Page images
PDF
EPUB

for Suidas has mention'd Eumetis or Polycafte; and Paufanias, Clymene or Themifto; which happens, because the contefting countries find out mothers of their own for him. Tradition has in this cafe afforded us no more light, than what may serve to shew its fhadows in confufion; they ftrike the fight with fo equal a probability, that we are in doubt which to chufe, and muft pafs the queftion undecided.

(

His Name.

a

If we enquire concerning his own name, even that is doubted of. He has been called Melefigenes from the river where he was born. Homer has been reckon'd an afcititious name, from fome accident in his life: The Certamen Homericum calls him once Auletės, perhaps from his mufical genius; and Lucian, Tigranes; it may be from a confufion with that Tigranes or b Tigretes, who was brother of Queen Artemifia, and whofe name has been fo far mingled with his, as to make him be esteem'd author of fome of the leffer works which are afcrib'd to Homer. It may not be amifs to close these criticisms with that agreeable derifion wherewith Lucian treats the humour of Gramma rians in their fearch after minute and impoffible enquiries, when he feigns, that he had talk'd over the point with Homer, in the land of the Bleffed I afk'd him, fays he, of what country he was? a queftion hard to be refolv'd with us to which he "anfwer'd, He could not certainly tell, because fome had inform'd him, that he was of Chios, fome of Smyrna, and others of Colophon; but he took himfelf for a Babylonian, and faid he was call'd Tigranes, "while he liv'd among his country-men; and Homer while he was a hostage among the Grecians.

[ocr errors]

Paufanias, . 10. ► Suidas de Tigrete

Lucian's true biftory, l. 2.

At

At his birth he appears not to have

been blind, whatever he might be af- His Blindness. terwards. The * Chian medal of him

(which is of great antiquity, according to Leo Allatius) feats him with a volume open, and reading intently. But there is no need of proofs from antiquity for that which every line of his works will demonAtrate. With what an exactness, agreeable to the natural appearance of things, do his cities ftand, his mountains rife, his rivers wind, and his regions he extended? How beautifully are the views of all things drawn in their figures, and adorn'd with their paintings? What address in action, what vifible characters of the paffions infpirit his heroes? It is not to be imagin'd, that a man could have been always blind, who thus inimitably copies nature, and gives every where the proper proportion, figure, cofour, and life: "Quem fi quis cacum genitum putat (fays Paterculus) omnibus fenfibus orbus eft :"

His Education

and Mafter.

muft certainly have beheld the creation, confider'd it with a long attention, and enrich'd his fancy by the moft fenfible knowledge of those ideas which he makes the reader fee while he but defcribes them, As he grew forward in years, he was train'd up to learning (if we credit d Diodorus) under one "Prona"pides, a man of excellent natural endowments, "who taught the Pelafgick letter invented by Linus." From him he might learn to preserve his poetry by committing it to writing; which we mention, because it is generally believ'd no poems before his were fo preferv'd; and he himself in the third line

* The medal is exhibited at the beginning of this effay,

a Diod. Sic. l. 3.

Paterculus, l. 1.
Jofeph. cont. Apion. 1. 1.

of his Batrachomyomachia (if that piece be his) exprefly speaks off writing his works in his tablets. When he was of riper years, for His Travels. his farther accomplishment and the gratification of his thirft of knowledge, he spent a confiderable part of his time in travelling. Upon which account, & Proclus has taken notice that he must have been rich: "For long "travels, fays he, occafion high expences, and "efpecially at thofe times when men could neither "fail without imminent danger and inconveniencies, "nor had a regulated manner of commerce with one "another." This way of reasoning appears very probable; and if it does not prove him to have been rich, it fhews him, at least, to have had patrons of a generous fpirit; who obferving the vaftness of his capacity, believ'd themselves beneficent to mankind, while they supported one who feem'd born for fomething extraordinary.

Agypt being at that time the feat of learning, the greatest wits and: Genius's of Greece us'd to travel thither. Among these h Diodorus reckons Homer, and to ftrengthen his opinion alledges that multitude of their notions which he has receiv'd into his poetry, and of their customs, to which he alludes in his fictions: Such as his Gods, which are nam'd from the first Ægyptian Kings; the number of the Mufes taken from the nine Minstrels which attended Ofiris; the Feast wherein they us'd to fend their statues of the Deities into Ethiopia, and to return after twelve days; and the carrying their dead bodies over the lake to a

*Ην νέον ἐν δίλλοισιν ἐμοῖς ἐπὶ γένασι θήκα. Batrach. 8 Procl. vita Hom.

Diod. Sic, l. 1.

pleafant

pleafant place call'd Acherufia near Memphis, from whence arose the stories of Charan, Styx, and Elysium. These are notions which fo abound in him, as to make Herodotus fay, He had introduc'd from thence the religion of Greece. And if others have believ'd he was an Ægyptian, from his knowledge of their rites and traditions, which were reveal'd but to few, and of the arts and customs which were practis'd among them in general; it may prove at least thus much, that he must have travell'd there.

As Greece was in all probability his native countrey, and had then began to make an effort in learning, we cannot doubt but he travell'd there alfo, with a particular obfervation. He uses the different dialects which were spokerr in its different parts, as one who had been converfant with them all. But the argument which appears moft irrefragable, is to be taken from his catalogue of the ships: He has there given us an exa& Geography of Greece, where its cities, mountains, and plains, are particularly mention'd, where the courses of its rivers are trac'd out, where the countries are laid in order, their bounds affign'd, and the uses of their foils fpecify'd. This the ancients, who compar'd it with the original, have allow'd to be fo true in all points, that it could never have been owing to a loose and cafual information: Even Strabo's account of Greece is but a kind of commentary upon Homer's.

We may carry this argument farther, to fuppofe his having been round Afia Minor, from his exact divifion of the Regnum Priami vetus (as Horace calls it)

1 Ησίοδον γδ ο Ομηρον ἡλικίαν τετρακοσίοισι ἔτεσι δικίω μας πρεσβυτέρες γυέως, και ο πλέοσι· ἔτοι δὲ εἰσι οἱ ποιήσαντες θεός γονίζω Ἕλλησι, καὶ τοῖσι θεοῖσι τὰς ἐπωνυμίας δόντες, και τιμάς τις τέχνας διελόντες, και εἴδια αὐτῶν σημήνα/ες. Herodot. 1. 2.

into its feparate Dynaflies, and the account he gives of the bordering nations in alliance with it. Perhaps too, in the wandrings of Ulyffes about Sicily, whofe ports and neighbouring iflands are mention'd, he might contrive to fend his Heroe where he had made his own voyage before. Nor will the fables he has intermingled be any objection to his having travell'd in thofe parts, fince they are not related as the hiftory of the prefent time, but the tradition of the former. His mention of Thrace, his defcription of the beafts of Libya, and of the climate in the fortunate islands, may feem alfo to give us a view of him in the extremes of the earth, where it was not barbarous or uninhabited. It is hard to fet limits to the travels of a man, who has fet none to that defire of knowledge which made him undertake them. Who

can fay what people he has not feen, who appears to be vers'd in the cuftoms of all? He takes the -Globe for the fcene on which he introduces his fubjects; he launches forward intrepidly, like one to whom no place is new, and appears a citizen of the world in general.

When he return'd from his travels, he feems to have apply'd himself to the finishing of his Poems, however he might have either defign'd, begun, or purfu'd them before. In thefe he treafur'd up his various acquifitions of knowledge, where they have been preferv'd through many ages, to be as well the proofs of his own induftry, as the inftructions of pofterity. He could then defcribe his facrifices after the Eolian manner; or his leagues with a mixture of Trojan and Spartan ceremonies: He could then compare the confufion of a multitude to that tumult he had obferv'd in the Icarian fea, dafhing and breaking among

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »