67354

UNIVERSITY

PURCHASED FROM
CAMBRIDGE PUBLIC LIBRARY

10 MARCH 1948

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCXVII.

JANUARY, 1834.

Vol. Xxxv.

Contents.

.

SOTHEBY's HOMER. The Odyssey. No. I.,

1

EDMUND BURKE. Part VII.,

27

REMINISCENCES OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, AT St Helena. By A LADY, 48

VOYAGE FROM LEGHORN TO CEPHALONIA, AND NARRATIVE OF A Visit, in

1823, TO THE SEAT OF WAR IN GREECE. By J. H. BROWNE, Esq.

Part I.

56

HINTS TO THE AristoCRACY. A RETROSPECT OF FORTY YEARS, FROM

THE FIRST OF JANUARY, 1834,

68

PASSAGES FROM THE DIARY OF A LATE Physician. CAAP. XV. The

BARONET'S BRIDE,

81

The Hindu DRAMA. No II. The Tor-cart,

122

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I.

B

IN POOLSCAP OOTAVO,

SCENES AND HYMNS OF LIFE;

A VOLUME OF SACRED POETRY,

BY FELICIA HEMANS,

II.

IN ONE VOLUME, QUARTO,

MEMORIALS

OF THE

LINEAGE, LIFE, AND WRITINGS,

OF

JOHN NAPIER OF MERCHISTON,

ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND AND OF SCIENCE,

COMPILED FROM HIS FAMILY PAPERS, AND OTHER ORIGINAL SOURCES.

A COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE

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It is expected that the Work will not exceed Ten Volumes, O:tavo. Each Volume will consist of Three Parts; one Part to be published each alternate inonth. Subscriptions to be intimated to the Publisher, Mr BLACKWOOD, George Street, Edinburgh, and to all the other Booksellers in town and country,

The Iliad was written by Homer. an Eidolon begotten by the imagiWill Wolf and Knight tell us how it nation on the air of night, or some happened that all the heroic strains night-like day, and is visible but to about the war before Tros; poured his own frightened father. Now, forth, as they opine, by many bards, Achilles was an Apparition; and his regarded but one period of the siege? seer was a blind old man, with a front By what divine felicity was it that like Jove's, and a forehead like all those sons of song, though apart Olympus." All power was given in time and place, united in chanting him in that dreadful trance;" and the wrath of Achilles ? The poem is Beauty and Terror accompanied the one-like a great wood, whose simul- Destroyer. He haunted Homer, who taneous growth overspreads a moun- no longer knew that he had bimself taia. Indeed one mighty poem, in created the sublimest of all Phanprocess of time, moulded into form toms. But the Muse gave the maout of separate fragments, composed ker command over his creature ; by a brotherhood of bards-not even and, at the waving of his hand, the coeval-way be safely pronounced imaginary Goddess-born came and au impossibility in nature.

went obedient, more magnificent Achilles was not the son of many than any shadowy form that at the sires; nor was the part he played bidding of sunlight stalks along written for him by a succession of mountains into an abisme of clouds. " eminent hands,” all striving to find The Odyssey-also and likewise fit work for their common hero. He -was written by Homer, and the is not a creature of collected tradi- proof lies all in one word-Ulysses. tions. He stande there-a single con. — There he is—the self-same being ception-in character and in achieve. as in the Iliad, and the birth of one ment;-his absence is felt like that brain. Had Homer died the day he of a thunder cloud withdrawn behind said, “And thus they celebrated the a hill, leaving the air still sultry';- obsequies of Hector the Tamer-ofhis presence is as the lightning in Horses,” before no mortal eye would sudden illumination glorifying the have stood on the threshold of his whole field of battle. Kill, bury, and own hall, pouring out from his quiforget him, and the Iliad is no more ver all the arrows at his feet, that an Epic.

vision of a ragged beggar, suddenly No two men at the same time ever transfigured into an Avenger more yet saw a ghost; because a ghost is glorious far than Apollo's self transVOL. XXXY, NO. CCXVII.

A