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THE

HERE is fomething in the mind of man, which goes beyond bare curiofity, and even carries us on to a fhadow of friendship with thofe great geniuses whom we have known to excel in former ages. Nor will it appear lefs to any one, who confiders how much it partakes of the nature of friendship; how it compounds itself of an admiration raised by what we meet with concerning them; a tendency to be further acquainted with them, by gathering every circumstance of their lives; a kind of complacency in their company, when we retire to enjoy what they have left; an union with them in thofe fentiments they approve; and an endeavour to defend them, when we think they are injurioufly attacked, or even fometimes with too partial an affection.

There is alfo in mankind a spirit of envy or oppofition, which makes them uneafy to fee others of the fame species feated far above them in a fort of perfecA

VOL.I.

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tion. And this, at least so far as regards the fame of writers, has not always been known to die with a man but to purfue his remains with idle traditions, and weak conjectures; fo that his name, which is not to be forgotten, fhall be preferv'd only to be ftained and blotted, The controverfy, which was carried on between the author and his enemies while he was living, fhall ftill be kept on foot; not entirely upon his own account, but on theirs who live after him; fome being fond to praise extravagantly, and others as rafhly eager to contradict his admirers. This proceeding, on both fides, gives us an image of the first descriptions of war, fuch as the Iliad affords; where a hero difputes the field with an army till it is his time to die, and then the battle which we expected to fall of courfe, is renewed about the body; his friends contending that they may embalm and honour it, his enemies that they may caft it to the dogs and vultures.

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There are yet others of a low kind of tafte, who, without any malignity to the character of a great author, leffen the dignity of their fubject by infifting too meanly upon little particularities. They imagine the part of an hiftorian to omit nothing they meet with, concerning him; and gather every thing without any diftinction, to the prejudice or neglect of the more noble parts of his character; like thofe trifling painters, or fculptors, who beftow infinite pains and patience upon the most infignificant parts of a figure, till they fink the grundeur of the whole, by finifhing every thing with the neatest want of judgement.

Befides thefe, there is a fourth fort of men, who pretend to divest themselves of partiality on both fides, and to get above that imperfect idea of their fubject, which little writers fall into; who propofe to themselves a calm search after truth, and a rational adherence to probability in their historical collections: who neither wifh to be led into the fables of fuperftition, nor are willing to fupport the injustice of a malignant criticifin; but, endeavouring to fteer in a middle way, have obtained a character of failing leaft in the choice of materials for hiftory, though drawn from the darkeft ages.

Being therefore to write fomething concerning a life, which there is little profpect of our knowing after it has been the fruitless inquiry of fo many ages, and which has however been thus differently treated by hiftorians, I fhall endeavour to speak of it not as a certainty, but as the tradition, opinion, or collection of authors, who have been fupposed to write of Homer in these four preceding methods; to which we alfo fhall add fome further conjectures of our own. After his life has been thus rather invented than written, I shall confider him historically as an author, with regard to thofe works which he has left behind him : in doing which, we may trace the degrees of esteem they have obtained in different periods of time, and regulate our prefent opinion of them by a view of that age in which they were writ.

I.

I. If we take a view of Homer in thofe fabulous traditions which the Stories of Homer admiration of the ancient heathens which are the efhas occafioned, we find them run- fects of extravaning to fuperftition, and multiplied, gant admiration. and contradictory to one another,

in the different accounts which are given with respect to Egypt and Greece, the two native countries of fable. We have one in Euftathius moft ftrangely framed, which Alexander Paphius has reported concerning Homer's birth and infancy. That " he was "born in Egypt of Damafagoras and Ethra, and

brought up by a daughter of Orus, the priest of "Ifis, who was herself a prophetefs, and from whose "breafts drops of honey would frequently diftil into "the mouth of the infant. In the night-time the "first founds he uttered were the notes of nine feveral "birds; in the morning he was found playing with "nine doves in the bed: the Sybil, who attended "him, ufed to be feized with a poetical fury, and "utter verses, in which fhe commanded Damafagoras to build a temple to the Mufes: This he per"formed in obedience to her infpiration, and related "all these things to the child when he was grown

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up; who, in memory of the doves which played "with him during his infancy, has in his works pre"ferred this bird to the honour of bringing Ambrofia "to Jupiter."

One would think a ftory of this nature fo fit for age to talk of, and infancy to hear, were incapable of being handed down to us. But we find the tradition again taken up to be heightened in one part, and carried forward in another. * Heliodorus, who had heard of this claim which Egypt put in for Homer, endeayours to strengthen it by naming Thebes for the particular place of his birth. He allows too, that a prieft was his reputed father, but that his real father, according to the opinion of Egypt, was Mercury: he lays, "That when the priest was celebrating the rites "of his country, and therefore flept with his wife in "the temple, the god had knowledge of her, and "begot Homer that he was born with tufts of hair " in his thigh, as a fign of unlawful generation, "from whence he was called Homer by the nations

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through which he wandered: that he himself was the "occafion why this story of his divine extraction is un"known; because he neither told his name, race, nor "country, being afhamed of his exile, to which his

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reputed father drove him from among the confecrat"ed youths, on accouut of that mark which their priests esteemed a teftimony of an incestuous birth." These are the extravagant ftories by which men, who have not been able to exprefs how much they admire him, tranfcend the bounds of probability to fay fomething extraordinary. The mind that becomes dazzled with the fight of his performances, lofes the common idea of a man in the fancied fplendor of perfection it fees nothing lefs than a god worthy to be his father, nothing less than a prophetefs deferving to be his nurfe; and, growing unwilling that he fhould be fpoken of in a language beneath its imaginations, delivers fables in the place of history.

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But whatever has thus been offered to fupport the claim of Egypt, they who plead for Greece are not to

* Heliod. Ethiop. 1. 3.

+ 'Oμngès, Femur.

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be accufed for coming fhort of it. Their fancy rose with a refinement as much above that of their mafters, as the Greek imagination was fuperior to that of the Egyptians: their fiction was but a veil, and frequently wrought fine enough to be feen through, fo that it hardly hides the meaning it is made to cover, from the first glance of the imagination. For a proof of this, we mention that poetical genealogy which is deliver'd for Homer's, in the * Greek treatife of the con-tention between him and Hefiod, and but little varied by the relation of it in Suidas.

"The poet Linus, fay they, was born of Apollo, "and Thoose the daughter of Neptune. Pierus of "Linus: Oeagrus of king Pierus and the nymph "Methone: Orpheus of Oeagrus aud the mufe Cal

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liope. From Orpheus came Othrys; from him Har"monides; from him Philoterpus; from him Euphemus; from him Epiphrades, who begot Menelops, the father of Dius; Dius had Heliod the "poet and Perfes by Pucamede, the daughter of Apollo; then Perfes had Mæon, on whole daughter Crytheis, the river Meles, begot Homer."

Here we behold a wonderful genealogy, contrived induftriously to raife our idea to the higheft, where gods, goddeffes, mufes, kings and poets link in a defcent; nay, where poets are made to depend, as it were, in clusters upon the fame ftalk beneath one another. If we confider too that Harmonides is derived from harmony, Philoterpus from love of delight, Eu-. phemus from beautiful diction, Epiphrades from intelligence, and Pucamede from prudence; it may not be improbable, but the inventors meant, by a fiction of this nature, to turn fuch qualifications into perfons, as were agreeable to his character for whom the line was drawn ; fo that every thing divine or great, will thus come together by the extravagant indulgence of fancy, while admiration turns itself. in fome to bare fable, in others to allegory.

After this fabulous tree of his pedigree, we may regularly view him in one pallage concerning his

* Αγών Ὁμήρε και Ησιόδειο

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birth,