514 Notes for the Month. [Nov. 



favour of the right of the plaintiff. But, in the next minute, his conscience, 

 catching him by the great toe which some will have to be the tenderest 

 point in all his lordship's body though we don't believe it cries, " My 

 lord your lordship is not this witness, with the suspicious name of 

 ' Nathan/ dabbling a little, or coquetting, something as one may say, with 

 the pleasant game of perjury?" Whereon his lordship makes no more ado, 

 but out with his sword of sharpness and a right sharp one it is and rips 

 up the Hebrew from the systole to the diastole ; knocking the plaintiff, 

 and his case and he would have included the whole tribe of Benjamin 

 had they been present pell-mell to the devil! and shewing the jury, who 

 would have been something loth to find in opposition to the opinion of so 

 eloquent and pleasant a man as Judge Best really is the clear road 

 smooth and broad as M' Adam's highway to a verdict for the defendants : 

 and all this in less time than you could say " Shealing-vaxsh !" 



The fact is, that we have a sort of admiration (which goes near to play 

 us false) for Chief Justice Best's talent, even when we differ from him (at 

 due distance) in opinion ; and we are sure that there must have been a 

 great struggle in his mind before he could resolve to consider a Jew as 

 libelled in any case. But, that a Jew should be allowed to act as a 

 bailiff, in a Christian country, at all that is the most wonderful wonder ! 

 That a mere misbeliever should dare to touch the hem of the garment of 

 much less the shoulder much less to empoigner, as the French call it 

 a true man! That we should absolutely be arrested by a fellow, who 

 can't even tell us in plain English " At whose shoot?" It shews the 

 admirable height to which the feeling of obedience to the law is carried 

 in this country. 



The last volume of M. Benjamin Constant's book on Religion ancient 

 and modern the former portions of which have acquired very high reputa- 

 tion on the Continent contains an ingenious and elaborate discussion of the 

 well-known problem Whether the Iliad of Homer, and the Odyssey 

 the " Homeric poems," as the writer calls them, generally are works of 

 the same date ; and whether it is possible to attribute the composition of 

 them to one individual? M. Constant supports the opinion, that these 

 poems are not the work of one hand, but an assemblage of legendary 

 " rhapsodies," first collected by Pisistratus ; and he maintains this theory 

 by internal evidence, taken from an examination of the works themselves. 



" We will take it as shewn, then (M. Constant begins), that the Greek 

 polytheism of this time (the epoch treated in the Iliad") afforded to mo- 

 rality no solid support," &c. 



" It is otherwise with the Odyssey: morality there becomes an integral part of 

 religion, So early as in the seventh verse of the First Book, it is declared, that 

 the companions of Ulysses had forfeited by their crimes, the benefit of return to 

 their country ; and, if the principal of these crimes is the having destroyed the 

 herds of Apollo which is a fault committed against the personal interest of the gods, 

 the justice of the latter, in abundance of other places, shews itself independent of 

 that particular feeling of advantage. All crimes here (in the Odyssey) are seen 

 to excite their horror. 'If I forced my mother to quit my home/ says Tele- 

 machus, ' she would invoke the Furies.* Jupiter prepares for the Greeks a fatal 

 voyage, because they are neither prudent nor just. The Gods warn ^Egisthus not 

 to assassinate Agamemnon, in order to marrjr his widow : and, after he has com- 

 mitted the murder, they do not delay to punish him. Minerva approves, and de- 

 monstrates the propriety of that punishment : and Jupiter adds, that JEg ; sthus has 

 committed his crime in opposition to the will of Destiny. Now this new point of 

 view, which forbids men any longer to accuse fate of those crimes which are their 

 own, is an amelioration of moral feeling. The same Minerva, in reproaching the 



