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groundless or mischievous innovation. While the antiquity or universality of any doctrine was a chief attraction to sceptical

assault, few but such as were fenced on

certain conditions of effect. But it is improbable and unprecedented for many poets to have worked so har

all sides by impenetrable barriers of demoniously apart and through a suc

monstrable fact were safe from the danger of falling at least a temporary sacrifice to zeal for some conjectural novelty. Wolf himself professed the scope of his argument to be rather to subvert the ancient fabric of opinion than to erect any solid edifice in its place, and the result has justified the figure. The publication of his Essay may be compared to that of a pamphlet, containing specious revolutionary doctrines, in a hitherto tranquil state, at the moment when the minds of men were ripe for political change. Unanimous in rejecting their old form of government, scarcely any two citizens can agree as to that to be adopted in its stead. A period of discord is followed by one of anarchy, and that, in its turn, by a gradual inclination to revert to the former system."

We now turn to the internal evidence of Homer's personality. It occupies more than five hundred pages, and contains a laborious and acute analysis of the structure of the poems and the genius of their author. In this department of his task the healthy idiosyncrasy of the English scholar shows to great advantage beside the scholastic dyspeptism of the German professors. To the latter Homer is merely a book and a theme for books; to the former he yet lives and speaks across the gulf of three thousand years, mingling his trumpet-song of wars and wanderings with nature's diapason of winds and waves. Colonel Mure's argument for Homer's personality and unity of authorship is substantially the same as Paley's well-known inference of design from the mechanism of a watch. He discovers in both Iliad and Odyssey a regular plan, a consistent development of it, and an internal harmony of structure. He detects, besides, dramatic precision in the character of the principal actors, and lively truthful observation of nature in the scenery of the story. If we except a few interpolations detected by the ancient grammarians and scholiasts, nothing in the texture of either poem is casual. Episodes such as the Doloneia in the tenth book, or the funeral games in the twenty-third, may have been added to the original draft, but they are added with design to attain or improve

cession of ages upon the same design. Still more unlikely is it that they should have succeeded in it. The inference therefore is, that one and the same author produced the Iliad, even if the Odyssey were the work of another hand. Colonel Mure, however, from both poems, alleges very striking examples of unanimity both of diction and conception, which incline him to ascribe, as the ancient critics generally consented to ascribe, both the story of Achilles and the travels of Ulysses to the same author. This however is a very different question from Wolf's hypothesis. The doubt of the Alexandrian grammarians supposed that no single human imagination could embrace two such orbs of song as the Iliad and Odyssey. The scepticism of Wolf strikes at the very head and front of their original conception, and converts a work of the most harmonious proportions into a fortuitous mass of

atoms.

Colonel Mure's sketches of the great chieftains of the Iliad have afforded us great pleasure. He points out numberless traits of character, of passion, and of sentiment which escape the cursory reader, and which it is utterly incredible that a club of Homers should have concurred to produce. It would be scarcely less absurd to fancy that Lear and Falstaff were designed by successive dramatic poets from Marlowe to Shirley. And it should be borne in mind that Achilles and Diomedes, Agamemnon and Ulysses, are far more distinctly portrayed than Orlando, Rinaldo, Charlemagne, or Godfrey of Bouillon. So perfect indeed in general is Homer's delineation of the Achæan leaders that the same personages, when adopted by the Attic playwriters afterwards, rather lose than gain by the transfer, although in their later forms they were sketched by poets whose personality was never doubted, and who had at their command ample materials for writing down their conceptions. Ulysses, for example, throughout the Iliad a valiant, although not a rash warrior, is represented by Sophocles in his "Scourge-bearing Ajax' as a shy cock, with decidedly a white

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feather in his plumage. In the Hecuba and Philoctetes the prudent counsellor of the Argives plots and pleads like a sharking attorney. In the Iliad Menelaus is inferior in strength, but not in courage, to his brotherwarriors. In the "Orestes" and "Helen" he blusters and then slinks away like Parolles. Now supposing the case reversed, and that the dramatic phase of these heroes had been the epic, how Wolf and his satellites would have pounced upon the inconsistency. Ulysses they then might have plausibly argued was drawn by one Homerid as a brave warrior, by another as more discreet than valiant, and more knavish than either. Accordingly the compiler from the original lays-Pisistratus or Solonformed of the two extremes a tertiary Ulysses, who betrays his double parentage by being sometimes brave and sometimes pusillanimous. But the consistent character of Ulysses in both poems is fatal to such a joining process, and would be equally fatal in all cases where Homer has drawn the original, and the dramatic poets have copied it. Colonel Mure has also clearly shown that such keeping and unity are by no means confined to the broad outline of the Homeric actors, but are equally preserved in the more subtle shades and differences of their speeches and demeanour. Before we quit this portion of the subject we will add that the analogies usually adduced in confirmation of Homer's plurality are singularly inapposite. In the English Garland or cycle of Robin Hood, the hero of Sherwood and his mates are little more than normal archers and freebooters. We have no personal distinctions to record between Adam Bell and Clym of the Clough, and, stature excepted, none between Scarlet and Little John. Nor is the scenery of these ballads more definite than the heroes. wood forest might be the Forest of Dean, and Nottingham might be Gloucester, but for the tenacity of local tradition. In the Cid again, Rodrigo Diaz is merely the ideal of a Gothic knight, Donna Urraca has none of the identity of Helen or Penelope, and the kings Garcia, Alfonso, and Ferrando might be Henry Pimpernel, or old John Napps of Greece, or Gyas or Cloanthus, or anybodies anywhere, for any epic

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individuality they possess, like Priam of Troy, or Glaucus of Lycia, or Chryses priest of Phoebus. We do not adduce the examples of the Mort d'Arthur or the Niebelungenlied, because these poems have been undeniably worked up from older originals at no very remote date, and without much care for cohesion of either structure or characters.

We have left ourselves but little room for extracts from these volumes; but we must not part with Colonel Mure without affording the reader a sample of his quality, both as regards his criticism of the Homeric poems and his analysis of Homeric character. It is not easy to detach from his dissertation any single fragment which will not suffer by transplantation, or exceed the limits of our columns. The first of the following paragraphs will, however illustrate his views of the consummate art of the Iliad, and the second his careful and genial dissection of the dramatic character of its heroes. We take his examination of the "rhapsody," called in the old subdivision of the poem the "Prowess of Diomed," comprising the fifth and sixth books, according to the existing arrangement.

"I. The first line ushers the reader into the midst of a battle, without any notice of where or why it was fought, or who were the contending parties, by the announcement that Pallas there urged Diomed into the thickest of the fight.' Such an exordium plainly assumes, on the part of the poet's audience, a previous knowledge of a combat already commenced and interrupted. II. That this combat belonged to the few weeks of the Trojan war marked by the secession of Achilles is proved, not only by his absence from the field, but by several pointed allusions to its cause. III. The deities left in immediate charge of the interrupted action of the previous book were, Mars on the side of the Trojans, Minerva on that of the Greeks. At the commencement of this book, accordingly, Minerva's first care is, by a stratagem, to procure Mars's retirement from the field, and a consequent freer scope for the exploits of her favourite hero. IV. The leading oction of the truce between the two armies currence of the previous book is the violaby the treacherous shot of Pandarus. To this outrage Pandarus himself alludes in the renewed action, expressing his mortification at its only partial success; and his own death by the hand of Diomed forms an appropriate conclusion of his

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career. V. Diomed defeats Æneas, and obtains possession of his horses. This prize, with the circumstances attending its acquisition, is afterwards repeatedly noticed by the victor. VI. Diomed successively wounds Venus and Mars. The latter achievement is referred to in the twenty-first book, by the injured god himself. VII. Minerva reminds the Greeks that, while Achilles fought in their ranks, the Trojans never ventured to advance beyond the gates of their city.' This statement is confirmed by Achilles himself in the ninth book, and by other heroes in numerous parallel passages. VIII. Diomed and Glaucus, after their dialogue, agree to avoid hostile encounter during the remainder of the war, and the compact is carefully observed in the sequel. IX. Paris, who acts a prominent part in the preceding and subsequent engagements, does not appear in that now described, having in the third book, after his defeat by Menelaus, been carried off by Venus to repose in his wife's apartments. X. Accordingly Hector, on his visit to Troy to propitiate Minerva, finds him loitering in Helen's Chamber, and orders him back to the field. XI. Andromache describes Achilles as the destroyer of her native city. This exploit is ascribed to the same hero in numerous other parts of the poem.

"That these coincidences could be the result of chance is incredible; and it certainly requires a wide stretch of sceptical credulity to believe that Pisistratus or any other primitive bookmaker should have possessed either the inclination or the means of interlarding his disjointed stock of materials with such a series of mutual references. The same species of interconnection might be exemplified throughout."

We have not room for our author's full-length portraiture of Achilles. But we hope the reader may be induced to turn to it by the following episodical sketch of the hero's friend Patroclus.

"Nowhere, perhaps, has the poet more finely displayed his knowledge of human nature, than in the adaptation to each other of the characters of his hero and his hero's friend. Between men of ordinary tempers, attachments are, perhaps, more easily cemented where there is a near similarity of disposition; but, with men of high passions and eccentric minds, the risks of collision are too great to admit of that harmony essential to the maintenance of strong personal friendship. A certain contrast is, perhaps, in every case, more GENT. MAG. VOL. XXXIV.

favorable to a reciprocal estimate of character than close resemblance. There cannot, therefore, be a happier selection of the opposite, but not uncongenial, qualities which were here to be exhibited in such harmonious conjunction. Among the varieties of heroic character shadowed forth in the Iliad, the virtues for which Patroclus was especially distinguished were, benevolence, tenderness of heart, and amiable manners. This is the disposition which experience shows to be alone, or chiefly, calculated to secure the affections or influence the mind of such a being as Achilles. Yet, even under these favourable conditions, the Thessalian hero's impetuosity of temperament scarcely admitted a very cordial bond of union with an equal. It was necessary, therefore, that the relation between them, without involving any servile subjection, should partake of that between patron and client, or chieftain and vassal. Menoetius, the father of Patroclus, was a noble stranger, driven with his only son, by adverse destiny, from his own country, to seek an asylum at the court of Peleus. The young refugee had been educated with Achilles, also an only child, on the mixed footing of companion and dependant. He was the elder of the two, and the influence he had obtained over his youthful patron by his amiable qualities was such, that the last act of Menoetius, on sending him forth to the war, was in the presence, and with the sanction, of Peleus, to charge him with the duty of moderating the dangerous ardour of the myrmidon prince's temper. Friendship, indeed, were but a feeble term to express the feelings entertained by Achilles towards his beloved comrade, whom he honoured equal to his own soul.' In the hero of the Iliad, the tender, like the terrible, passions required to be made up of more than ordinary ingredients; and, in the fulness of his affection, were thus united personal respect, fraternal love, and reverence for the will

of a parent whom he was destined never again to see.”

We trust that Colonel Mure will be enabled to produce the volumes of this excellent history in quick succession; for should his work be destined to remain, like those of Niebuhr and Arnold, a fragment, the present generation can hardly expect to greet a successor in the same path with equal zeal, leisure, and information at his command. We have seen that he proposes to trace the entire circle of Grecian literature from its Ionian cradle to its Byzantine tomb. The fourth and fol

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lowing sections of his work will not indeed justify the minute elaboration which the poetic and dramatic periods require. But no one is better aware than Colonel Mure that the productions of the Alexandrian, Roman, and Byzantine eras respectively, although they no longer retained classical purity of thought and form, are little less interesting as records of the manners and speculations of later pagandom. Lucian, Plutarch, Dion, Chrysostom, and the Greek novelists merit attention second only to that which is due to the contemporaries of Pericles or Demosthenes. In these later and less known writers, the genius of the ethnic world began to make its first approaches to

the genius of Christendom. The ethical treatises of Plutarch are the great magazine of current opinions and superstitions, many of which passed over with philosophy and religion into Christian literature. Lucian again, although he is generally regarded only as a humorist and a scoffer, contains passages more terrific in effect, and more approaching to the sublime, than any Greek authors, except the dramatic poets. Indeed if the Greek element in Roman literature be a subject of interest, the reaction of the Oriental and Roman mind upon the Hellenic is equally instructive. We look to Colonel Mure for a full and lively account of this latter harvest of the Greek intellect.

SOUTHEY AND "THE AIKINS;" HIS INJUSTICE TOWARDS
MRS. BARBAULD.

[WE willingly give insertion to the following letter from the valued author of the Memoirs of the Court of Elizabeth, &c. &c. Although called forth by the review of the second and third volumes of Southey's Life and Correspondence, published in our last number, p. 611, it stretches, in its application and consequences, beyond our review to the book itself, and, still further, to the grave question of the propriety of Southey's conduct towards a family several members of which were amongst his earliest and most useful friends.]

MR. URBAN,-Permit me to crave insertion in the Gentleman's Magazine of a few remarks on the "Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey," as reviewed in your last number.

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The Aikins" were not "proprietors" of the Annual Review. The ownership of that work rested exclusively with Messrs. Longman and Co. by whom the remuneration of the writers was of course determined.

The "many editorial tricks" imputed by Mr. Southey to Mr. Arthur Aikin consisted merely in the exercise of the just authority of his office to cut short digressions, and occasionally to strike out remarks made by Mr. Southey in that spirit for the display of which so much scope was afterwards allowed in other quarters. His own interference never went further with respect to articles sent him; he allowed of none on the part of the proprietors.

The graceful pleasantries of Mr. Southey on "Mrs. Barebones and her flaxen wig" may stand on their own merits; but it is right to inform the public that the critique on the tragedy

of John Woodville, at which the author's friends took such high offence, was written neither by Mrs. Barbauld nor by any of her family. I can further take upon me to affirm that she lived and died without knowing or seeking to know by whom it was written; and certainly without the slightest suspicion of the incredible fact that it could have been ascribed to her pen by so accomplished a judge of style as Mr. Southey.

It was, however, partly on this surmise, partly on an equally erroneous notion that she was the author of a preface in the same review in which nothing was said of Madoc, that his hatred of this admirable woman was founded-a hatred profound enough to have delighted Dr. Johnson, and so faithful, that it followed her even to the grave, without having missed one opportunity, found or made, of aiming a shaft against her out of darkness.

The correspondence proves it to have been compatible with the moral code of Mr. Southey, to take revenge for any review-article unpalatable to

himself or his friends, on the writer, or supposed writer, by heaping abuse, right or wrong, on any subsequent work of his; the public having, of course, no claim on an anonymous and self-constituted judge for an equitable and impartial sentence.

I have seen Mr. Southey, young and as yet obscure, partaking with apparent satisfaction the simple but cordial hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld, and seemingly enjoying her

delightful conversation. I have heard
her, again and again, expatiating with
generous warmth on the beauties of
Thalaba and Kehama. I have heard
many kind words of the author, and
never a single unkind one, fall from
her lips; unkind words indeed it was
not her practice to utter of any one.
Such has been her reward!
I am, sir, yours, &c.

Wimbledon, June 7.

LUCY AIKIN.

CONTINENTAL DISCOVERIES OF ANTIQUITIES..

VILLA AND TOMB OF A FEMALE GALLO-ROMAN ARTIST.

THE researches to which attention is here drawn acquire more than a usual degree of interest in the fact of their being of considerable importance in supplying materials to the scientific investigator of the useful and ornamental arts as practised by the ancients, as well as to the analytical chemist in determining the state of chemical science in remote times. They also afford novel information on ancient manners and customs.

The appointments of a Roman villa are in certain respects tolerably well understood, and it will be needless to touch further on this portion of the title of our present remarks than to describe the most striking feature in the discovery, that of the mural paintings; the disclosures which warrant the announcement that the grave of a lady who, if she did not exercise the art of painting as a profession, must have been a zealous amateur, has been identified, will be regarded with keen interest by the antiquary, and with curiosity by all, except the stolid and the worldly-minded, for whom neither the facts nor the sentiment of antiquity have any charms.

A short time since, at St. Médarddes-Prés (Vendée), accidental circumstances brought to light the ruins of a Roman villa, which, it appeared, had undergone several reparations; that is to say, it was very evident the original building either had decayed from the effects of time or violence, and the site had been built upon once if not twice. The last overthrow of the building seemed the result of sudden and rough force, and to this cause

may be attributed the preservation of masses of painted coatings of walls which were recovered from the debris, mutilated and shattered of course, but still sufficiently perfect to admit either of restoration, or of determination as to character and subject. The memorable eruption of Vesuvius which in the days of Titus converted two great cities into sepulchres has contributed largely to our acquaintance with the domestic life of the Romans in their native country. The paintings from Pompeii and Herculaneum are among the most valuable remains of these recovered cities, and have exercised the criticism of the artist, the skill of the chemist, and the admiration of the man of refined taste. While, therefore, these productions of ancient art are thus generally admired and studied, and particularly at a moment when the government of our country is encouraging the attempts made to resuscitate the decayed art of fresco painting, the ancient provincial examples, such as those discovered at St. Médard-desPrés, become of additional value, as giving tangible evidence of similar processes, which were, it appears, as well adapted to our own climate as to that of Italy.

As in the decorations of the apartments at Herculaneum and Pompeii, the rooms of this villa were painted in panels, the centres of which were adorned with subjects taken from history, mythology, and private life, surrounded with arabesques and foliage. The larger sized figures, of which fragments have been preserved, consist of the bust of a female holding her hair

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