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There are indeed some few passages in the Odyssey which are very displeasing, and can hardly be defended on a plea of poetical justice or dramatic fidelity. I mean particularly the treatment of Melanthius* and the female servants, than which nothing can be conceived more bloody, brutal or disgusting. This always seems to me to be a complete blot in the otherwise grand and interesting picture of the righteous triumph of Ulysses. It is, in the true sense of the word, indecorous. As to all that follows the 296th line of the 23d book being rejected as spurious, on the ground of an inconsistency between the narrative and the predictions of Tiresias in the Necyomanteia, I own I have never been able to discover any such alleged contradiction; and though it cannot be denied that the battle in the last book is weak, huddled and unnatural, it may well be said, on the other hand, that the description of the house and the garden of Laertes, and the scene of the mutual recognition of Ulysses and his aged father, are amongst the most beautiful and interesting parts of the whole poem.

Taken together, the Iliad and the Odyssey are assuredly two of the grandest works of the human

* X'. xxii. 474-7.

† X'. xxii. 457—72.

Intellect. They may be looked upon as the embodied Spirit of Heroic Poetry in the abstract rather than as the Poems of any particular Poet. In them we can discover no peculiarities of thinking or feeling, no system, no caprice. All is wide, diffused, universal, like the primal Light before it was gathered up and parcelled off into greater and lesser luminaries to rule the day and the night. Look at the difference, in this respect, between the Homeric and all the Greek poetry of the following ages! It is no longer the Muse speaking; but a Theban, or an Athenian or a Sicilian poet. The Individual appears; the temperament of the Man is visible. Poems become unlike each other. The free and liberal spirit of the old heroic Muse is every day straitened, circumscribed, and, if I may use such an expression, packed up and labelled. This observation may be illustrated by reference to the poetry of modern nations. There are thousands of old Spanish Romances on the Cid and the heroes of Ronces valles, undoubtedly the productions of various authors, which yet might be arranged in order, and set out as several heroic poems, with as little discrepancy between them in style and tone of feeling as can be perceived in the Rhapsodies of the Iliad. The same may be said, with even more obvious truth, of the ancient English Ballads on Robin Hood and his famous band. We

know that these little poems are from different hands; yet I defy any critic to class them under different heads distinguishable by any difference of thought or feeling. As the nation grows older, and the rights of citizens and the habits of civil society become more precisely defined, the Poet's compositions are more or less stamped with the mark of his own character; his spirit, in ceasing to be universal, waxes more intense and personal. A man who had not read a line of the works of Milton or Waller, could not fail to perceive distinct authorship in any two pieces that could be selected from their poetry. So it is with the Greek Poets after the Homeric age.

Yet, no doubt, there are many hearts and minds to which one of these matchless poems will be more delightful than the other; there are many to which both will give equal pleasure, though of different kinds; but there can hardly be a person, not utterly averse from the Muses, who will be quite insensible to the manifold charms of one or the other. The dramatic Action of the Iliad may command attention where the diffused Narrative of the Odyssey would fail to do so; but how can any one, who loves Poetry under any shape, help yielding up his soul to the virtuous Siren-singing of Genius and Truth, which is for ever resounding from the pages of either of these marvellous and truly immortal Poems? In

the Iliad will be found the sterner lessons of public justice or public expedience, and the examples are for statesmen and generals; in the Odyssey we are taught the maxims of private prudence and individual virtue, and the instances are applicable to all mankind: in both, Honesty, Veracity and Fortitude are commended, and set up for imitation; in both Treachery, Falsehood and Cowardice are condemned, and exposed for our scorn and avoidance. Born, like the river of Egypt, in secret light, they yet roll on their great collateral streams, wherein a thousand Poets have bathed their sacred heads, and thence drunk Beauty and Truth, and all sweet and noble harmonies. Known to no man is the time or place of their gushing forth from the Earth's bosom, but their course has been amongst the fields and by the dwellings of men, and our children now sport on their banks and quaff their salutary waters. Of all the Greek Poetry, I, for one, have no hesitation in saying that the Iliad and the Odyssey are the most delightful and have been the most instructive works to me; there is a freshness about them both which never fades, a truth and sweetness which charmed me as a boy and a youth, and on which, if I attain to it, I count largely for a soothing recreation in my old age.

MARGITES.

THIS Poem, which was a Satire upon some strenuous blockhead, as the name implies, does not now exist; but it was so famous in former times that it seems proper to select it for a slight notice from amongst the score of lost works equally attributed to the hand of Homer. It is said by Harpocration that Callimachus admired the Margites, and Dio Chrysostom says† that Zeno the philosopher wrote a commentary on it. A genuine verse, taken from this poem, is well known:— Πόλλ' η πίστατο ἔργα, κακῶς δ ̓ ἐπίστατο πάντα.†

For much he knew, but every thing knew ill.

Two other lines, in the same strain, are preserved by Aristotle:

Τόνδ ̓ οὔτ ̓ αὖ σκαπτῆρα θεοὶ θέσαν, οὔτ ̓ ἀρετῆρα,
οὔτ ̓ ἄλλως τι σοφόν· πάσης δ ̓ ἡ μάρτανε τέχνης.

Him or to dig or plough the Gods denied,
A perfect blockhead in whate'er he tried.

* In voce Μαργίτης.

+ Diss. 53.

Plato, Alcib. 2. The Atticism of the augment, however, is attributable to Plato, as is well remarked by Mr. G. Penn.-Prim. Arg. § Eth. vi. 7.

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