AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE, WRITINGS. LONDON: H. G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE, WRITINGS, AND GENIUS OF HOMER.* THERE is a desire in the mind of man to become acquainted with the minutest particulars of the lives of those eminent individuals, whose works have been transmitted to us from former ages. We seek to become acquainted with the place of their birth-to know their parentagethe habits of their early youth, and their employment in after life; and in this we seem to be influenced by the wish to ascertain by what means they so much surpassed other men. It is gratifying to observe, that this curiosity almost entirely confines itself to the lives of those who have employed their genius for the instruction rather than for the destruction of mankind; so that the veneration for the name of Homer is greater than that for Achilles, Alexander, or any other hero which antiquity has produced: his name will live, and his works will be handed down to posterity, and celebrated in every age in which poetry shall be held in estimation. The present Essay is principally formed from the one published by Pope, and the articles Homer and Hesiod in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, to which we refer those who are desirous to inquire farther into the subject. It is not to be wondered at that envy should have been employed to lessen a name so illustrious, particularly in the absence of every authentic information. Some eminent scholars have doubted whether Homer composed all the works that bear his name, and others have even carried their incredulity so far as to question his very existence, and to assert that neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey is the work of a single mind; but that they are two collections of the songs of wandering rhapsodists, arranged for the first time at Athens, under the direction of Pisistratus, or his son. However, the poems of Homer are the most ancient of all the undisputed pieces which time has spared to us, at least if we admit them to be older than those of Hesiod; but they are generally considered as contemporary. Tradition has preserved the names of Linus, Orpheus, Musæus, and Eumolpus, as having adorned an earlier age; but as so little is known of Homer, it is not to be expected that any thing certain can be ascertained of them. It may however be presumed, that all preceding or contemporary writers were far inferior to him, and as it is doubtful whether the knowledge of writing was possessed in Homer's time, as he nowhere alludes to it, either in the Iliad or Odyssey, it is not surprising that their works should have perished, and that his should have endured. Real excellence, however first made known, is almost sure to be lasting; it appeals to natural beauty and truth, the taste for which is the same in every age, and depends not upon the caprice of fashion. It sinks deeply into the hearts of those who are able to feel it, and who are not very likely to allow it altogether to be forgotten. And from this we may find some consolation in believing that the works of the oldest bards of Greece would have been preserved if they had been worthy of that distinction. |