The following on the 'Rhapsodoi' is a variation on that which appeared
in 'Homer and the Homeridæ,' with some quite additional and new thoughts
on the subject.
About these people, who they were, what relation they bore to Homer, and
why they were called 'Rhapsodoi,' we have seen debated in Germany
through the last half century with as much rabid ferocity as was ever
applied to the books of a fraudulent bankrupt. Such is the natural
impertinence of man. If he suspects any secret, or any base attempt to
hide and conceal things from himself, he is miserable until he finds out
the mystery, and especially where all the parties to it have been
defunct for 2,500 years. Great indignation seems reasonably to have been
felt by all German scholars that any man should presume to have called
himself a _rhapsodos_ at any period of Grecian history without sending
down a sealed letter to posterity stating all the reasons which induced
him to take so unaccountable a step. No possible solution, given to any
conceivable question bearing upon the 'Rhapsodoi,' seems by any tendency
to affect any question outstanding about Homer. And we do not therefore
understand the propriety of intermingling this dispute with the general
Homeric litigation. However, to comply with the practice of Germany, we
shall throw away a few sentences upon this, as a pure _ad libitum_
digression.
The courteous reader, whom we beg also to suppose the most ignorant of
readers, by way of thus founding a necessity and a case of philosophic
reasonableness for the circumstantiality of our own explanations, will
be pleased to understand that by ancient traditionary usage the word
_rhapsodia_ is the designation technically applied to the several books
or cantos of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' So the word _fytte_ has gained a
technical appropriation to our narrative poetry when it takes the ballad
form. Now, the Greek word _rhapsody_ is derived from a tense of the verb
_rhapto_, to sew as with a needle, to connect, and _ode_, a song, chant,
or course of singing. If, therefore, you conceive of a _rhapsodia_, not
as the _opera_, but as the _opus_ of a singer, not as the form, but as
the result of his official ministration, viz., as that section of a
narrative poem which forms an intelligible whole in itself, whilst in a
subordinate relation it is one part of a larger whole--this idea
represents accurately enough the use of the word _rhapsodia_ in the
latter periods of Greek literature. Suppose the word _canto_ to be taken
in its literal etymological sense, it would indicate a metrical
composition meant to be sung or chanted. But what constitutes the
complexity of the idea in the word _rhapsodia_ is that both its separate
elements, the poetry and the musical delivery, are equally essential;
neither is a casual, neither a subordinate, element.
Now, the 'Rhapsodoi,' as may be supposed, are the personal correlates of
the _rhapsodia._ This being the poem adapted to chanting, those were the
chanters. And the only important question which we can imagine to arise
is, How far in any given age we may presume the functions of the
poetical composer and the musical deliverer to have been united. We
cannot perceive that any possible relation between a rhapsody considered
as a section of a poem and the whole of that poem, or any possible
relation which this same rhapsody considered as a thing to be sung or
accompanied instrumentally could bear to the naked-speaking rehearsal of
the same poem or to the original text of that poem, ever can affect the
main question of Homer's integrity. The 'Rhapsodoi' come to be mentioned
at all simply as being one link in the transmission of the Homeric
poems. They are found existing before Pisistratus, they are found
existing after Pisistratus. And they declined exactly as the art of
reading became general. We can approximate pretty closely to the time
when the 'Rhapsodoi' ceased; but at what time they began we defy any man
to say. Plato (Rep. x.) represents them as going back into the days of
Homer; nay, according to Plato, Homer himself was a _rhapsodos_, and
itinerated in that character. So was Hesiod. And two remarkable lines,
ascribed to Hesiod by one of the Scholiasts upon Pindar, if we could be
sure that they were genuine, settle that question:
[Greek: En Delo tote prôton ego xai Homeros aoidoi
Melpomen, en nearois úmnois rapsantes aoidê.]
'Then, first of all,' says Hesiod, 'did I and Homer chant as bards in
Delos, laying the nexus of our poetic composition in proæmial hymns.' We
understand him to mean this: There were many singers and harpers who
sang or accompanied the words of others; perhaps ancient words--at all
events, not their own. Naturally he was anxious to have it understood
that he and Homer had higher pretensions. They killed their own mutton.
They composed the words as well as sang them. Where both functions were
so often united in one man's person, it became difficult to distinguish
them. Our own word _bard_ or _minstrel_ stood in the same ambiguity. You
could not tell in many cases whether the word pointed to the man's
poetic or musical faculty. Anticipating that doubt, Hesiod says that
they sang as original poets. For it is a remark of Suidas, which he
deduces laboriously, that poetry, being uniformly sung in the elder
Greece, acquired the name of [Greek: aoidê]. This term became
technically appropriated to the poetry, or substance of whatever was
sung, in contradistinction to the musical accompaniment. And the poet
was called [Greek: aoidos] So far Hesiod twice over secures the dignity
of their office from misinterpretation. And there, by the word [Greek:
raphantes] he indicates the sort of poetry which they cultivated, viz.,
that which was expanded into long heroic narratives, and naturally
connected itself both internally amongst its own parts, and externally
with other poems of the same class. Thus, having separated Homer and
himself from the mere musicians, next he separates them even as poets
from those who simply composed hymns to the Gods. These heroic legends
were known to require much more elaborate study and art. Yet, because a
critical reviewer might take occasion to tax his piety in thus composing
human legends in neglect of the Gods, Hesiod, forestalling him, replies:
'You're out there, my friend; we were both pious, and we put our piety
into hymns addressed to the Gods, which, with cabinetmakers' skill, we
used also as interludes of transition from one legend to another.' For
it is noticed frequently and especially by a Scholiast on Aristophanes
(Pac. 826), that generally speaking the _proæmia_ to the different parts
of narrative-poems were entirely detached, [Greek: kai ouden pros to
pragma dêlon], and explain nothing at all that concerns the business.