the use of them to orators. Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, so justly celebrated for their taste and simplicity, were not found, however, superior to the invitation to punning, which the name of Polynices held out to them, and, accordingly, a wretched conundrum, relative to it, disgraces the respective tragedies of these three great dramatists. The lamentable conceit, inspired by the name of Ajax, is another instance of the fallibility of Grecian taste; but, happily, such instances, far from being numerous, are so few, that it is not for the purpose of avoiding prolixity, that I decline mentioning them.

It was the good fortune of Greece that her constitutional energy and enthusiasm were at first exercised in the admiration of a Poet, of all others the best qualified to excite, support, regulate, and direct them to their proper object.

At this early period of their duration, before their faculties or their manners were sophisticated by artificial culture, or their language was modified into

To the

rigidity by the inflexible rules of an arbitrary grammar; while the former retained all the spirit and raciness of nature, and the latter all the grace and harmony of primitive modulation; there arose among the Greeks a BEING, with that sovereignty of genius, which seems to be invested with a species of divine right to intellectual dominion over mankind. possession, was joined the consciousness, of such mighty power, and THE POET entered upon the task of what might be deemed his mission, as having authority. He travelled; and, like one of his heroes, * he surveyed the cities of many men, and looked, with an intuitive glance, into their mind and character. There is internal evidence of this throughout the

whole of his works.

tion, respecting the

Without entering into the ques

existence of literature, in the

age of HOMER, I may fairly say, that it is manifest that he at least did not look at nature through "the

* Πολλων δ' ανθρωπων ιδεν ας εα, και 100 εγνω.

spectacles of books." From the same principle, on which I ground my inference, as to his wandering disposition, I deduce my idea of his moral character, and conclude it to have been generous and humane,* superior to the sordid pursuits of gain or low ambition, and passionately addicted to military life, from the same impulse, to which a noble writer ascribes a similar attachment in minds animated with all the social affections, because the ties of fellowship are drawn closer in warfare, than in any other situation, or condition in society. That he was a soldier by

Εργον δ' εμοι ου φίλον εςκεν,

Οι δ' οικοφελίη, ήτε τρέφει αγλαά τέκνα
Αλλά μοι αιεὶ νῆες ἐπήρετμοι φίλαι ησαν,

Και πόλεμοι, και ακονίες εύξεςτοι, και οἴςτοι,

Λυγρά τα τ' αλλοιςιν γε καλαριγηλα πέλονται,

Αυτάρ εμοι τα φίλ' εςκε, τὰ που Θεος εν φρεσὶ θηκεν.

It is scarcely possible to read these lines, without conceiving that the poet is describing his own character. Considered in this point of view, they are peculiarly interesting.

profession, is, I think, probable, to a degree approaching to moral certainty. But upon this supposition, it is impossible to account for the anatomical precision, with which he describes wounds of every kind, without attributing to him such a knowledge of the structure of the human frame, as would be little short of miraculous. According to my hypothesis, he describes only what he actually saw; which, considering the powers of minute and accurate observation, that he every where evinces, serves to moderate, although by no means to supersede, our astonishment at this particular.

But it is not to this subject only that the observation applies; it applies almost to every thing, in respect to this mighty genius. Homer seems always to describe what he actually saw, without excepting even the machinery of his poem. There is an individuality in the character and attributes of his Deities, to which the automatical term can hardly be considered as suitable. They are as well known to his readers, as the human personages of the scene. He brought

down his Gods to the level of his Heroes, for the purpose of exalting the latter. Cicero wishes that he had adopted the opposite course; but there Cicero talks more like a moralist than a critic. That Nature, which is, *by itself, and of necessity, endowed with immortal life, and in the uninterrupted enjoyment of profound peace, removed, withdrawn, to an immeasurable distance, from all human concerns; secure from danger, inaccessible to pain, self-sufficient in its powers, and wanting nothing from us, must, indeed, to the eye of unenlightened reason, be perfectly indifferent to the good or evil of mankind. Hence the difficulty, under which Christian Poets labour; hence, too, that strange, and uncouth, but not unaccountable,