HOMERIC STUDIES
"The plenitude and variety of Mr. Gladstone's intellectual powers," says
G. Barnett Smith, "have been the subject of such frequent comment that
it would be superfluous to insist upon them here. On the political side
of his career his life has been as unresting and active as that of any
other great party leader, and if we regard him in the literary aspect we
are equally astonished at his energy and versatility. Putting out of
view his various works upon Homer, his miscellaneous writings of
themselves, with the reading they involve, would entitle their author to
take high rank on the score of industry.... We stand amazed at the
infinity of topics which have received Mr. Gladstone's attention."
To solve the problems associated with Homer has been the chief
intellectual recreation, the close and earnest study of Mr. Gladstone's
literary life. "The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle" possessed for
him an irresistible and a perennial charm. Nor can this occasion
surprise, for all who have given themselves up to the consideration and
attempted solution of the Homeric poems have found the fascination of
the occupation gather in intensity. It is not alone from the poetic
point of view that the first great epic of the world attracts students
of all ages and of all countries. Homer presents, in addition, and
beyond every other writer, a vast field for ethnological, geographical,
and historical speculation and research. The ancient world stands
revealed in the Homeric poems. Besides, almost numberless volumes have
been written based upon the equally debatable questions of the Homeric
text and the Homeric unity.
Some literary works of Mr. Gladstone have been already noticed. "Studies
on Homer and Homeric Age" shows Mr. Gladstone's classic tastes and
knowledge as well as his great industry and ability. This work was
published in three volumes, in 1858. It is his _magnum opus_ in
literature, and exhibits wide and laborious research. "It discusses the
Homeric controversy in its broad aspects, the relation of Homer to the
Sacred Writings, his place in education, his historic aims, the probable
period of the poet's life, the Homeric text, the ethnology of the Greek
races, and the politics and poetry of Homer. Among subsequent Greek
studies by Mr. Gladstone were his 'Juventus Mundi' and the 'Homeric
Synchronism.' There is probably no greater living authority on the text
of Homer than Mr. Gladstone, and the Ancient Greek race and literature
have exercised over him a perennial fascination."
Mr. Gladstone dwells much on the relation of Homer to Christianity. "The
standard of humanity of the Greek poet is different, yet many of his
ideas almost carry us back to the early morning of our race; the hours
of its greater simplicity and purity, and more free intercourse with
God.... How is it possible to overvalue this primitive representation of
the human race in a form complete, distinct and separate, with its own
religion, stories, policy, history, arts, manners, fresh and true to the
standard of its nature, like the form of an infant from the hand of the
Creator, yet mature, full, and finished, in its own sense, after its own
laws, like some masterpiece of the sculptor's art?" The Homeric scene of
action is not Paradise, but it is just as far removed from the vices of
a later heathenism.
Mr. Gladstone compares the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," which he believed
to be the poems of one poet, Homer, with the Old Testament writings, and
observes that "Homer can never be put into competition with the
Scriptures as touching the great fundamental, invaluable code of truth
and hope;" but he shows how one may in a sense be supplementary to the
other. As regards the history of the Greek race, it is Homer that
furnishes "the point of origin from which all distances are to be
measured." He says: "The Mosaic books, and the other historical books of
the Old Testament, are not intended to present, and do not present, a
picture of human society or of our nature drawn at large. The poems of
Homer may be viewed as the complement of the earliest portion of the
sacred records."
Again: "The Holy Scriptures are like a thin stream, beginning from the
very fountain-head of our race, and gradually, but continuously, finding
their way through an extended solitude into times otherwise known, and
into the general current of the fortunes of mankind. The Homeric poems
are like a broad lake, outstretched in the distance, which provides us
with a mirror of one particular age and people, alike full and
marvelous, but which is entirely disassociated by a period of many
generations from any other records, except such as are of the most
partial and fragmentary kind. In respect of the influence which they
have respectively exercised upon mankind, it might appear almost profane
to compare them. In this point of view the Scriptures stand so far apart
from every other production, on account of their great offices in
relation to the coming of the Redeemer and to the spiritual training of
mankind, that there can be nothing either like or second to them."
Mr. Gladstone thinks that "the poems of Homer possess extrinsic worth as
a faithful and vivid picture of early Grecian life and measures; they
have also an intrinsic value which has given their author the first
place in that marvelous trinity of genius--Homer, Dante, and
Shakespeare."
As to the historic aims of Homer, Mr. Gladstone says: "Where other poets
sketch, Homer draws; and where they draw he carves. He alone of all the
now famous epic writers, moves (in the 'Iliad' especially) subject to
the stricter laws of time and place; he alone, while producing an
unsurpassed work of the imagination, is also the greatest chronicler
that ever lived, and presents to us, from his own single hand, a
representation of life, manners, history, of morals, theology, and
politics, so vivid and comprehensive, that it may be hard to say whether
any of the more refined ages of Greece or Rome, with their clouds of
authors and their multiplied forms of historical record, are either more
faithfully or more completely conveyed to us."
Mr. Gladstone fixes the probable date of Homer within a generation or
two of the Trojan war, assigning as his principal reason for so doing
the poet's visible identity with the age, the altering but not yet
vanishing age of which he sings, and the broad interval in tone and
feeling between himself and the very nearest of all that follow him. He
presents several arguments to prove the trustworthiness of the text
of Homer.
In 1877, Mr. Gladstone wrote an article on the "Dominions of the
Odysseus," and also wrote a preface to Dr. Henry Schliemann's "Mycenae."
One of his most remarkable productions bore the title of, "The Vatican
Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance; a Political
Expostulation." This book was an amplification of an article from his
own pen, which appeared October, 1874, in the _Contemporary Review_. It
created great public excitement and many replies. One hundred and twenty
thousand copies were sold. Mr. Higginson says: "The vigor of the style,
the learning exhibited, and the source whence it came, all contributed
to give it an extraordinary influence.... It was boldly proclaimed in
this pamphlet that, since 1870, Rome has substituted for the proud boast
of _semper eadem_, a policy of violence and change of faith;... 'that
she had equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history;' ... 'that
she has reburnished and paraded anew every rusty tool she was thought to
have disused,' and 'that Rome requires a convert who now joins her to
forfeit his moral and mental freedom, and to place his loyalty and
civil duty at the mercy of another.'"
Mr. Gladstone issued another pamphlet, entitled "Vaticanism; and Answers
to Reproofs and Replies," He reiterated his original charges, saying:
"The Vatican decrees do, in the strictest sense, establish for the Pope
a supreme command over loyalty and civil duty.... Even in those parts of
Christendom where the decrees and the present attitude of the Papal See
do not produce or aggravate open broils with the civil power, by
undermining moral liberty, they impair moral responsibility, and
silently, in the succession of generations, if not in the lifetime of
individuals, tend to emasculate the vigor of the mind."
Mr. Gladstone published in seven volumes, in 1879, "Gleanings of Past
Years." The essay entitled "Kin Beyond the Sea" at first created much
excitement. "The Kin Beyond the Sea" was America, of which he says: "She
will probably become what we are now, the head servant in the great
household of the world, the employer of all employed; because her
services will be the most and ablest." Again: "The England and the
America of the present are probably the two strongest nations in the
world. But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the
England of the future, that the daughter, at some no very distant time,
will, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than
the mother." Mr. Gladstone argues in support of this position from the
concentrated continuous empire which America possesses, and the enormous
progress she has made within a century.
In an address at the opening of the Art Loan Exhibition of Chester,
August 11, 1879, Mr. Gladstone said: "With the English those two things
are quite distinct; but in the oldest times of human industry--that is
to say amongst the Greeks--there was no separation whatever, no gap at
all, between the idea of beauty and the idea of utility. Whatever the
ancient Greek produced he made as useful as he could; and at the same
time, reward for work with him was to make it as beautiful as he could.
In the industrial productions of America there is very little idea of
beauty; for example, an American's axe is not intended to cut away a
tree neatly, but quickly. We want a workman to understand that if he can
learn to appreciate beauty in industrial productions, he is thereby
doing good to himself, first of all in the improvement of his mind, and
in the pleasure he derives from his work, and likewise that literally he
is increasing his own capital, which is his labor."
In his articles on "Ecce Homo" he expresses the hope "that the present
tendency to treat the old belief of man with a precipitate, shallow,
and unexamining disparagement, is simply a distemper, that inflicts for
a time the moral atmosphere, that is due, like plagues and fevers, to
our own previous folly and neglect; and that when it has served its work
of admonition and reform, will be allowed to pass away."
The "Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture" is the title of a book by Mr.
Gladstone, the articles of which were originally published in _The
Sunday School Times_, Philadelphia.
[Illustration: MR. GLADSTONE'S AXE]