of calling the hornet 'bold son of air and heat.' Ἐν δὲ βίην ὤμοισι καὶ ἐν γούνασσιν ἔθηκεν, II. p. 569. Any one who has lived in the islands of the Levant will be satisfied with the strength of a literal interpretation. * Mr. Coleridge gives Chapman's translation of some of these similes, but we are somewhat perplexed at finding the translator's long lines called anapæstic. If we may put long and short for accented and unaccented, they run thus, as we read them, occasional irregularities. We should be glad if this remark should attract the author's attention sufficiently to induce him to supply the want in his next edition; and the more so, because a work generally attributed to him contains some descriptions, the fidelity and spirit of which have never been surpassed in English prose. Mr. Coleridge disputes the correctness of a passage of Dr. Copleston, which asserts that Homer did not describe external nature abstractedly from human feelings and habits (affectibus et moribus). The assertion is perhaps too uncompromising, yet we believe it to be nearly correct. Mr. Twining has a passage to the same effect in the First Dissertation prefixed to his Translation of the Poetics*. The enjoyment of picturesque scenery, probably, belongs to an age in which associations have become more complicated than they can well be in an early state of society. Perhaps it will be found that in the literature of any country, the age in which natural beauties are described as objects of admiration in themselves, is preceded immediately by an age in which the associations, to which the pleasure may be traced, are expressly brought forward; when poets, instead of describing broad masses of shade and light, speak of cool shade and warm sunshine. As we go farther back, we find the gratification of the sense more palpably insisted upon. The softness and warmth of the bed,— κώεά τε, ῥηγός τε, λίγοιό τε λεπτὸν ἄωτον, the size of the chine of sheep, or goat, or fatted pig, rich with its unctuousness, τεθαλυῖαν αλοιφή,these are described with a particularity and zest, which seem to show what the objects were which, in the age of the Homeric poems, created the enjoyments for which we now have recourse to the passion for the picturesque. Natural beauties, which now excite in us pleasurable emotions, are no doubt described with the utmost truth in Homer; but how?—We believe, never for their own sake, but incidentally, and for the purpose of illustrating something else. If the similes in Homer were struck out, little description of natural objects would remain. That such is the progress of the taste for beautiful scenery may perhaps also be inferred from the order in which objects are selected for admiration. Last of all-perhaps not before the formation of tolerably good roads, and the establishment of comfortable inns-comes the admiration of precipices, glaciers, and pine-forests. How long have even the western Highlands of Scotland, and the magnificent mountains and lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland, been objects of admiration in Britain ? P. 44, &c.-Ed. 1812. We differ altogether from the view which Mr. Coleridge takes of the Homeric morality. There is much, we allow, that is of a transcendently noble and generous character;' in other words, gallant and fearless spirits are exhibited, as everything else is exhibited in Homer, with perfect truth. But is there, or, at any rate, did the original hearers of the Iliad believe that there was,-morality in Hector's contempt of the auguries? We suspect that neither they, nor the author, saw in this famous passage anything but a brave and imprudent defiance of good advice, justifiable only by the press promise of Zeus. To pass to the next instance: Achilles says, that he detests a man who says what he does not think, instead of what he does think. This,' says Mr. Coleridge, may well give us a very exalted notion of the poet's own moral feeling.' It is indeed characteristic of the bold and haughty temper of Achilles, but it has nothing to do with an abhorrence of deceit; it is only an expression of his scorn for civil speeches, and of his own determination to speak plainly. The context, and the occasion of the speech, show beyond all doubt that this is the effect of the passage. Pope's translation, indeed, supports Mr. Coleridge's interpretation; but this is only one instance, among the thousand, of Pope's unrivalled dexterity in inverting his author's meaning : 6 'Who dares think one thing, and another tell, My heart detests him, as the gates of hell. Surely, Odysseus was not represented as an immoral character for his want of veracity: his skill in deceiving is one great beauty in his character, just as, in the Bhagavat-Gita, the mighty Krishna, among other excellences with which he identifies himself, says that he is-not only the Ganges among rivers and the Meon among mountains, but alsogambling with dice among frauds *. Yet Mr. Coleridge, at another place (p. 179), declares that, both in the Iliad and Odyssey, honesty and veracity are commanded and set up for imitation, and treachery and falsehood condemned and exposed for our scorn and avoidance. Another instance, adduced by Mr. Coleridge in proof of the Homeric morality, is found in the passage where Achilles asks whether the Atridæ are the only persons who like their bedfellows (aλóxous); putting the case of Briseis on the same footing with that of Chryseis and Helen. Every man of spirit and sense likes, and regrets the loss of, his own, just as I too liked this woman from my soul, though she was won by the spear.' This, to be sure, is a fair argument in the mouth of * Quarterly Review, vol. xlv., p. 11. Achilles; but that it is utterly unconnected with the approbation of that conjugal fidelity which we now prize so justly, seems clear from the way in which it is introduced, as well as from the close of this scene in the tent: Αὐτὰρ Αχιλλεὺς εἶδε μυχῷ κλισίης ευπήκτου" Τῷ δ ̓ ἄρα παρκατέλεκτο γυνὴ τὴν Λεσβόθεν ἦγεν, Πάτροκλος δ ̓ ἑτέρωθεν ἐλέξατο· πὰς δ ̓ ἄρα καὶ τῷ, κ. τ. λ. Still there are moral lessons to be learned from the Homeric poems; not because the characters exhibited, or the few maxims uttered, are moral in our sense of the word, but because whatever gives a true representation of human nature in any state, may be made morally instructive to those who look from the vantage ground of a purer and holier system. It certainly is not a very moral feeling which is contained in such lines as the following: Τῷ μήτις πρὶν ἐπειγέσθω οἴκονδε νέεσθαι, Πρίν τινα πὰρ Τρώων ἀλόχῷ κατακοιμηθῆναι, Yet these pictures must be looked at and understood, if we are to learn the history of human nature, a learning without which no moral education can be complete. There is some very good advice respecting the nonsense which the old grammarians and lexicographers have written on the subject of the Homeric dialects. But in the account which Mr. Coleridge gives of the Greek national families, there are omissions which should be supplied. In the first place, Hellen and his mythical descendants are spoken of as if they were ascertained historical personages. We do not suspect Mr. Coleridge of entertaining this notion himself; but it would have been advisable to inform his readers, that these legends, at the utmost, contain nothing historical beyond the traditions of old national affinities. Again, we are told of Pelasgic, Æolian, Ionian, Doric, and Attic; but of that which is most to the point, Achæan, nothing is said. By comparing the introduction to the Achaica of Pausanias with the early chapters in Thucydides, we learn how that state of dynasties arose to which the Homeric poems relate. Archander and Architeles are clearly names designating the leaders of troops, like those which (as we know from Thucydides) in later times established the Hellenic ascendency. Metanastes is also a significant name, as Pausanias himself has pointed out. In the peninsula, we have the Argivi and the Danai spoken of, (names which belong to the Pelasgians and the colonists,) and the Achæi besides, who seem to have |