́moral is most directly framed for ethics. It carries the hero through a world of trials both of the dangerous and pleasurable nature. It fhew him first under most furprising weights of adverfity, among fhipwrecks and favages; all thefe he is made to pass through, in the methods by which it becomes a man to conquer; a patience in fuffering, and a prefence of mind in every accident. It fhews him again in another view, tempt ed with the baits of idle or unlawful pleasures; and then points out the methods of being fafe from them. But if in general we confider the care our author has taken to fix his leffons of morality by the proverbs and precepts he delivers, we fhall not wonder if Greece, which afterwards gave the appellation of wife to men who fettled fingle fentences of truth, thould give him the title of the father of virtue, for introducing fuch a number. To be brief, if we take the opinion of † Horace, he has propofed him to us as a master of mora lity; he lays down the common philofophical division of good, into pleasant, profitable, and honeft; and then afferts that Homer has more fully and clearly inftructed us in each of them, than the most rigid philofophers. Some indeed have thought, notwithstanding all this, that Homer had only a defign to please in his inventions; and that others have fince extracted morals out of his ftories (as indeed all ftories are capable of being ufed fo). But this is an opinion concerning poetry, which the world has rather degenerated into, than begun with. The traditions of Orpheus's civilizing mankind by moral poems, with others of the like nature, may fhew there was a better ufe of the art both known and practifed. There is alfo a remarkable paffage of this kind in the third book of the Odyffey, that Agamemnon left one of the poets of thofe times in his court when he failed for Troy; and that his queen was preserved virtuous by fongs, until Ægyíthus was Qui quid fit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, qu'inon, HOR. Ep. 2. 1. 1. *Odyff. 3. v. 267. E 2 forced forced to expel him in order to debauch her. Here he has hinted what a true poetical spirit can do, when applied to the promotion of virtue; and from this one may judge he could not but design that himself, which he recomends as the duty and merit of his profeffion. Others fince his time may have feduced the art to worfe intentions; but they who are offended at the liberties of fome poets, fhould not condemn all in the grofs for trifling or corruption; especially when the evidence runs fo ftrongly for any one, to the contrary. We may in general go one to obferve, that at the time when Homer was born, Greece did not abound in learning. For where-ever politics and morality are weak, learning wants its peaceable air to thrive in. He has however introduced as much of their learning, and even of what he learned from Egypt, as the nature and compass of his work would admit. But that we may not mistake the eulogies of thofe ancients who call him the father of arts and Sciences, and be furprised to find fo little of them (as they are now in perfection) in his works; we fhould know that this character is not to be understood at large, as if he had included the full and regular systems of every thing: He is to be confidered profeffedly only in quality of a poet this was his bufinefs, to which as whatever he knew was to be fubfervient, fo he has not failed to introduce thofe ftrokes of knowledge from the whole circle of arts and fciences, which the fubject demanded, either for neceffity or ornament. And, fecondly, it fhould be obferved, that many of thofe notions, which his great genius drew only from nature and the truth of things, have been imagined to proceed from his acquaintance with arts and fciences, invented long after; to which that they were applicable, was no wonder, fince both his notions and thofe fciences were equally founded in truth and nature. Before his time there were no hiftorians in Hiftory. Greece: he treated hiftorically of past trans◄ actions, according as he could be informed by tradition, fong, or whatever method there was of preferving their memory. For this we have the confent of Antiquity; they have generally more appealed to to his authority, and more infifted on it, than on the teftimony of any other writer, when they treat of the rites, customs, and manners of the first times. They have generally believed that the acts of Tydeus at Thebes, the fecond fiege of that city, the fettlement of Rhodes, the battle between the Curetes and the Ætolians, the fucceffion of the kings of Mycena by the fceptre of Agamemnon, the acts of the Greeks at Troy, and many other fuch accounts, are fome of them wholly preferved by him, and the reft as faithfully related as by any hiftorian. Nor perhaps was all' of his invention which feems to be feigned, but rather frequently the obfcure traces and remains of real perfons and actions; which, as * Strabo obferves, when history was tranfmitted by oral tradition, might be mixed with fable before it came into the hands of the poet. "This happened (fays he) to Herodotus, the "firft profeffed hiftorian, who is as fabulous as Homer when he refers to the common reports of coun"tries; and it is not to be imputed to either as a fault, but as a neceflity of the times." Nay, the very paffages which caufe us to tax them at this distance with being fabulous, might be occafioned by their diligence, and a fear of erring, if they too hastily rejected thofe reports which had paffed current in the nations they described.. 66 66 Geography Before his time there was no fuch thing as geography in Greece. For this we have the fuffrage of Strabo, the best of geographers, who approves the opinion of Hipparchus and other ancients,that Homer was the very author of it; and upon this account begins his treatife of the feience itfelf, with an encomium on him. As to the general part of it, we find he had a knowledge of the earth's being fur-rounded with the ocean, because he makes the fun and stars both to rife and fet in it; and that he knew the ufe of the ftars is plain from his making Ulyffes fail by the obfervation of them. But the inftance ofteneft alledged upon this point is the fhield of Achil- les; where he places the earth encompaffed with the fea, and gives the ftars the names they are yet known by, as the Hyades, Pleiades, the Bear, and Orion. By the three first of these he reprefents the constellations of the northern region; and in the laft he gives a fingle reprefentative of the fouthern, to which (as) it were a counterbalance) he adds a title of greatnefs, oftros 'giavos. Then he tells us that the Bear, or stars of the arctic circle, never difappear; as an observation which agrees with no other. And if to this we add (what Eratofthenes thought he meant) that the five plates which were faftened on the fhield, divided it by the lines where they met, into the five zones, it will appear an original defign of globes and fpheres. In the particular parts of geography his knowledge is entirely inconteftable. Strabo refers to him upon all occafions, allowing that he knew the extremes of the earth, fome of which he names, and others he defcribes by figns as the fortunate iflands. The fame ** author takes notice of his accounts concerning the feveral foils, plants, animals and cuftoms; as Egypt's being fertile of medicinal herbs; Lybia's fruitfulness, where the ewes have horns, and yean thrice a-year, &c. which are knowledges that make geography more various and profitable. But what all have agreed to celebrate is his defcription of Greece, which had laws made for its prervation, and contests between governments decided by its authority: which † Strabo acknowledges to have no epithet, or ornamental expreffion for any place, that is not drawn from its nature, quality, or circumftances; and profeffes (after fo long an interval) to deviate from it only where the country had undergone alterations, that caft the descriptions into obfcurity. Rhetoric. In his time rhetoric was not known: that art took its rife out of poetry, which was nct till then established. "The oratorial elocution (fays Strabo) is but an imitation of the poetical; "this appeared firft and was approved: they who imitated it, took off the meafures, but ftill preserved 66 * Strabo, 1. 1. † Strabo, 1. 8. Strabo, 1. 1. "all tæus. * "all the other parts of poetry in their writings; fuch "were Cadmus the Milefian, Pherecydes, and HecaThen their followers took fomething more "from what was left, and at laft elocution defcended "into the profe which is now among us.' But if rhetoric is owing to poetry, the obligation is ftill more due to Homer. He (as Quintilian tells us) gave both the pattern and rife to all parts of it. "Hic "omnibus eloquentiæ partibus exemplum et ortum "dedit: Hunc nemo in magnis rebus fublimitatæ, "in parvis proprietate, fuperavit. Idem lætus et "preffus, jucundus et gravis, tum copia tum brevita"te admirabilis, nec poetica modo fed oratoria virtu"te eminentiffimus." From him therefore they who fettled the art found it proper to deduce the rules, which was eafily done, when they had divided their obfervations into the kinds and the ornaments of elocution. For the kinds, the "ancients (fays † A. "Gell.) fettled them according to the three which they obferve in his principal speakers; his Ulyffes, "who is magnificent and flowing; his Menelaus, who "is fhort and clofe; and his Neftor, who is moderate "and difpaflioned, and has a kind of middle elò-"quence participating of both the former." And for the ornaments, Ariftotle, the great mafter of the rhetoricians, fhews what deference is due to Homer, when he orders the orator to lay down his heads, and exprefs both the manners and affections of his work, with an imitation of that diction, and thofe figures, which the divine Homer excelled in. This is the conftant language of thofe who fucceeded him, and the opinion fo far prevailed as to make § Quintilian obferve, that they who have written concerning the art of fpeaking, take from Homer most of the inftances of their fimilitudes, amplifications, examples, digref fions, and arguments. As to natural philofophy, the age Natural philofo was not arrived when the Greeks cultivated and reduced into fyitem the phy. principles of it which they learned from Egypt: yet *Quintil. 1. 10. † Aulus Cell. 1. 7. cap. 14. Topic. Politian. Præfatio in Hom. Arift. we |