1B31.] Ilomti- : n Rhapsody. 17^ 



The authenticity of the Homeric poems I believe was never questioned 

 until the close of the IJth century, and then by a Frenchman — one of a 

 people who never have, and never can, appreciate the simplicity of the 

 Poet. Oh ! Ignorance, what a hundred-headed monster thou art ! 

 Joshua Barnes wrote a book to prove that the Iliad was composed by 

 King Solomon. Another theory, equally singular and vexatious, has 

 been proposed by Branchini, who affirmed that the Iliad was one entire 

 allegory in the oriental manner. By Jupiter, he understood Sesostris, 

 who occupied the thi'one of Egypt during the siege of Troy, and the 

 other gods he considered as his vtissals : Juno was Syria ; IMinerva, the 

 learned and scientific Egypt. Fontenelle relates in his Eloge dc Bran- 

 chini, that so great was the estimation in which this extraordinary man 

 was held during his residence at Oxford, that the university defrayed, 

 from their own funds, the expenses of his establishment. We suppose 

 such men as Philip ]\Ielancthon introduced these diverlimenii upon the 

 principle assigned by the Rabbin, for the nonsense so frequently re- 

 curring in the Talmud. 



The Digamma, again, who cares a straw about it ? The reader may 

 remember, that a treatise of the celebrated Bentley is preserved in the 

 library of Trinity College, Cambridge, where it was shewn to Thiersch, 

 in 1815.* Long may it continue in its dust and oblivion, until some 

 future Columbus of criticism shall bring forth the manuscript, even as a 

 rich treasure, like Giovanni Finati, ]Mr. Bankes' servant, who ran away 

 with a heavy chest, and found, to his mortification, that it contained 

 nothing but crockery-ware. We remember an anecdote which strikes 

 us as forming an excellent accompaniment to the ignorance of the dis- 

 believers in the authenticity, we should have said the existence, of 

 Homer, and the equally erudite historians of the Digamma. Our readers 

 may recollect, that before the close of the fifteenth century, the French 

 had no idea of gardening. " Writers there were in abundance," says the 

 author of tlie Vie Privee des Frnngois, " but they were learned men, who 

 knew nothing but Latin and Greek." 



Shame — to sit lingering here, while the leaves of that laburnum-tree 

 are glancing forth specks of light, as from a thousand beautiful summer- 

 eyes, and the lark is nestling herself far, far away, a mile high, in the 

 blue air, bluer than the eyes of Venus, when they opened upon the 

 Trojan warrior, and he hid his face in his garment.t Reader, be not 

 surprised at my apparent hallucination ; the present rhapsody was com- 

 posed in the sunny hours among the glorious trees of the most seques- 

 tered village in the woodlands of Suffolk. I resemble Rousseau in in- 

 ability to write at a desk. I put on a shooting jacket, and slipping two 

 or three books— favourites of course— into the ample pockets which de- 

 corate the sides, in three tiers, as it were, stray forth into the shady 

 nooks and the stilliest vallies, fashioning in my mind, as I linger along, 

 my broken dreams of loveliness. Beautiful in the summer light is the 

 green stile on which I am sitting, with a dark wood full of pheasants, 

 gold and silver, by my side, and a hamlet-church casting a brightness 

 through the old oaks before us. 



I have been reading a little book by an old Etonian, which offers a 

 very pleasant introduction to the ancient poet. It is designed principally 



Thiersch's Greek (irammar, pp. 312, ?\'.i. 

 t Hymn tn Venus 



