_Homeric Literature._
There has been a very great difficulty in the world of literature, which
it were almost vain to think of removing. This difficulty is that
usually known as "the Homeric question." After the folios and quartos of
the grand old scholars of antiquity; after the octavos of Wolf, Heyne,
and Knight; after the able chapters of Grote, and the eloquent volumes
of Mure; after the Alexandrian Chorizontes; and after the incidental
reflections on the subject scattered through thousands of volumes, it
seems almost hazardous, and indeed useless, to offer any more
conjectures on "the bard of ages," and (to use the phrase of the
novelists) "his birth, education, and adventures." On a consideration of
the question, however, it will be seen that (strange fact!) the subject
is not yet exhausted; I shall therefore, with your kind assistance,
submit a retrospective view of the matter to the readers of "N. & Q.,"
and afterwards attempt to show what results may be drawn from the united
labour of so many minds. I shall then give a _résumé_, first, of the
ancient history bearing on Homer, and, continuing the sketch to the late
volumes of Mure, draw my own conclusions, which, after much patient
consideration, I must say, appear to be nearer an approximation to the
truth, than any theory which has yet been promulgated.
Let us cast our eyes on antiquity. This very much misunderstood period
of the earth's progress offers to us the proofs of an appreciation of
Homer to which literary history affords but one parallel. The
magnificent flights of thought, which the Hellenes could so well
accompany, the tone of colouring at once so subdued and so glorious,
gained for the unknown poet a reputation everlasting and world and
age-wide. But as time fled by, there arose a race of men who wrote
poetry as schoolboys do Latin, by judiciously arranging (or _vice
versâ_) appropriate lines from the earlier poets, called Cyclic poets,
or _cento_-makers. The men who wrote thus were, probably, persons either
engaged in itinerant vocal pursuits, or regular verse makers, who wrote
"on a subject," as our own street writers on the present day. Indeed, I
may say, that the state of the rhapsodists of Greece resembles much that
of our own "itinerant violinists," as an eminent counsel once
apostrophized the class which the excellent judge on the bench named,
according to general custom, "blin' fiddlers." The probable reason for
the introduction of passages into the original Homeric compositions was
the necessity of a novelty. The Cyclic poems are to Homer what the
letters of Poplicola, Anti-Sejanus, Correggio, Moderator, and the rest,
were to Junius. However, they prove in a remarkable manner how great the
excitement regarding "the poet," as Aristoteles calls him, ever
continued to be in Hellas.
These gentlemen, whose object was not to disgrace Homer by their puling
compositions, but only to practically observe the maxims subsequently
instilled by Iago into Roderigo's mind (viz., to "put money in their
purse"), were the precursors of another race of writers. In ancient
times, we are informed by Tatian[1], there were many writers on Homer,
whose works, it is to be lamented, have perished with the nominal
exception of a few fragments,--though, perhaps, scholars will once learn
to use those as a clue, and find, as Burges did in the case of
Thucydides[2], that many valuable passages are lying hid in the pages of
the lexicographers, who spared themselves the trouble of writing fresh
matter, by merely slightly changing the expressions of their sources,
and not "bothering" their lexicographical brains by attempting original
composition. It is thus, that even the weaknesses of the human mind
benefit after ages!
[Footnote 1: Fabr. _Bibl. Græc._ II. 1. iii.]
[Footnote 2: _Journ. of the Royal Soc. of Literature_, vol, ii.,
New Series, and afterwards in a pamphlet in 1845.]
The names furnished us by Tatian are these:--Theagenes of Rhegium (the
earliest writer of whom we are cognizant, contemporary with Cambyses);
Stesimbrotos of Thasos (contemporary with Pericles[3]); Antimachos of
Claros; Herodotos, Dionysios of Olynthos, Ephoros of Cyme; Philochoros
of Athens, Metacleides, Chamæleon of Heracleia[4]; Zenodotos of Ephesus,
(B.C. 280); Aristophanes of Byzantium (B.C. 264); Callimachus, whose
poetry, by the way, is dryer and more vapid than his prose, if the
little we have left of him allows us to form an opinion; Crates of
Malfus (B.C. 157); Eratosthenes of Cyrene; Aristarchos of Samothrace,
and Apollodoros of Athens. The minds or pens of these men in Hellas
alone, were occupied with this grand subject; and in Rome, that city of
translations and "crib," we find the pens of the scribes were at work,
and prolific in prolixity. Besides these authors, there are others whose
attempts at illustrating the text of the writers of antiquity have been
met in a most illiberal manner; I mean the Scholiasts, who have been
treated most unjustly. A goodly host of scribblers looks forth from the
grave of antiquity. And here, before proceeding to speak of the theories
of later times, it may be permitted me to suggest that casual allusions
by writers who write not expressly on the subject, and who are
sufficiently accurate on those points to which they have directed their
attention, are often more valuable than the folios of writers who go on
the principle of book-making.
[Footnote 3: Plato, _Ion_, p. 550. c.; Xenoph. _Mem._ iv. 2. §
10.; _Sympos._ iii. 5.; Plutarch, _Themist._ 2. 24.; _Cim._ 4. 14.
16.; _Per._ 8. 10. 13. 26. 36.; Strabo, x. p. 472.; Athen. xiii.
p. 598. e.]
[Footnote 4: Quoted by Athenæus (ix. p. 374. a.) under the title
of Περὶ τῆς ἀρχαίας κωμωδίας, which, however, is also
the name of a work by Eumelus.]
To enumerate the modern works of Homeric controversy, would be an
endless and tedious task, nay, even useless, when so able and full an
account exists in Engelmann's _Bibliotheca Classica_. The chief works,
however, are Wolf's _Prolegomena_; Wood's _Essay on the Original Genius
of Homer_; Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie_; Hermann, _Briefwechsel
mit Creuzer über Homer und Hesiod_; Welcker, _Der Epische Cyclus_;
Lange, _Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter und den sogenannten Epischen Kyklus
der Griechen_; Lachmann, _Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias_
(_Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841_); Voss, Nitzsch, O. Müller, Thirlwall
(_Hist. of Greece_, vol. i. appendix 1. p. 500. foll.), _Quarterly
Review_, No. lxxxvii., Grote (_Hist. of Greece_, pt. i. chapter xxi.
vol. ii.), Mure's _Critical History of the Language and Literature of
Antient Greece_, the article in Smith's _Dictionary_, vol. ii. p. 500.,
and Giovanni Battista Vico (_Principi di Scienza nuova_).
The foregoing writers are the principal who have occupied themselves
with the subject. I will, in my next paper, pass on to a review of the
question itself.