LITER ART AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 335 



as he had already written twenty articles during 1831, five of which 

 were in the August number. 



During this year, too, he commenced those noble critical essays 

 on " Homer and his Translators,"* which scholars have remarked 

 " contain the most vivid and genial criticisms in our own or any 

 other language."! I believe deep thought and careful philosophi- 

 cal inquiry, combined with stirring vivacity, are nowhere more 

 attractively displayed than in these essays of my father. But not 

 to the learned alone do they give delight, for my humble admira- 

 tion makes me turn to them again and again. 



The following letter from Mr. Sotheby, relating to these papers, 

 may come in here : — 



" 13 Lower Grosvenor Place, October 8, 1831. 



" My dear Sir : — One month, two months, three months' griev- 

 ous disappointment, intolerable disappointment, Homer and his tail, 

 Chapman, Pope, and Sotheby in dim eclipse. What becomes of 

 the promise solemnly given to the public, that the vases of good 

 and evil, impartially poured forth by your balancing hand, were ere 

 Christmas to determine our fate ? I long doubted whether I 

 should trouble you with a letter, but the decided opinion of our 

 friend Lockhart decided me. And now hear, I pray, in confidence, 

 why I am peculiarly anxious for the completion of your admirable 

 remarks. 



" I propose, ere long, to publish the Odyssey, and shall gratify 

 myself by sending you, as a specimen of it, the eleventh book. It 

 will contain, inter alia, a sop for the critics, deeply soaked in the 

 blood of a fair heifer and a sable ram, and among swarms of spirits, 

 the images of the heroes of the Iliad, completing the tale of Troy 

 divine. After the publication of the Odyssey, it is my intent, by 

 the utmost diligence and labor, to correct the Iliad, and to endeavor 

 to render it less unworthy of the praise you have been pleased to 

 confer on it. Of your praise I am justly proud ; yet for my future 

 object, I am above measure desirous of the benefit of your cen- 

 sures. The remarks (however flattering) with which I have been 

 honored by others, are less valuable to me than your censures ; of 

 this, the proof will be evident in the subsequent edition. 



* The first appeared in April, followed by Numbers 2 and 3, in May and July. In August, a 

 critique on the Agamemnon of -dEschylus interrupted the essays, but they were resumed again in 

 December, continued at intervals from 1832 to 1834. making in all seven papers. 



+ Gladstone's Studies on Homer and the Ifomerio Age. 



