It will occur to many readers, that perhaps Homer may furnish the
sole exception to this sweeping assertion. Any _but_ Homer is
clearly and ludicrously below the level of the competition, but
even Homer "with his tail on," (as the Scottish Highlanders say of
then chieftains when belted by their ceremonial retinues,) musters
nothing like the force which _already_ follows Shakspeare, and
be it remembered, that Homer sleeps and has long slept as a subject
of criticism or commentary, while in Germany as well as England,
and _now even in France_, the gathering of wits to the vast
equipage of Shakspeare is advancing in an accelerated ratio. There
is, in fact, a great delusion current upon this subject.
Innumerable references to Homer, and brief critical remarks on
this or that pretension of Homer, this or that scene, this or that
passage, lie scattered over literature ancient and modern; but the
express works dedicated to the separate service of Homer are, after
all, not many. In Greek we have only the large Commentary of
Eustathius, and the Scholia of Didymus, &c.; in French little or
nothing before the prose translation of the seventeenth century,
which Pope esteemed "elegant, "and the skirmishings of Madame
Dacier, La Motte, &c.; in English, besides the various translations
and their prefaces, (which, by the way, began as early as 1555,)
nothing of much importance until the elaborate preface of Pope to
the Iliad, and his elaborate postscript to the Odyssey--nothing
certainly before that, and very little indeed since that, except
Wood's Essay on the Life and Genius of Homer. On the other hand, of
the books written in illustration or investigation of Shakspeare, a
very considerable library might be formed in England, and another
in Germany.