*

They mention a race they had, called the Homeridæ, whom they reckoned his pofterity; they caft medals of him; they fhew to this day an Homærium, or temple of Homer, near Boliflus; and close their arguments with a quotation from the hymn to Apollo (which is acknowledged for Homer's by Thucydides) where he calls himself, "The blind man that inhabits Chios." The reader has here the fum of the large treatise of Leo Allatius, written particularly on this fubject †, in which, after having feparately weighed the pretenfions of all, he concludes for Chios. For my part, I determine nothing in a point of fo much uncertainty; neither which of thefe was honoured with his birth, nor whether any of them was, nor whether each may not have produced his own Homer; fince ‡ Xenophon fays, there were many of the name. But one cannot avoid being furprized at the prodigious veneration for his character, which could engage mankind with fuch eagerness in a point fo little effential; that kings fhould fend to oracles for the inquiry of his birth-place; that cities fhould be in ftrife about it, that whole lives of learned men fhould be employed upon it; that some fhould write treatifes; that others fhould call up fpirits about it; that thus, in fhort, heaven, earth, and hell fhould be fought to, for the decifion of a question which terminates in curiofity only.

If we endeavour to find the parents His. Parents. of Homer, the fearch is as fruitless.

Ephorus had made Mæon to be his father, by a niece whom he defloured; and this has fo far obtained, as to give him the derivative name of Mæonides. His mother (if we allow the story of Mæon) is called Crytheis: but we are loft again in uncertainty, if we fearch farther: for Suidas has mentioned Eume. tis or Polycafte; and § Paufanias, Clymene, or The misto; which happens, because the contefting countries find out mothers of their own for him. Tradition has in this cafe afforded us no more light, than what may ferve to fhew its fhadows in confusion;

Thucyd. lib. 3. Xenophon de Equivocis, § Paufanias 1. 10,

+Leo Allatius de patria Homeri. || Plut. vita Hom, ex Ephoro. they

they ftrike the fight with fo equal a probability, that we are in doubt which to chufe, and must pass the queftion undecided.

His Name.

If we inquire concerning his ow name, even that is doubted of.

*

Hé

has been called Melefigenes, from the river where he was born. Homer has been reckoned an afcititious name, from fome accident in his life: The Certamen Homericum calls him once Auletes, perhaps from his mufical genius ; and Lucian, Tigranes; it may be from a confufion with that Tigranes or + Tigretes, who was brother of queen Artemifia, and whofe name has been fo far mingled with his, as to make him be efteemed author of fome of the leffer works which are afcribed to Homer. It may not be amifs to close these criticisms with that agreeable derifion wherewith Lucian treats the humour of grammarians in their fearch after minute and impoffible inquiries, when he feigns, that he had talked over the point with Homer, in the island of the Bleffed. "I afked him, fays he, of "what country he was? A question hard to be refol"ved with us; to which he answered, He could not "certainly tell, because fome had informed him, that "he was of Chios, fome of Smyrna, and others of "Colophon; but he took himfelf for a Babylonian, "and faid he was called Tigranes, while he lived ་་ among his countrymen; and Homer, while he was a hostage among the Grecians."

His Blindness.

At his birth he appears not to have been blind, whatever he might be af terwards. The Chian medal of him, which is of great antiquity, according to Leo Allatius) feats him with a volume open, and reading intently But there is no need of proofs from antiquity for that which evės ry line of his works will demonftrate. With what an exactnefs, agreeable to the natural appearance of things, do his cities ftand, his mountains rife, his ri-vers wind, and his regions lie extended! How beautifully are the views of all things drawn in their figures,

* Lucian's true history, 1. 2.

Suidas de Tigrete,

‡ The medal is exhibited at the beginning of this essay.

and

and adorned with their paintings! What addrefs in action, what vifible characters of the paffions infpirit his heroes! It is not to be imagined, that a man could have been always blind, who thus inimitably copies nature, and gives every where the proper proportion, figure, colour, and life: "Quem fi quis cacum genitum putat (fays * Paterculus) omnibus fenfibus orbus eft." He muft certainly have beheld the creation, confidered it with a long attention, and enriched his fancy by the moft fenfible knowledge of thofe ideas which he makes the reader fee while he but defcribes them

66

As he grew forward in years, he was trained up to learning if we cre

His Education

dit + Diodorus) under one "Prona- and Mafter.

pides, a man of excellent natural endowments, who " taught the Pelafgic letter invented by Linus."

་་

When he was of riper years, for his His Travels. farther accomplishment and the gratifi

cation of his thirst of knowledge, he spent a confiderable part of his time in travelling. Upon which account, Proclus has taken notice that he must have been rich: "For long travels, fays he, occafion high "expences, and especially at thofe times when men "could neither fail without imminent danger and in", conveniences, nor had a regulated manner of com"merce with one another." This way of reasoning appears very probable; and if it does not prove him to have been rich, it fhews him, at least, to have had patrons of a generous fpirit; who obferving the vastnefs of his capacity, believed themselves beneficent to mankind, while they fupported one who feemed born for fomething extraordinary.

Egypt being at that time the feat of learning, the greatest wits and geniufes of Greece ufed to travel thi ther. Among thefe | Diodorus reckons Homer, and to ftrengthen his opinion, alledges, that multitude of their notions which he has received into his poetry, and of their customs, to which he alludes in his fic

Hom,

Paterculus, 1. 1.
Diod, Sic, 1. 1.

+ Diod. Sic. 1. 3.

Procl. vita

tions fuch as his Gods, which are named from the first Egyptian kings; the number of the Mufes taken from the nine Minstrels which attended Ofiris; the feaft wherein they used to fend their ftatues of the deities into Ethiopia, and to return after twelve days; and the carrying their dead bodies over the lake to a pleafant place called Acherufia near Memphis, from whence arofe the tories of Charon, Styx, and Elyfium. Thefe are notions which fo abound in him, as to make* Herodotus fay, He had introduced from thence the religion of Greece. And if others have believed he was an Egyptian, from his knowledge of their rites and traditions, which were revealed but to few, and of the arts and customs which were practised among them in general; it may prove at least thus much, that he must have travelled there.

As Greece was in all probability his native country, And had then began to make an effort in learning, we cannot doubt but he travelled there alfo, with a particular obfervation. He ufes the different dialects which are spoken in its different parts, as one who had been converfant with them all. But the argument which appears most irrefragable, is to be taken from his catalogue of the hips. He has there given us an exact geography of Greece, where its cities, mountains, and plains, are particularly mentioned, where the courfes of its rivers are traced out, where the countries are laid in order, their bounds affigned, and the ufes of their foils fpecified. This the ancients, who compared it with the original, have allowed to be fo true in all points, that it could never have been owing to a loofe and cafual information: even Strabo's account of Greece is but a kind of commentary upon Homer's.

We may carry this argument farther, to fuppofe his having been round Afia Minor, from his exact di

* Ἡσίοδον γὰρ καὶ Ὅμηρον ἡλικίαν τετρακοσίοισι έτεσι δοκίν μὲν πρεσβυτέρες γενέσθαι, καὶ ὅ πλέοσι ὗτοι δέ εισι οἱ ποιήσαν τες θεογονίην Ἕλλησι, καὶ τοῖσι θεοῖσι τὰς ἐπωνυμίας δόντες, καὶ τιμὰς τε καὶ τέχνας διελόντες, καὶ εἴδεα αὐτῶν σημῆναντες. Herodot. 1. 2.

vilion of the Regnum Priami vetus (as Horace calls it) into its feparate Dynafties, and the account he gives of the bordering nations in alliance with it. Perhaps too, in the wanderings of Ulyffes about Sicily, whofe ports and neighbouring islands are mentioned, he might contrive to fend his hero where he had made his own voyage before. Nor will the fables he has intermingled be any objection to his having travelled in thofe parts, fince they are not related as the history of the present time, but the tradition of the former. His mention of Thrace, his description of the beasts of Lybia, and of the climate in the Fortunate Islands, may feem alfo to give us a view of him in the extremes of the earth, where it was not barbarous or uninhabited. It is hard to fet limits to the travels of a man, who has fet none to that defire of knowledge which made him undertake them. Who can fay what people he has not feen, who appears to be verfed in the cuf toms of all? He takes the globe for the scene on which he introduces his fubjects; he launches forward intrepidly, like one to whom no place is new, and appears a citizen of the world in general.

When he returned from his travels, he feems to have applied himself to the finishing of his poems, how ever he might have either defigned, begun, or pursued them before. In these he treasured up his various acquifitions of knowledge, where they have been preferved through many ages, to be as well the proofs of his own industry, as the inftructions of pofterity. He could then defcribe his facrifices after the Æolian manner; or his leagues with a mixture of Trojan and Spartan ceremonies: He could then compare the confufion of a multitude to that tumult he had obferved in the Icarian fea, dafhing and breaking among its croud of islands: He could reprefent the numbers of an army, by thofe flocks of fwans he had feen on the banks of the Cayfter; or being to defcribe that heat of battle with which Achilles drove the Trojans into the river, he could illuftrate it with