Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/51

 10 s. VIL JAN. 12, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Homer and his Age. By Andrew Lang. (Long- mans & Co.)

THERE is no more polished and skilful fighter in the literary lists than Mr. Lang, and he easily makes fun of the extraordinary conclusions and assertions of the learned Teuton. But he lacks that thorough- ness which distinguishes the best German scholar- ship, and in this volume, as in some others he has written, he makes us regret that he has not gone deeper, and written all round the subject with the acuteness which he shows in his partial treatment. In 1893 his ' Homer and the Epic ' argued for the unity of Homer, and now he has returned to the charge in a shorter book. When we say that it contains but 326 pages of leisurely print, the expert will easily imagine that the treatment is far from exhaustive.

Mr. Lang's thesis is that Homer, both in the ' Iliad ' and ' Odyssey,' depicts the life of a single brief age of culture an age which " is sundered from the Mycenaean prime by the century or two in which changing ideas led to the superseding of burial by burning." Roughly, this date seems to the present reviewer correct for at any rate the core of the poem ; but that the whole of the ' Iliad ' and the ' Odyssey ' as we now know them is the work of that one age Mr. Lang has not persuaded us. He demolishes easily special points in theories which suppose different dates of composition for various parts of the poem, but he has, on his own view, to make admissions of later insertions. Thus we read on p. 124 that "it is a critical error to insist on taking Homer absolutely and always an pied de la lettre ; but with due deference to Mr. Lang, it seems to us that this is the very method by which he often confutes his adversaries. Of a line twice appearing in the ' Odyssey ' (xvi. 294 and xix. 13) he says (p. 193) that, because it disregards the dis- tinction iron for implements, bronze for weapons, " it must therefore be a very late addition ; it may be removed without injuring the sense of the passage in which it occurs." This seems to us a significant Argal for the other side, and the easy condition that the sense of the passage is not injured would allow of excisions of a wholesale character such excisions, indeed, as are made by those who suppose a core of narrative and a gradual addition to it, not necessarily contemporaneous. Here, in fact, we come upon a criterion of literary judgment in which technical scholars and men of letters may differ. It is all very well to say that Homer, a writer of one age, shows "unus color." That quality has been ascribed to our Authorized Bible, with some justifi- cation, we think, yet the version of James was a polishing by many hands of previous renderings which have very various sources. Would not many critics select the stories of Ali Baba and Aladdin as the most characteristic of the ' Arabian Nights ' ? Yet Mr. Lane-Poole has recently told us that these two tales ' ' occur in no manuscript or printed text of the collected tales." The professional Orientalist might discover this, but would the literary critic ?

The most valuable part of the volume is that con- cerning the question of Homeric dress and armour, which Mr. Lang treats in detail and with great acuteness. He gives us, with that zeal for com- parative anthropology which distinguishes him,

pictures of 'Algonquins under Shield,' an Algon- quin corslet and evidence of warlike accoutrements derived from early Greek vases. In the matter of dress we think date is very difficult to determine. Nothing shows survivals in culture more, apparently meaningless survivals of arrangements and words. The retention of such terms concerning obsolete things Mr. Lang admits on p. 204. The alternative is to omit another unfortunate line in the 'Odyssey,' whioh " does not apply to the state of things in the ' Iliad,' while it contradicts the whole ' Odyssey,' in which swords and spears are always of bronze when their metal is mentioned."

It will be seen that the best of theories have their drawbacks.

On the human side of Agamemnon and Nestor, as characters drawn with skill (and possibly derived from real prototypes), Mr. Lang is admirable. He analyzes with gusto the boasts of Nestor and the frailties of Agamemnon. This is a point of view generally neglected by lovers of Greek grammar, who dote on the digamma and cannot see a jest. It has always struck us as a veracious touch that Achilles, in a rage with Agamemnon, should say that the monarch was the worse for drink. There is no reason to suppose that it was so, but the taunt is common now.

On the linguistic side Mr. Lang has given us very little. He says, following Helbig, that Homer never mentions seals or signet rings, and he follows this up by asking: "How often are finger rings men- tioned in the whole mass of Attic tragic poetry ? We remember no example, and instances are certainly rare. Liddell and Scott give none. Yet the tragedians were, of course, familiar with rings and seals." We must protest that we expect a little more research than is implied in the mere consulting of Liddell and Scott ! Those venerable authorities are not aware that Agamemnon himself seals an inscribed tablet in the ' Iphigeneia in Aulis,' 38 ; in the same play Agamemnon instructs the old man to "keep the seal (impression in wax) on the tablet," 155. In the ' Hippolytus ' (864) Theseus breaks the seal, his own wife's gold signet (862), before reading Phaedra's indictment of Hippo- lytus. Deianeira sends Lichas with a token which her lord will "quickly recognize within the circle of this seal" ('Trachinige,' 615).

We need hardly add that the book shows abundant humour and an exceptionally wide range of compari- son between ancient and modern times. It does not excel in arrangement or compression, but it will stimulate thoughtful students of the subject.

Popular Ballads of the Olden Time. Selected and arranged by Frank Sidgwick. Third Series. (A. H. Bullen.)

" I WADNA gi'e ae wheeple of a whaup (cry of a curlew) for a' the nichtingales in England " is the patriotic, but anonymous motto for the third volume of Mr. Sidgwick's 'Popular Ballads,' which deals with 'Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance.* As the contents of the volume include such master- pieces as ' The Hunting of the Cheviot ' (better known as 'Chevy Chase'), 'Johnie Armstrong,' ' The Braes of Yarrow,' the modern ballad of ' Kinmont Willie,' ' Sir Patrick Spence,' ' Bessie Bell and Mary Gray,' "Waly, waly, gin love be bonny," ' The Heir of Linne,' and many more of equal merit and celebrity, this outburst of Border enthusiasm may pass without protest. A noble collection of ballads is indeed given, and is said to-