expressions too strictly. From their praise I have felt a cheering consolation, which, though I have little reason to be in good humour with the world, has given in my sight new colours to existence here. I know, indeed, that I am too anxious to possess, as well as to deserve, their favourable opinion. And that he who thinks me careless of a good name, or not morbidly alive even to the whispers of calumny, is marvellously ignorant of the nature of my irritable disposition. It has been my lot, if not innocently, at least by a very pardonable indiscretion of pen, to make enemies; of whose life, it has, in return, become the future business to traduce and blacken me. Lost in my books, or in distant speculations, I live in hourly danger; unprotected, and undefended; while these wretches are always at their post, and working in the mine. In this gloom the praise of more impartial and more intelligent judges is all I have to lighten me; and to give me a chance of counteracting these deeds of darkness. I cannot conceal how anxious I am to retain this consolation. Sept. 21, 1807. No XVII. TO THE RUMINATOR. SIR, WHEN the concurrent opinion of all ages, ancient as well as modern, concerning the merits of Homer, are considered, I trust I shall not be deemed to have merely had recourse to a schoolboy's common-place-book, in venturing to express my admiration of him. If he was in the opinion of Horace (judice te non sordidus auctor naturæ verique) as great in morals and philosophy, as he is universally allowed to be in poetry; if as an historian, a geographer, a soldier, and even a physician, i no succeeding writer in the most improved and polished age, has equalled his fame; and what the Roman poet said of his Jupiter may justly be applied to him, nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum; surely any dissertation which may tend to make him better understood, can hardly be thought foreign from the purpose of a literary work. Perhaps, therefore, you will not consider that portion 4 i In the original and proper sense of the word, 'algos ins cluded every branch of the art of healing. of your CENSURA, which is appropriated to rumination, disgraced by the admission of an attempt to elucidate the meaning of a passage of the ancient bard, which still remains doubtful and obscure, though it has been explained in several different ways. In the third volume of Harmer's "Observations on Scripture," the ingenious and learned author gives some few specimens of his manner of applying to the classics, as well as to sacred history, illustrations taken from travels into the countries where the scene of action lay. In one of these he endeavours to explain the meaning of a part of Hector's soliloquy in the twenty-second Iliad, line 126. &c, Hector has been deliberating whether he should meet Achilles unarmed, and offer him terms of peace; but suddenly recollecting the ferocity of his temper, and his implacable hatred, he exclaims, "but why do I employ my mind upon such thoughts, for he would kill me even though unarmed." Ου μεν πως νυν εστιν απο δρυος εδ' απο πείρης Παρθένος ηἴθεος τ' οαριζεῖον ἀλληλοισιν. In these lines is the difficulty; their literal translation is this. "For it is not possible now to converse with this man from an oak or from a rock, as a maiden and youth, as a maiden and youth converse with each other." Now it is certainly not very easy to comprehend what is meant by conversing from an oak or a rock, since young men and maidens are not wont to breathe out the tender tale" from oaks or rocks: nor does it seem to apply well to mere friendly intercourse. The Latin version is the same, and exactly literal, both in Didymus's, and in Clarke's Homer, and therefore throws no light on the subject. The old Greek scholiast in that edition which bears the name of Didymus, has a long note upon it to this effect: "There is no using such language towards Achilles, says Hector, as young men and women use in their conversation. The ancients when they found children who had been exposed near oaks or rocks, thought they were produced from them, and this gave rise to that opinion. For the ancients lived chiefly in the fields, and rarely possessed houses, so that the women who brought forth their children in the mountains, lodged them in the hollows of the oaks or rocks. In them they were sometimes found, and then supposed to have been produced from them. This is the account given by Didymus." Clarke has copied this note without making any addition to it; and Eustathius, as quoted by Pope, explains the passage in the same manner, and supposes it to have been a common proverbial expression for an idle old tale, and to have been used by Hector in this manner, "Achilles will not listen to such tales as may pass with youths and maidens." Pope himself renders the passage with his usual diffuseness; aut viam invenit aut facit; where the sense is not obvious, he uses no ceremony towards poor Homer, but gives a paraphrase of what appears to him to be the general meaning. In his version he glides smoothly over the difficulty, takes no notice of the repetition of παρθενος ηΐθεος τ', translates the preposition amo at, (a sense of which I believe it is incapable) and with the utmost sang froid, by one stroke of his magic pen levels the rock into a plain. k Harmer, with his accustomed copiousness of quotation, has brought together a variety of pas 1 "What hope of mercy from this vengeful foe, But womanlike to fail, and fall without a blow? Like youths and maidens in an ev’ning walk. * POPE'S HOMER. 1 No disrespect is here meant to Mr. Harmer, to whose diligent researches the Christian world is much obliged, and * It is indeed impossible for four more contemptible verses to have proceeded from a bellman. Editor. |