which, like the magnificent redundancy of their rabes, gave an air of grace and dignity to every step and movement of the Poet.

In any age or country, the work of such a genius must have commanded the admiration of men; but among the Greeks, yet fresh from the hand of nature, and undebauched by the vicious refinements of polished life; amongst the Greeks, still warm with the salutary prejudice of the love of their Country, and that exalted national pride, that never yet harboured in an ignoble bosom; among the Greeks, where "the tale of Troy divine" was not considered as a romance, nor poetry as the mere amusement of literary indolence; where the bard was regarded as the favourite of heaven, and his song as the spontaneous effect of inspiration;* among the Greeks, it is

no wonder if the Poems of Homer were believed to be the result of revelation, and their author a superior being, vix humanâ stirpe creatus, and entitled to divine honours.

For ages, then, the Iliad and Odyssey were the exclusive objects of the admiration of Greece; and the sentiments, they contained, were imbibed, mingled, and assimilated, in the minds of the natives. They were read with avidity, recited with enthusiasm, and heard with more than religious veneration; and the consenting testimony of succeeding generations has confirmed the correctness of that judgment, which pronounced the Poet without a rival as he had been without a model, in his art.

*

* Clarissimum deinde Homeri illuxit Ingenium, sine exemplo maximum. Qui magnitudine operis, et fulgore carminum SOLUS appellari POETA MERUIT. In quo hoc maximum est, quod neque ante illum, quem ille imitaretur, neque post illum, qui eum imitari posset, inventus

est.

Such testimony, Roman testimony too, against Virgil's claims to rivalship with Homer, is very formidable.

To this circumstance, as to its primary and efficient cause, I am inclined to ascribe the proud ascendancy of the Greeks, over all the other Nations of the Globe. For, as the chisel of the sculptor, struck forth the Olympian Jove from the divine prototype exhibited in the Iliad, so was the character of his countrymen formed and perfected by the genius of Homer. It was the genius of Homer that conducted the hand of Pheidias and Apelles; that inspired the drama of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; that thundered from the tongue of Demosthenes; and that shattered the Persian power in the plains of Marathon Platea.

The subject of the Iliad is as simple in its design, and obvious in its moral, as it is magnificent in its execution. Divided into a number of independent states, Greece, for the first time, saw them combined, for one great national purpose, to avenge, on Asiatic insolence, the injury done to one of her princes, exemplifying, by their success, the immense advantages of union, and the policy of

e

*

considering an injury to an individual, as an insult to the community at large. The poet omits no opportunity to inculcate this important truth; and Nestor, while he boasts, with the garrulity natural to an old man, of the superior merit of his own contemporaries; yet, with the candour of a wise one, acknowledges that no sceptered king had ever so much HONOUR, as Agamemnon, whatever GLORY Jupiter might have bestowed upon him; a distinction in terms evidently implying, that the pre-eminence of "the King of men" was owing to no other cause, than the union of the several Grecian powers under his command,

But the uniform success of almost ten years' and the grandeur of Agamemnon, founded on the unbroken confederacy of those powers, are at

war,

επει ουποθ ̓ ὁμοίης ἔμμορε τιμῆς

Σκηπτούχος βασιλεὺς, ωτε Ζεὺς κῦδος ἔδωκεν.

once destroyed, by the baleful influence of Discord. An insult offered by the Monarch to the bravest of the Greeks is followed by the latter's withdrawing himself from the Coalition; an insult, which, as it reflects disgrace, so it inflicts calamity, on the whole army. The people, as must ever be the case, suffer for the vices of their rulers; in the frenzy of pas sion, the young Thessalian prefers a rash prayer to heaven; and, that no part of this divine poem might want its moral effect, the very accomplishment of that prayer, while it gratifies his revenge, carries with it a just punishment for the impiety of the imprecation. This is no far-fetched thought- -the moral is put expressly in the mouth of the Hero, who, amidst all his transports of sorrow for the death of his friend, by a sudden, but sublime and natural transition, adverts to the true cause of all those calamities:*___"c may Discord," exclaimed Achilles,

* Ὡς ἔρις ἔκ τε θεῶν, ἔκ τ' ανθρώπων ἀπόλοιτο,