754 



HOME 



HOMER 



according to the Doomsday Book, yield a rental of 

 47,721 a year. 



Home, DANIEL DUNGLAS, spiritualist, was 

 born ( near Edinburgh, March 20, 1833, and was 

 taken by an aunt to the United States, where by 

 1850 he had become a famous medium. He began 

 the study of medicine, but was persuaded by his 

 friends to practise spiritualism instead ; and in 1855 

 he removed to London to carry on his 'mission.' 

 Home was a proficient in mesmerism and such- 

 like sciences, arid to table-turning and spirit- 

 rapping he added, for advanced disciples, speaking 

 ghosts, and a display of his own powers of floating 

 in the air. He made many converts, though not 

 all the great people he claimed. He was presented 

 at several courts, and to the pope ; and he joined 

 the Roman Catholic Church, but was ultimately 

 expelled for spiritualistic practices. In 1866 lie 

 acceded to a Mrs Lyon's suggestion that he should 

 become her adopted son, she assigning to him 

 60,000 ; but this money his fickle patroness after- 

 wards compelled him to restore, and the lawsuit 

 discredited Home greatly, though he was scarcely 

 to blame in the matter. He died at Auteuil, 21st 

 June 1886. He published two series of Incidents of 

 my Life (1863 and 1872), and Lights and Shadows 

 of Spiritualism (1877) ; see also D. D. Home: his 

 Life and Mission (1888), and a continuation, The 

 Gift of D. D. Home ( 1890), both by his widow. 



Home, HENRY. See KAMES (LORD). 



Home, JOHN, a Scotch clergyman and dramatist, 

 was born at Leith in 1722. He graduated at the 

 Edinburgh University in 1742, and three years later 

 entered the church. He was present as a volunteer 

 on the king's side when the royalists were routed by 

 the young Pretender at Falkirk, and was carried a 

 prisoner to the castle of Donne, whence he effected 

 his escape. In 1746 he was appointed minister of 

 Athelstaneford, near Haddington, where he pro- 

 duced in 1747 the tragedy of Agis, and, after the 

 lapse of five years, Douglas, a tragedy founded (be- 

 fore the publication of Percy's Reliques ) on the ballad 

 of Gil Morrice. Each of these plays was successively 

 rejected by Garrick ; but Douglas, brought out at 

 Edinburgh, met with instant and brilliant success, 

 and evoked equal enthusiasm when placed on the 

 London boards. Its production, however, gave such 

 offence to the Presbytery that the author thought fit 

 to resign his ministry, and, withdrawing into Eng- 

 land, he became private secretary to the Earl of 

 Bute, who procured him a pension of 300 a year. 

 The success of Douglas induced Garrick not only to 

 accept Home's next play, The Siege of Amiileia, 

 but to bring out the earlier work, Agis. Home's 

 other works are The Fatal Discovery, Alonzo, 

 Alfred, occasional poems, and, in prose, A History 

 of the Rebellion of 1745. He died in 1808. 



Home is the last of our tragic poets whose works 

 for any time held the stage. The drama, purified 

 from the licentiousness of Wycherley and Congreve, 

 had become frigid and lifeless in the hands of Addi- 

 son, Kowe, and Johnson, and the enthusiasm with 

 which Douglas was greeted was due to the generous 

 warmth of domestic feeling, the chivalrous ardour 

 and natural pathos which Home infused into his 

 work. His writings are remarkable for the inter- 

 esting character of their plots, for lucidity of lan- 

 guage, and for occasional flashes of genuine poetry ; 

 but he did not succeed in entirely discarding the 

 pompous declamation of his forerunners. In his 

 day he enjoyed the praise of all and the friendship 

 of the most distinguished ; Collins dedicated to him 

 his ode on the Highland superstitions, and Burns, 

 with more zeal than judgment, said that he 



Methodised wild Shakespeare into plan. 

 The taste of his time is not that of ours, but the 



dramatists who displaced him turned to comedy, 

 and he has had no successor of equal fame. See 

 the Life by Henry Mackenzie, prefixed to his works. 

 (3 vols. 1822). 



Home Counties, the counties over and into 

 which London has extended Middlesex, Hertford- 

 shire, Essex, Kent, Surrey. The south-eastern 

 circuit (see ASSIZE) is still sometimes called the 

 ' Home Circuit,' though it includes, besides the 

 home counties ( except Middlesex ), also Cambridge- 

 shire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. 



Homelyn. See RAY. 



Home Office. See SECRETARY OF STATE. 



Homer. The poems of Homer differ from alt 

 other known poetry in this that they constitute in 

 themselves an encyclopaedia of life and knowledge ; 

 at a time when knowledge, indeed, such as lies be- 

 yond the bounds of actual experience was extremely 

 limited, but when life was singularly fresh, vivid, 

 and expansive. The only poems of Homer we 



S>ssess are the Iliad and the Odyssey, for the 

 omeric Hymns and other productions lose all title 

 to stand in line with these wonderful works, by 

 reason of conflict in a multitude of particulars with 

 the witness of the text, as well as of their poetical 

 inferiority. They evidently belong to the period 

 that follows the great migration into Asia Minor 

 brought about by the Dorian conquest. 



The dictum of Herodotus which places the date 

 of Homer 400 years before his own, therefore in the 

 9th century B.C., was little better than mere con- 

 jecture. Common opinion has certainly presumed 

 him to be posterior to the Dorian conquest. The 

 Hymn to Apollo, however, which was the main 

 prop of this opinion, is assuredly not his. In a. 

 work which attempts to turn recent discovery t 

 account, I have contended that the fall of Troy 

 cannot properly be brought lower than about r250- 

 B.C., and that Homer may probably have lived 

 within fifty years of it (Homeric Synchronism, 

 I. vi.). 



The entire presentation of life and character in 

 the two poems is distinct from, and manifestly 

 anterior to, anything made known to us in Greece 

 under and after that conquest. The study of Homer 

 has been darkened and enfeebled by thrusting back- 

 wards into it a vast mass of matter, belonging to- 

 these later periods, and even to the Roman civil- 

 isation, which was different in spirit and which 

 entirely lost sight of the true position of Greeks 

 and Trojans, and inverted their moral as well a& 

 their martial relations. The name of Greeks is a. 

 Roman name : the people, to whom Homer ha& 

 given immortal fame, are Achaians both in designa- 

 tion and in manners. The poet paints them at a 

 time when the spirit of national life was rising 

 within their borders. Its first efforts had been seen 

 in the expeditions of Achaian natives to conquer the 

 Asiatic or Egyptian immigrants who had under the 

 name of Cadmeians ( etymologically, 'foreigners') 

 founded Thebes in Breotia, and in the voyage of 

 the ship Argo to Colchis which was probably 

 the seat of a colony sprung from the Egyptian 

 empire, and was therefore regarded as hostile in 

 memory of the antecedent aggressions of that 

 empire. The expedition against Troy was the 

 beginning of the long chain of conflicts between 

 Europe and Asia which end with the Turkish con- 

 quests, and with the reaction of the last 300 years, 

 and especially of the 19th century, against them. 

 It represents an effort truly enormous towards 

 attaining nationality in idea and in practice. Clear- 

 ing away obstructions, of which the cause has been 

 partially indicated, we must next observe that the 

 text of Homer was never studied by the moderns as 

 a whole in a searching manner until wi thin the last 

 two generations. From the time of Wolf there 



