parallel passage in the 'Odyssey,' Book viii. verse 124, unless by supposing that the measure to be understood is the plethrum, so that if the mules go twice as fast as the oxen, the start which the heroes give Dolon would be fifty feet; and this distance accords with the rest of the story. We must be brief in pointing out the few changes which we would fain suggest in the 11th Book, that we may leave ourselves space for some observations on the beginning of the 12th Book, and for a concluding specimen. Because bronze cannot be made iridiscent, and for other reasons too long to enumerate, we believe that the six serpents on the breastplate of Agamemnon were of iron tempered to a dark hue. Verse 163, 'And in the dust a headless block he rolled,' is surely not a faithful translation of · ὅλμον δ' ὡς ἔσσευε κυλίνδεσθαι δι' ὁμίλου, which is to be understood of the head and not of the trunk, for what resemblance is there between the trundling of a saladbowl and the rolling of a man's body in the dust? On the words by Lucina sent,' in verse 311, we must observe that, though we entirely agree with Lord Derby as to his principle of rendering Greek proper names by their better-known Latin equivalents, and though Lucina has become familiar to us through Milton's line, we do not think that this form of the Latin Juno ought to supersede the μογοστόκοι εἰλείθυιαι of the Homeric creed. Why not call them the pain-engendering throes,' or if the personification is too bold, 'powers?' In verse 467 it will be sufficient to draw the translator's attention to the words 'increase the people's terror,' and to request him to compare them with the original. The best of us make these slips, and are thankful to have them pointed out. The beginning of the 12th Book is one of the most interesting passages in the poem, as affording at least some trace of the poet himself: 'While Hector liv'd, and Peleus' son his wrath So long the Grecian wall remain'd entire : But of the Trojans when the best had fall'n, Of Greeks, when some were slain, some yet surviv'd ; And Greeks, embark'd, had ta'en their homeward way, To sap the wall by aid of all the streams Scamander's Scamander's stream divine, and Simoïs, On this an old grammarian remarks, that Homer must have lived soon after the Trojan war, or he would not have been at such pains to account for the destruction of the wall, if the length of time had been a sufficient cause of its disappearance. His second remark is much more sensible, that the wall had never existed at all save in Homer's imagination. Indeed there is no other way of explaining this singular break in the narrative, and this reference to a time outside the poem, but by supposing that this subject, so unimportant to us, had some special interest to the poet. Now if we assume that those before whom he was to recite in the first instance, the audience for whom his poem was in fact composed, were as well acquainted with the Troad and its topographical features as himself, nothing is more natural than that having invented an additional landmark, he should afterwards be at great pains to show how it had disappeared. But if he thus addressed himself to those who were familiar with the Simois, and the Scamander, and the barrow of Achilles, and the tomb of Ilus, and the plain of Troy surging up to a bank before it shelved down into the sea, the place which he lived in could not have been very far from those scenes, and the cities which he first visited professionally must have been those, to the inhabitants of which all these objects were familiar; that is, they must have been Æolian cities. We believe that the first and innermost circle of his admirers were the men to whom the peaks of the Trojan Ida were daily visible; and that having first succeeded with those for whom the poem had local charms, he betook himself further southward, and sought fresh admirers at the festivals of the Ionian towns. If the reader will take the trouble to compare this observation with the admirable account given by K. O. Müller (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece,' vol. i. pp. 58-64), he will see how far the one confirms the other, and how far it modifies it. The specimen which we shall select in order to give an agree able able close to this article is the grand old speech of Sarpedon, the oldest composition that we know in which the sentiment 'Noblesse Oblige' is urged with heroic frankness. Pope, who thought this an admirable opportunity for beautifying his author, has made the son of Jove talk esprit like a French courtier. But we would recommend the reader of sound taste who desires some healthier movement than being dandled to death with antithesis and rhyme, to read the following version, and to judge whether its author has not rendered the speech with a great deal of that spirited simplicity with which he has translated the moral of it into his own public life. 'Whence is it, Glaucus, that in Lycian land. ART. V.-1. Private Diary of Travels, Personal Services, and Public Events, during Mission and Employment with the European Armies in the Campaigns of 1812, 1813, 1814; from the Invasion of Russia to the Capture of Paris. By General Sir Robert Wilson, C.M.T., Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, G.C. St. A. of Russia, C.C. St. G. of Russia, G.C.B.E. of Prussia, &c. &c. Edited by his Nephew and Sonin-Law the Rev. Herbert Randolph, M.A., of Baliol College, Oxford. 2 vols. London, 1861. 2. Life of General Sir Robert Wilson, Commander of the Imperial Military Order of Maria Theresa of Austria, &c. &c. From Vol. 117.-No. 233. Autobiographical I Autobiographical Memoirs, Journals, Narratives, Correspondence, &c. Edited by his Nephew and Son-in-Law, the Rev. Herbert Randolph, M.A., Oxon. 2 vols. London, 1862. THE publications which are represented by their titles at the not only by their intrinsic merits, but also, and in no unequal degree, by the period of deep interest with which they are connected, and the importance, still actively operating, of the principal transactions which they record. They comprise, in point of time, when taken together, the whole of that great struggle between England and France, which, beginning in the ninety-fourth year of the last century and terminating twenty-one years later with the first occupation of Paris, was only interrupted by the broken dreams of peace into which we were sulkily and mistrustfully drawn at Amiens. The period we refer to was almost immediately followed by those convulsive efforts at universal settlement on which the far-famed Congress of Vienna imposed a character of its own. The numerous volumes which have issued from the Press on matters relating to these times have not yet sufficed to drain so vast a theme, or to quench the thirst of public curiosity. No wonder. When we look back upon the immense interests at stake; the almost boundless theatre of their operation; the brilliant enterprises; the astonishing events; the colossal phantoms of power and glory; the volcanic changes, from which no country was free; their causes, their consequences, their complications; and amidst all these phenomena the portentous developments of human genius, energy, and passion, we cannot but feel the impossibility of so arranging, distinguishing, and penetrating the mass as either to give it a strictly-defined outline, or to obtain an exhaustive view of its component parts. Room is thus left for the natural workings of uncertainty and expectation. Fresh light may still be thrown upon some less vivid portion of the canvas. The eloquence or ingenuity of an historian may impart new colouring to well-known incidents and long-established characters. Above all, the memoirs of some distinguished eyewitness, reserved with considerate modesty, and bursting, as it were, from the tomb when least expected, like the flash from Michael Scott's vault when suddenly opened, may well inflame a curiosity which so many circumstances concur to keep alive. The records furnished by Sir Robert Wilson are emphatically of this description. They possess all the interest of contemporary narrative, together with those attractions which naturally belong to a lively perception of objects, a spirited style, and a noble train of sentiment; to say nothing of the frequent opportunities enjoyed enjoyed by their author of mingling with the most illustrious of his time in birth, talent, and action. а From the days of old Plutarch, our schoolboy friend, the inspirer of many heroes, down to those of our Nelsons, Pitts, and Wellesleys, even to the still later career of a Royal Prince, whose premature loss we are not yet weary of lamenting, biography has never failed to shed an additional charm over the department of history, and to give its transactions a stronger hold on our awakened memory. Viewed in connexion with some prominent individual who stirs our passions or enjoys our sympathies, whose evershifting fortunes command, as the case may be, our liveliest emotions of hope and fear, every scene and every incident assumes a deeper colouring and a more impressive aspect. Events themselves beam out with meaning and consistency in proportion as they are associated with individual motives and the vicissitudes of a single life, with instances of personal suffering or personal exertion, disappointment or success. Our minds are, perhaps, so constituted that the interest we take in objects or occurrences can hardly come home with full effect to our feelings unless it be pointed by individual agency. How tame are the landscapes and battles, even of a Claude or Loutherbourg, compared with those historical paintings by other great masters, where time, place, and circumstance seem to be concentrated and personified in some commanding figure, towards which they are all made harmoniously to converge! Hogarth's pictured tales of 'The Rake's Progress' and 'The Idle Apprentice' may be cited to exemplify the same idea. In Le Brun's grand representation of the Battle of Arbela, with what intense interest do we gaze upon the one resistless warrior, with the rushing bird of victory above his head, and full in front the chariot of Darius, whose countenance and attitude discover, without any undignified expression of terror, the consciousness of defeat, and the necessity of submission to an overwhelming destiny! We can imagine that those who are to come after us in the succession of generations will read with deepened emotion the story of Italy's national resurrection, whenever its various threads shall be twined into one golden cord. If these observations are founded in truth as regards biography in general, they can hardly fail to be received as more emphatically applicable to historical literature, when the hero of some great movement in the fortunes of a people, or in the minds of a generation, is himself the narrator of his own undertakings, the expounder of his own motives, the transmitter of contemporary events and actions, with all their varieties of concurrence or |