Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/143

 HOMER. 127 Whatever may have been the principle on which the cyclic poems were originally strung together, they are all now lost, except those two unrivalled diamonds, whose brightness, dim- ming all the rest, has alone sufficed to confer imperishable glory even upon the earliest phase of Grecian life. It has been the natural privilege of the Iliad and Odyssey, from the rise of Grecian philology down to the present day, to provoke an in- tense curiosity, which, even in the historical and literary days of Greece, there were no assured facts to satisfy. These composi- tions are the monuments of an age essentially religious and poet- ical, but essentially also unphilosophical, unreflecting, and unre- cording : the nature of the case forbids our having any authentic transmitted knowledge respecting such a period ; and the lesson must be learned, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence. After the numberless comments and acrimonious controversies l to which the Homeric poems have given rise, it can hardly be said that any of the points originally doubtful have obtained a solution such as to command universal acquiescence. To glance at all these controversies, however briefly, would far transcend the limits of the present work ; but the most abridged Grecian history would be incomplete without some inquiry respecting the Poet (so the Greek critics in their veneration denominated Homer), and the productions which pass now, or have heretofore passed, under his name. Who or what was Homer? What date is to be assigned. to him ? What were his compositions ? A person, putting these questions to Greeks of different towns and ages, would have obtained answers widely discrepant and contradictory. Since the invaluable labors of Aristarchus and 1 It is a memorable illustration of t?iat bitterness which has so much dis- graced the controversies of literary men in all ages (I fear, we can make no exception), when we find Pausanias saying that he had examined into the ages of Hesiod and Homer with the most laborious scrutiny, but that he knew too well the calumnious dispositions of contemporary critics and poets, to declare what conclusion he had come to (Pans. ix. 30,2) : Hepl 6e 'HaiodoM re jj^iKiaf Kal 'O/n^pov, n-oTi.viTpa.yfj.ovqaavTi ff rd uKpifieaTarov ov fioi ypdfyetv ij6i) fyv, ixiaTanevu rb ^ikainov uAAwi> re Kal oi>% rjKiara oaai /car' /ie sirl rtitv ETTUV Ka&iaTJ]KGav.