vient to one end. But does not this wonderful progression give reason to suspect a succession of bards, each of whom aspired to surpass his predecessors ?

The Odyssey, on the contrary, is characterised by a constant and perfect unity. Not only does every thing in it bear relation to the return of Ulysses, but the poet, in attaching our interest from the first book to Telemachus and Penelope, whom he paints to us as weak, defenceless, and oppressed by the suitors, obliges us from the begining of the poem to form wishes for the return of the father and the husband, whom they expect, and who alone can deliver them. We desire this arrival on account of the interest we feel for the youthful age of the son, of the respect with which the noble character of the mother inspires us, and of the hatred excited in our minds for the intemperate and brutal crowd of their rude persecutors.

The superiority, in point of art, which is conspicuous in the Odyssey, is also remarkable in some circumstances of less importance, but which deserve to be noticed. Much more care, işi shown to avoid repetitions than in the Iliad. Ulysses, under the roof of Alcinous, when in the narration of his travels he arrives at the incidents which the poet had related in the former books, breaks off, in order not to repeat a thing which had been already told. The idea also of commencing the poem in the middle of the action, in order to give occasion to the hero to recount his adven- : tures, and to vary the tone of the recital, is an improvement in the art1: all subsequent writers have adopted the same method.

Thus, on the one hand, in the Odyssey, the art of the poet is more conspicuous; on the other, the poetry of the Iliad is more brilliant, and indicates a younger and more vigorous epoch.

Are all these differences sufficiently accounted for by the supposition of Longinus, that the author of the Iliad, who was in his youth, or in the vigour of his age, when he wrote his first poem, composed the Odyssey in his old age? We think not. The question does not turn on a greater or less degree of boldness in conception, or of brilliancy of colouring; but on a fundamental variance in the entire system of the two epics, and in the divers matters of religion, manners, usages, condition of the women, and of civil and even political life,

No individual, be he in youth or in age, escapes the yoke of the period in which he lives. When that age happens to be a period of advanced civilization, the past may be imitated, but its spirit is not to be caught. By inhaling the social atmosphere which surrounds us, we make it part of ourselves: what we imbibe becomes identified with our existence; every word we e utter feels its influence, The knowledge of ancient monuments and of ancient opinions is the province of erudition: erudition instructs, but does not inspire us. She furnishes us with illustrations more or less happy, with

analogies more or less intimate, with allusions, with contrasts, but all these become impregnated with the times and with contemporary manners. Take Virgil by way of example. He fed, as it were, on Homer, and he studied the Etruscan traditions; yet he is neither Greek nor Tuscan. He is a Roman, the courtier of Augustus. We dare assert that it is no more possible that the Homer of the Odyssey could have written the Iliad, than that a Jew of Alexandria could have composed the Psalms of David, or the Book of Job..

We are forced, therefore, to devote a few pages to the examination of another hypothesis, notwithstanding the apprehension that in spite of our efforts to be concise we shall probably appear to have devoted too much space to this subject. It should be considered, however, in our justification, that the two epics attributed to Homer are the only poems which can be adduced as historical monuments. All the poets who wrote at periods of more advanced civilization, wrote for effect. They know the taste of their age; they have before them the treasures of past times; from these they cull at their convenience, according to the end they have in view, many without discernment, all without accuracy. The most faithful confine themselves to the embellishment of the manners they describe; but to embellish things is to change their nature. The date of their works, then, becomes a question purely literary.

The

This date throws light on the state of letters at the period when the respective writers flourished, but none at all on the truth of their pictures, if they treat of any age other than their own. Place the Eneid a hundred years earlier or a hundred years later than its true epoch, and your ideas will be changed as to the literary merit of that age; but you will know then, as you do at present, that a knowledge of the manners of the Trojans is not to be sought in the Eneid. The case is not the same with the Homeric poems. Iliad represents to us with accuracy the manners of a people such as the Greeks would be at the time of the Trojan war: but as the Odyssey transmits us details of a very different character, if we suppose the works to be written at the same time, or with an interval of a few years only, suspicion is thrown on the fidelity of both. The date of the Homeric poems is not merely important as a matter of criticism,-it is decisive evidence in the history of the human race.

Were it proved that the Iliad and the Odyssey are not by the same author, but, on the contrary, that the Odyssey is of an age subsequent to that of the Iliad, and belongs to a period of civilization much more advanced, all the differences which we have already noticed would be explained without difficulty. Let us see, therefore, if there be any thing in the monuments, or in the volumes of antiquity, to rebut this opinion.

Let us first of all observe, that the notion is not a novel one. The authenticity of the two poems attributed to Homer has ap

peared doubtful to learned men of every age. It has been attempted' to make the solution of this problem depend on that of one still more obscure, namely, whether in the time of Homer the art of writing was in usage. Many probabilities countenance the negative opinion on this point. But were that question decided affirinatively, no proof would thence result in favour of the authenticity of these poems.

In the first place, it would remain equally doubtful whether their author had written them. The difficulties which must have opposed the dissemination of the art of writing, or which must have sprung from the want of materials on which to write, are obvious. What a long interval must have elapsed between the first inscriptions rudely engraved in stone or brass, and the reduction to writing of works of a very different volume!

There exists among all nations, as a celebrated and learned man (Wolff) has observed, a fact which fixes the period at which the use of writing has become general,-this is the composition of works in prose. As long as they are wanting, we may conclude with safety that writing is little in use. In the absence of materials adapted for writing, verse is more easy to be retained than prose, and, under all circumstances, is also more easy of inscription. Prose has its origin immediately after the discovery of another instrument than memory to which men may trust for the durability of their compositions. Now, the first prose authors, Pherecydes, Cadmus of Miletus, Hellanicus, are of the age of Pisistratus, and consequently much later than Homer.

It may have been the case, then, that the two Homeric Epopees, during a long space of time, were transmitted by tradition only. Memory is a faculty which improves to an astonishing degree when its exercise is requisite, but which is lost with extreme rapidity when it becomes less necessary.

The example of the Bards, of the Scaldes, of the Druids, of the Hebrew Prophets, of the Caledonian Minstrels, and lastly, of the Improvvisatori of Italy, preclude all doubt of the truth of this assertion. The Sagas or traditions of the Scandinavians, who, from father to son, had preserved in their memory recitals abundant enough to fill whole libraries when the art of writing had become common in Scandinavia, are convincing proofs of the possibility of an oral preservation of the Homeric poems. The entire history of the North, says Botin, was preserved in unwritten poems. Our mode of social life, observes M. de Bonstetten, so disperses our faculties, that we can form no adequate idea of the power of memory of those semi-barbarous races of men, who, having nothing to distract them, made it their glory to recite in verse the exploits of their ancestors.

One fact is certain: so late as the times of Pisistratus, the Ho

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meric rhapsodies were recited separately by the rhapsodists in the public squares, and that usurper was the first person who had them collected and arranged in the order which appeared to him most suitable. In the same manner, Charlemagne caused the ancient Germanic poetry, until his time transmitted orally, to be collected. In like manner, the Arabs, about the seventh century, formed the collections, called Divans, of unwritten poems of preceding ages; and, in more modern times, Macpherson brought together the scattered poems, now known as the works of the Son of Fingal.

But is it possible that those rhapsodists, who, during several generations, sung the poems of Homer in detached morsels, can have avoided changing the order, corrupting the text, and confounding in their popular and theatrical recitations, the compositions of divers authors And the friends of Pisistratus, in forming a single poem from these scattered pieces, will they not have selected, arranged, and corrected them at their pleasure? Among the associates of a tyrant, who, without doubt, trusted all literary researches to his friends, since he must have found sufficient occupation for his attention in his usurpation, and in the artifices which usurpation entails; in the number of the associates of Pisistratus, we say, is found Onomacritus of Athens, who, a short time afterwards, was convicted and punished, for having inserted long and frequent interpolations in the works of Orpheus and of Musæus, (a fact not calculated to raise an advantageous opinion of his fidelity or of his scruples,) and who afterwards sold himself to the tyrants expelled from his country, to raise against his fellow-citizens another despot. From Pisistratus to the Ptolomies, who will pretend to tell us how many times these new castings, general or partial, were repeated?

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To the possibility that the Iliad and Odyssey have been, we do not say formed entirely, from rhapsodies collected at random, but in that manner considerably increased, the uniformity of style and of poetic colouring, are objected; but all the epic poems of the Greeks resemble each other in style as well as in dialect.. That of Hesiod, that of the battle of the frogs and mice, that of Quintus of Smyrna, differ, it is true, but almost imperceptibly, from that of Homer; and the superior rank of this last depends on the vigour of its conceptions, on the vivacity of an exhaustless imagination, much more than on any thing which may be called style.

This conformity in the manner of expression is a characteristic trait of the period of society in which the Homeric poems were composed. No one can read the poems of Ossian without being struck by their uniformity; and yet Ossian certainly was not one single bard. The individual character of writers is very late in showing itself. As long as the human mind is contending, as it were, against barbarism, there is in all styles a general resemblance. In this, as in all other things, extremes unite. The absence of civilization gives

to all individuals nearly the same tint; civilization in its state of progression develops their differences; but in the extreme of civilization these differences again disappear. The only variation between the effect of the extremes is, that what in the first case was the natural consequence of the circumstances of society, is in the second the result of wilful imitation; and what was uniformity in the one, becomes in the other monotony.

To these considerations might be added others drawn from our ignorance of the life of Homer. The stories related of his wretched and wandering existence, do not accord with the epoch assigned to him. The Homeric poems do not paint bards in such a state of degradation. Such debasement could only be produced by the decline and the fall of the Greek monarchies. In warlike and barbarous times, such as were the heroic ages of Greece, poets were ever held in the highest consideration, both by the kings and the people. We find a proof of this in all the historical monuments of the Scandinavians, who, in many respects, resemble the Greeks. But in proportion as civilization advanced, the life led by men becomes more laborious, and ideas of utility acquiring greater empire, poets lose their importance. They themselves are sensible of their decline, and they deplore it. Adopting the idea that Homer existed, it is impossible to explain how, in speaking of the minstrels, his predecessors, so well received and so well treated, he did not make 'some allusion to himself and to the difference of his lot.

No chance never produced, on the precise line which separates two states of civilization, one man capable of painting that which no longer existed, and that which was about to exist. Homer, like Hercules or Buddha, is a generic name.

The Homeric poems were the work of several bards, each of whom was the organ and representative of his age. Two, or perhaps three, primitive poems, may have arisen and served for a centre; but these poems have undergone several important transformations; several episodes have, by degrees, arranged themselves around them; and parts, foreign to them, have been inserted in each; and the date of these parts, of these episodes, and of the two poems, can be determined only by moral proofs. Of such, we distinguish irrefragable ones in the essential differences which distinguish the Iliad from the Odyssey; and, since these differences would be inexplicable if the two works are to be attributed to the same author, or to the same age, we must regard them as the productions of two distinct authors, and of two different ages,

We do not think, therefore, that, to the picture we have drawn of the first polytheism of the Greeks, the mythology of the Odyssey can be opposed. This poem belongs to an epoch posterior to polytheism.

Generally speaking, we must distinguish in the Homeric poems three sorts of mythology:

1: