supposing himself to be criticising in this passage the opening of the Iliad, and pointing out how undignified it is, why, he is sketching, without being aware of it, the plan of the whole poem-beginning, middle, and end. Is it all undignified together? If not, at what point, pray, does the meanness merge into the dignified, and the march begin of the majestical? "Such is the basis of the whole action of the Iliad," he continues, meaning thereby to say, that it is all as insignificant in itself as the opening with the quarrel of two chief tains about a female slave. "Hence," he well says, rose all those 'speciosa miracula,' as Horace terms them, which fill up that extraordinary poem; and which have had the power of interesting almost all the nations of Europe during every age since the days of Homer. The general admiration commanded by a poetical plan so very different from what any one would have formed in our times ought not, upon reflection, to be matter of surprise. For besides that a fertile genius can enrich and beautify any subject on which it is employed, it is to be observed that ancient manners, how much soever they contradict our present notions of dignity and refinement, afford, nevertheless, materials for poetry superior in some respects to those which are furnished by a more polished state of society. They discover human nature more open and undisguised, without any of those studied forms of behaviour which now conceal men from one another.) They give free scope to the strongest and most impetuous motions of the mind, which make a better figure in description than calm and temperate feelings. (They shew us our native prejudices, appetites, and desires, exerting themselves without control. From this state of manners, joined with the advantage of that strong and expressive style, which commonly distinguishes the composition of early ages, we have ground to look for more of the boldness, ease, and freedom of native genius, in compositions of such a period, than in those of more civilized times, And accordingly, the two great characters of the Homeric poetry are, Fire and Simplicity."

The one great original error of sup

posing that the subject-matter of the Iliad is in itself undignified, and that its poetical plan is, on that account, so very different from what any one would have formed in our times, runs through the whole of the passage we have quoted from Blair, and vitiates the philosophy of its criticism. Had any one in our times chosen the subject for an epic poem in the heroic ages of Greece, he would have been puzzled to find one different from that of the Tale of Troy Divine, unless, perhaps, he had been at once a Homer and a Shakspeare, and then there is no saying what he might not have done; and had any one in our times chosen to choose a subject from our times, or from any other times intermediate between that heroic and this unheroic age, he might have stretched his brain till the crack of doom, ere he had found one more dignified; even though the Iliad begins with the wrath of Achilles for sake of a female slave, Briseis, is conversant about the middle with his furious grief for loss of a male friend, Patroclus, draws to a close with the lamentations of two old people, Hecuba and Priam, and ends with the funeral rites of Hector the Tamer of Horses.

But making allowances for that first and fatal error, all must admit that Blair speaks truly and finely towards the close of the paragraph; and that he says as much in a few simple sentences, and more, too, than both the Schlegels put together, in their shadowy style, would have said in a whole essay written in Cloudland. The good Doctor warms as he walks-and finally escapes out of the ungenial gloom of heresy, declaring, with an inconsistency that does him infinite credit, "that the subject of the Iliad must unquestionably be admitted to be in the main happily chosen."-" Homer has, with great judgment, selected one part of the Trojan War, the Quarrel betwixt Achilles and Agamemnon, and the events to which that quarrel gave rise." In short, the Professor forgets all his former folly about want of dignity and so forth, and expresses the admiration natural to so fine a mind, of the miracle wrought by Homer.

We said that we should seize on Sotheby, as a subject for six critiques

-that is to say, on his translation of the Iliad, as affording us fine opportunities of launching out upon Homer. In the present utter dearth of poetry, caused by a drought-" in the Albion air adust"-by the political dog-star, which not only looks so exceedingly Sirius, but foams at the mouth like the Father of Hydrophobia, if not Hydrophobia himself, we see nothing left for us but to take a flight of a few thousand years back into antiquity; and being partial to the epic, we propose prosing away thereupon-when wearied taking a tift at Tragedy-and occasionally, laying our lugs into a cup of Lyrics. Having descanted on the First and Sixth Books of the Iliad, in a style not unsatisfactory to those who perused our articles, and inoffensive to those who, with a skip, gave them the go-by-both classes numerous -suppose, gruff or gentle reader, that we take a glimpse of what is going on in the Ninth. Some of the Books of the Iliad are, as you know, each in itself a poem. The Iliad is a river, that expands itself into Twenty-Four Lakes. Each Lake is

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a beautiful or magnificent watery world in itself, reflecting its own imagery all differently divine. The current is perceptible in each that flows through them all-so that you have always a river as well as a lake feeling; in the seclusion of any one are never forgetful of the rest; and though contented, were there neither inlet nor outlet to the circular sea on which you at the time may be voyaging, yet assured all the while that your course is progressive, and will cease at last, only when the waters on which you are wafted along by heavenly airs shall disappear underground among some Old Place of Tombs.

Now the Night-scene in the Ninth Book is bright with Achilles-an apparition, who vanished from our bodily eyes in the first, although he continued to move through the succeeding seven-and especially in the sixth-before those of our imagination. A night-scene in Homer, even without Achilles, is worth looking at-and therefore let us look at it without him-Lo, here it is!

a fatal-overthrow; and at sinking of the sun, the whole Trojan army, fifty thousand strong, are lying on their arms beside their watch-fires, fifty warriors round each; so altogether, without aid of John Cocker or Joseph Hume, there are, you perceive, a thousand blazes.

Now this is, perhaps, the most celebrated simile in the Iliad. It has been lauded to the skies, of which it speaks, and from which it is sprung, by scholars who will here see no beauty but in the original Greek, and in it all beauty; while, by the same scholars, the heaven reflected in Pope's translation is declared to be not only not Homer's heaven, but no heaven at all-a night-scene, say they, such as never was seen on this planet, and such as on this planet is impossible. People again, who are no scholars,

admire Pope's picture as celestial, and without pretending to know that language, devoutly believe that it is all one in the Greek. Now, observe, most perspicacious of perusers of Maga's face, and of the face of heaven, that three separate questions are submitted to your decisionFirst, what is the meaning and the merit of the said simile, as it stands in Homer? secondly, what is the merit or demerit of the said simile, as it stands in Pope? and, thirdly, what is its character as it stands there, viewed in the light of a translation?

As it is not impossible you may have forgot your Greek, or improbable that you may never have remembered it, allow us, with all humility, to present you with a literal prose translation.

We are now all ready to proceed to form and deliver judgment. Taking, then, Homer's Greek and Christopher's English to be one and the same, what was the object of the old Ionian in conceiving this vision of the nocturnal heaven? Why, aim and impulse were one. Under the imagination-moving mental perception of a thousand fires burning on the earth between the Grecian ships and the streams of Xanthus, Homer suddenly saw a similar, that is, for the time being, a kindred and congenial exhibition, up aloft in the heavens. That was the impulse. But the moment he saw the heavenly apparition, he felt it to be kindred and congenial with the one on earth, and under the influence of that feeling, he delighted to describe it, in order to glorify the one on earth-that was his aim-in four and a half hexameters, which have won the admiration of the world,

But the world often admires without knowing why, any better than the wiseacres who, in their pride, would correct the world. Why then has the world-meaning thereby that part of it that could or can read Greekadmired so prodigiously this passage? Simply, because heaven and earth, the starry sky and the field with its thousand fires, appeared mutual reflections of each other; for pleasant it is for us mortal creatures, high and low, rich and poor, to recognise a resemblance between our limited and evanescent scenery,especially if the work of our own hands, which watch-fires are, the same being of wood we ourselves have gathered and heaped up into piles, and the scenery of everlasting infinitude. Depend upon it this emotion was in the very rudest minds when they kindled beal-fires. To the most beggarly bonfire it brings fuel. Homer felt this; and

he knew that all who should ever listen to his rhapsodies, either from his own lips, or from the lips of od singing their way on continent or isle, would feel it; for he had no forewarning given him of the invention of printing, or of Pope's or Sotheby's translation, or of this article in Maga.

So much for the spirit of the simile, almost identifying for the time the scenery of earth and heaven. If it does almost identify them, then it is successful, and the admiration of the world is legitimate. But when we come to analyze the passage, which is the self-same thing as to analyze our own perceptions, what do we find? Difficulty and darkness in what we thought facility and light-and our faces are at the wall. We believe that we can see as far into either a mill or a milestone as ever Homer could; but we doubt if we can see as far into heaven. For, simple as it seems to be, we do not believe that the man now lives who thoroughly understands that simile.

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In the first place, take the line,— "As when the stars in heaven around the bright moon shine beautiful,”— with what object on earth does the bright moon" correspond in heaven? With none. The thousand watch-fires are like the thousand stars. But no great central queen watch-fire, that we are told of, burned below-therefore the moon, wanting her counterpart, had perhaps no business on high. Would not a starry but a moonless sky have better imaged the thousand fire encampments?

This natural, nay, inevitable feeling, has suggested the reading of αστρα φαει την for φαεινην—not a very violent change; and if we suppose the moon new, it will be the next thing to no moon at all, and as our present wish is, at all events, to get id of the full moon, that reading is for that effect commendable. But then, alas! nothing less, we fear, will satisfy the shepherd-not the Ettrick Shepherd-but Homer's-than the full moon. She must be an ample shiner so to gladden his heart. The stars alone-though aggira-could not have done that sufficiently to justify Homer in mentioning his gladness on such an occasion. Was the moon then young or old, cres

cent or full-like Diana's bow when bent," or round as my shield?"

It was round as my shield. The shepherd's delight is decisive. It is, then, a similitude of dissimilitude; and though haply not the less on that account Homeric-for Homer was a strange old star-gazer and moonmouther, and would often absurdly yield to the temptation of a sudden glorious burst of beauty-it is so much less like that for resembling which all scholars have always admired it, except a few who, desirous to get rid of an unnecessary φαεινην σελήνην, have tried to prove her infancy by a violent or false reading. The truth is, that we can imagine Homer mentioning the full moon for the sake of her own transcendant beauty, though imaging nothing at the time seen below; but why he should have mentioned her at all if, that is, scarcely visible, and equally imaging nothing at the time below, surpasses, we fear, all reasonable conjecture. Be it then, we repeat, the

full moon.

But in all this there is no real difficulty-and we have, as you will have perceived, been merely throwing about the waters, "like a whirling mop, or a wild goose at play." Now comes the pinch. Read the Greek on to vara, line sixth-our English on to " groves," ditto, and you have a picture in which the stars are conspicuous-they are beautiful

φαείνην αμφι σεληνην φαίνετ' αριπρεπει. What, then, mean the mysterious words immediately following? "The immeasurable firmament bursts from below, and all the stars are seen." Or how do you translate værþjáɣn? Another vision is seen by Homerwhence and how comes it? You are mute.

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Perhaps it thus fared with Homer. At first there was no wind. He says so, and we must believe him, however suspicious may seem the assertion. There were some stars seen around the shining moon-not many -but such as were seen, were "beautiful exceedingly” — ag1ęsa. and by the wind, which was thought to be absent or dead, began to move in the region-the clouds falling into pieces, opened a new reach of heaven upwards—ὑπεῤῥάγη ἄσπετος ang-that is, to Homer's eyes looking from below-and he was not