98 



HOME R. 



Homer. Doth now, will ever, that experience yield, 



'- -^ in * Which his own genius only could acquire." 



AKENSIDH, Inicription far the Butt of Shaketptare. 



Our ingenious countryman Wood * had a higher 

 opinion of the authority of the work in question ; and 

 although some allowance may b made for the gratifi- 

 cation of the traveller, in finding that theory respecting 

 Homer's history, which he had himself so plausibly de- 

 duced from his landscapes and similes, confirmed by a 

 work ascribed to so venerable a name as that of Hero- 

 dotus, yet Wood's remarks are worth attending to : " It 

 may be here requisite," he says (p. 1 89, Essay on Ho- 

 mer, ) " that I take some notice of the ancient life of 

 Homer, handed down to us, and ascribed to Herodotus. 

 The life of Homer is supposed by several not to be the 

 genuine production of that historian. As it is impossible 

 to imagine a collection of circumstances which have 

 less the appearance of fiction, I do not see why we 

 should not suppose that this was the last and most pro- 

 bable account that the historian could get. As for 

 the observation that they belong to the lowest sphere 

 of life, 1 fear it is suggested by modern distinctions of 

 rank unknown in those times. When we are told, by 

 way of depreciating this written life, that it is conduct- 

 ed with the spirit of a grammarian ; that there is no- 

 thing in it above the life which a grammarian might 

 lead himself; nay, that it is such a one as they com- 

 monly do lead, the highest stage of which is to be mas- 

 ter of a school, we are treated with objections which 

 arise much more out of a knowledge of modern than 

 ancient times. The character of a grammarian was 

 unknown, not only to Homer, but to Herodotus ; and 

 when it did appear, was much more respectable than 

 of late, when, by an easy transition, it is connected 

 with the name of schoolmaster, as in the present case, 

 and conveys very false ideas of the state of knowledge 

 and learning. Of the same sort is the stricture upon 

 the extempore verses of this treatise, which, far from 

 being an argument against it, I take to be the most 

 genuine mark of the age to which it pretends. When, 

 in a written composition, the distinction of prose and 

 verse was of a short standing, what we here call extem- 

 pore verses, which are so often interspersed in the 

 works of Herodotus, and the oldest of the Greek wri- 

 ters, I suppose to have been quotations from that pe- 

 riod of knowledge previous to the common use of wri- 

 ting, when prose was confined to conversations, and all 

 compositions were in metre, that they might be more 

 easily remembered." In this life of Homer, attributed 

 to Herodotus, the name of the poet's mother is said to 

 have been Critheis, a native of Smyrna : he was the 

 offspring of illegitimate love. 



" No sickly fruit of faint compliance, he 

 Stampt in the mint of Nature's ecstacy." 



SAVAO*. 



Critheis had been left an orphan. Her tutor, whose 

 name was Cleanax, having disgraced her for her frail- 

 ty, she was obliged to fly from her native place, and, 

 after wandering for some time, arrived at the banks of 

 the river Meles. There she was delivered of the in- 

 fant, who, from the place of his birth, was called Me- 

 lesigenes, a name which he bore till it was changed to 

 Homer after his blindness. Phemius, an inhabitant 

 of Smyrna, who taught music, took the unfortunate 



mother into his house, married her, and adopted the 

 child Melesigenes. The youth for some time assisted 

 them in the school of music, but after their death was 

 seized with a desire of seeing foreign countries, and 

 embarked with a Phenician shipmaster. Among 

 other places, he arrived at Ithaca, where he learnt the 

 adventures of Ulysses ; but his stay was unfortunately 

 prolonged till he was struck with ophthalmia, which 

 the ignorance of a pretender to the healing art soon 

 made incurable. Already he had been a poet, and 

 he now consoled his blindness by composing the Iliad. 

 With this treasure in his memory, he wandered from 

 place to place, and subsisted by reciting it. Universal 

 tradition thus exhibits to us the greatest genius of an- 

 tiquity as wandering about in blindness, and supported 

 by the spontaneous kindness of those whom he visited. 

 But the idea of such mendicity must not be confound- 

 ed with the repulsive and squalid associations which 

 the word beggary brings to the mind in our own arti- 

 ficial state of society, when disgrace covers the supplicant, 

 and when the feeling of compassion carries contempt, 

 and not kindness, along with it. In simple times, the 

 traveller went abroad, and sought protection and food 

 with the assurance, that, whenever he saw the human 

 countenance, he should meet with the natural charity 

 of the human heart. He made his way with confi- 

 dence, for hospitality was the virtue and the point of 

 honour of primeval society. A picture of such hospita- 

 lity is given in the Odyssey, when Mentor and Telema- 

 chus arrive at the dominions of Nestor. The King, who 

 knows nothing of the visitants, invites them to the 

 royal table, and, not until he has feasted them, puts 

 the question, " Strangers, ivhat are you ?" But Ho- 

 mer did not visit foreign countries with merely the 

 common claims to hospitality, religiously respected as 

 those claims were sure to be. He travelled in the 

 character of bard and reciter, of which an image was 

 renewed in modern Europe among the minstrels and 

 the troubadours. Of the latter description of poets, 

 we know that many held an honourable place at the 

 most splendid courts, were the inmates of palaces, and 

 the suitors of noble dames. The Greek itinerant bard, 

 in times when books and writing were unknown, must 

 have been a character not coldly respected as a stran- 

 ger, but esteemed and beloved for his powers of enter- 

 tainment. Poetry was then not only the ornament of 

 sentiment and beautiful fiction, but embraced all that 

 was the mental amusement, and all that could be called 

 the knowledge of mankind. It taught them what they 

 believed to be their history ; celebrated their mytholo- 

 gy ; gave them romantic conceptions of the past and 

 the present world ; and gave additional pleasure to the 

 heart, by the charm which it afforded to the ear. Such 

 was the profession of the ancient poet ; but which, ne- 

 vertheless, though immeasurably removed above the 

 contempt of contemporary society, must have been ex- 

 posed to many incidental calamities. The very virtue 

 of hospitality arose out of a state of society, that render- 

 ed travelling and navigation fatiguing and perilous. 

 When the poet could only recite his works, the ho- 

 nours and caresses due to genius and originality alone 

 might often be lavished on the least inspired of the 

 profession, who drew their stores of entertainment from 

 a memory tenacious of the compositions of others ; and 

 hospitable as the times might be, the general partia- 

 lity of the undistinguishing multitude, for impudence 

 and flattery, might often favour the mere pretenders to 



Homer. 



Eiiay on Homtr. 



