to their place of rest enveloped in the clouds of night, and full of years, but finishing their race with glory, and followed by the ever-during love and sympathy of an admiring world.

Of a privation thus associated with the first among the sons of men, and which, while felt as the heaviest of inflictions, was yet endured with singular magnanimity and resignation, the circumstances, both moral and physical, must ever be considered as affording a subject of peculiar interest.

That HOMER was blind in his old age, has been the tradition and the belief of all antiquity, nor is there wanting testimony, both direct and indirect, in the works of the poet himself, to the truth of the popular ascription.

In the Hymn to Apollo, of all the minor poems attributed to Homer, the one which carries with it the strongest evidence of authenticity, the bard has expressly mentioned his own blindness. It is of this hymn, which the accurate Thucydides has quoted, in the first book of his history, as a genuine production of Homer, that the judicious Bergler has observed, in the pre

face to his edition of the Odyssey and smaller poems, "that no one can render it suspected by me, unless he could persuade me, that his authority was of more weight than that of Thucydides; a writer of all others the farthest from vanity, nor very remote from the time of Homer." *

In this beautiful composition, worthy of the genius of the venerable bard, occurs the following passage, immediately addressed to Latona and her offspring, Apollo and Diana, whose festival, annually held at Delos, was frequented by a vast concourse of people from every quarter of Ionia and its neighbouring islands.

"Hail, heavenly powers, whose praises I sing; let me also hope to be remembered in the ages to come: and when any one born of the tribes of men, comes hither a weary traveller, and enquires, Who is the sweetest of the singingmen that resort to your feasts, and whom you most delight to hear? Then do you make answer

* It should also be stated, that Pausanius has likewise cited this hymn as an undoubted work of the Grecian bard.

for me, it is the blind man that dwells in Chios. His excel all that can e'er be sung."

songs

As it may be satisfactory to my readers, to see the original of the lines marked by italics in this literal translation, I shall insert them, together with a passage from a nearly contemporary poet, and which must be deemed strikingly illustrative of their import and authenticity.

Τίς δ ̓ ἔμμιν ανηρ ήδιστος ΑΟΙΔΩΝ
Ενθαδε πωλεῖται ; καὶ τέω τέρπεθε μάλιςα;
Τυφλὸς ἀνήρ· οικεῖ δὲ Χίω ενι παιπαλόεσση
Τα πᾶσαι μετόπιθεν αειςευέσιν ̓Αοιδαί.

It appears to me, that there cannot be a more decisive comment on this question and reply, than what is contained in the following lines just alluded to from Hesiod, preserved by an anonymous scholiast on Pindar. They assert, in fact, that Homer was in the habit of making voyages to Delos, for the very purpose mentioned in the hymn; and that such an hymn, and of Homer's composition, was then in existence.

* Translated by Blackwell, in his "Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer," 2d edition, p. 110.

Εν Δήλῳ τότε πρῶτος ἐγὼ Όμηρος ̓Αοιδοί
Μελπομεν εν νεαροις ὕμνοις ῥαψαντες ἀοίδην,

Φοῖβον ̓Απολλωνα χρυσάιρον, ὅν τεκε Λητώ.

Of this hymn to Apollo, an elegant version has been given to the public by the late poet laureat, Mr. Pye; and the passage in question, together with the immediately subsequent lines, which speak of the poet's extensive wanderings, and of the celebrity of his muse, it would be doing injustice to the subject not to insert.

Hail, Phoebus and Latona! Dian, hail!

O let your votary's fervent prayers prevail !
And when in future times some pilgrim hoar,
Wandering, shall reach this sea-encircled shore,
And ask what mortal now, with heavenly fire,
Strikes with his skilful hand the warbling lyre,
What dulcet voice is this to which belong
Powers to entrance you with its godlike song?
O may you answer with applausive smile –
'Tis the blind bard of Chio's rugged isle,
The unrivalled merit of whose glorious strain
Succeeding times shall emulate in vain.
Thus I, through every seat of man's abode,
Through every track by human footsteps trod,
Bold in the truth, my native worth proclaim;
My verse alone the herald of my fame,

Ne'er shall my votive lay forget to sing
Fair-hair'd Latona and the Archer-king. *

To a character and profession, such as were those which we are taught to attribute to Homer, the loss of sight must have been, at first, felt as one of the most distressing of privations; for he was accustomed, as we are told by all who have written on the early ages of Greece, to travel to the courts of kings and chieftains, as one of the AOIDOI or Rhapsodists; a class of men which, as uniting in their persons the arts of poetry and music, was held in the highest

esteem.

During what has been termed, indeed, the heroic ages of Grecian history, the Aoidos or Bard formed one of the principal pillars of society. He was equally necessary at the festival and at the altar; beneath the tent of the warrior, and at the domestic hearth; and his office was, in fact, no less than, as the poet himself has told us, to delight both gods and men.

Θεοισι και ανθρωποισι αείδειν.

Sharpe's edition of the Minor poems of Homer, translated by Parnell, Hole, and Pye, p. 72.