the formation of the phrases, the collocation of the words, the figurative diction, the animation of inanimate nature, whatever else distinguishes poetry from prose, is introduced, in its most perfect mode, into the poems of Homer. The universal opinion of all ages has acknowledged these to constitute the true poetical character, and no succeeding age has improved on any of them. Was he, then, the inventor of them ?-This exceeds human power. Was he preceded by other bards, upon whom he refined, and whom he transcendently excelled? Then,what has become of these antecedent poets?

To solve these difficulties, the Reminiscent begs leave to suggest a conjecture, in which he has sometimes indulged himself;-that there existed in central Asia a civilized and powerful nation, in which the Sanscrit language was spoken, and the religion of Brama prevailed; this, the initiated might reconcile, by emblematical explanation, with philosophy; but, in the sense in which it was received by the people at large, it was the rankest idolatry; -that, comparing what the writers on India, Siam, China and Japan, relate of a celebrated man, whom they severally call Budda, Sommonocoddom, Fohi and Xaha, we have reason to suppose that he was the same person, and a reformer of the Sanscrit creed and ceremonial;-that his reformed system may be called Buddism: that this still prevails in Tartary, China, and numerous islands in the Indian Archipelago; but that Sanscritism still exists in Hindûstan; that either before or after the Buddistic schism, and not far from the era usually

assigned to the fabulous ages, the Sanscritans spread their doctrines and languages, though not their castes, over the countries which lay to their west, so that,

the course of time, they became the religious creed and language both of Greece and Italy; that civilization and the arts and sciences flourished at this period among them; that those, who introduced them into Greece, were called the Pelasgi; that those, who introduced them into Italy, acquired the appellation of Hetruscans; that, by degrees, the Sanscrit was moulded into the Greek language; that from the Greek it degenerated, in Italy, into the Latin; that this state of things continued in Greece, till the irruption of the Dorians and Heraclidæ into Peloponnesus, about eighty years after the Trojan war; and in Italy, until the period usually assigned for the foundation of Rome, when, from some unknown event, the glories of Hetruria were considerably impaired; that, after the settlement of the Dorians and Heraclidæ in Peloponnesus, but while the former traditionary learning of Greece was still remembered, Homer wrote; that, in the confusion which followed this event, the memory of Homer and the preceding and contemporary poets was lost; and that the minor poets never revived, but that the supereminent merit of Homer buoyed up his strains against the overwhelming waves of time, and restored them to celebrity.

This conjecture receives some countenance from the opinion generally entertained by the ancients, that Homer acquired his knowledge in Egypt, and the Egyptians theirs from India; and from the

system of Sir William Jones* respecting the identity of the Indian, Grecian and Italian deities :-Among these, if we believe Dr. Milne †, we should include the national deities of China.-It is also said by Sanscrit scholars, that there are strong marks of affinity between the languages of these nations, and that something even which resembles the Greek and Roman metres, is discoverable in Sanscrit poetry..

But, whatever opinions may be formed on the points which have been mentioned, no doubt can be entertained of the supreme merit of the Homeric poems.

In one respect-the strong and exquisite delineation of character-Homer has, unquestionably, excelled all other writers. His heroes constitute nearly all the genera into which mankind can be divided; the species of them he left to his followers. Sometimes, however, he descends to these, and then his pencil is equally powerful and distinct. All the principal actors in his poems have the heroic port, and therefore inspire awe; but they are all human, and therefore interest by their successes and misfortunes.

Here, Virgil, miserably fails. With the With the exception of Dido, and perhaps of Turnus in his latest hour, he has scarcely introduced into the Æneid a personage who either imposes by the grand, or

* In his excellent dissertation upon this subject in the "Asiatic Researches."

+ See his " Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Pro"testant Mission to China,"an interesting work, printed at the Anglo-Chinese press in Malacca.

interests by the amiable features of his character. Æneas is worse than insipid :—he disgusts by his fears, his shiverings, and his human sacrifices: and, in his interview with Helen, while Troy was on fire, he is below contempt. Amata, however, is Virgil's crime he had invested Dido with grandeur; he might have made Amata lovely; and, as he had excited our admiration for the Tyrian queen, he might have drawn our tears for the daughter of Latinus.

It must be obvious to every reader that Homer's women are infinitely preferable to Virgil's; but it is not a little remarkable, that the women of Ossian are equal in grace, and superior in delicacy and feminine tenderness to both. The icicles on Dian's temple are not more pure, more chaste than they. This seems to the Reminiscent to afford a strong, but, in his opinion, a solitary argument, in favour of the authenticity of the poems which describe them *.

The "Paradise Lost" did not admit the discrimination of character, or excitement of feeling, which the Iliad contains; and in this respect is necessarily its inferior. But the ability with which Milton struggled with this overwhelming difficulty is prodigious, and may justify our asserting the

* The magic of exquisite poetry is, perhaps, nowhere more conspicuous than in the description of Dido's silent and indignant scorn of Æneas in the Stygian regions, and her return to Sichæus. Stript of the charm, with which it is invested by the poet, the scene is disgustingly ludicrous; but, as it is related by Virgil, it rises to sublimity. If the whole adventure on the Tyrian shore had been told by an ordinary poet, the widower and the widow would always have been in view, and been comic.

*

equality of the poets, while we admit the inequality of the poems. Perhaps neither the Latin nor the English epic contains any insulated passage which can be compared with the description of the Mourner at the Scæan gate, or with,-perhaps the very noblest effort of the epic muse,-Priam's begging the body of Hector :-to these only, Milton's descriptions of Satan in his first book, and some scenes in which he introduces Adam and Eve, are inferior. Yet, there is no part of Homer which we read with more pleasure than the second, fourth and sixth books of Virgil. The story of Nisus and Euryalus is exquisite; but is it not exceeded by the nightadventures of Ulysses and Diomedes, in which we hear every step, and feel every breath? Homer's language is uniformly idiomatic: Is not Virgil's occasionally too highly polished? polished? Does it not sometimes cease to be Latin? Has not the poem of Lucretius, have not the hexameters of Catullus, and the epistles of Horace, more of the true raciness of the Latian soil?

The Reminiscent recollects the little real admiration with which, when he was at Douay, he read the Olynthiacs and Philippics of Demosthenes, and

* One fancied scene, however, of common life—the prison interview between Jeannie Deans and Effie, in the Heart of Mid Lothian-has been described with such exquisite pathos, that, if it were lawful to weigh heroes and ordinary mortals in the same scales, it might be compared with this wonder of Homer's muse, and not suffer by the comparison. No judge of good writing ever approached the pages which contain it, without a fear of the author's failure; none has perused them without astonishment at the felicity of the execution.