breadth and elevation of the highest genius, we have before us,
and in a yet more remarkable degree, an even more rare fulness and
consistency of the various instruments and organs which make up the
apparatus of the human being--constituted as he is, in mind and body,
and holding, as he does, on the one side of the Deity, and on the
other, of the dust. Among all the qualities of the poems, there is
none more extraordinary than the general accuracy and perfection of
their minute detail, when considered with reference to the standards
at which from time to time they aim. 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. He alone presents to us a mind and an
organization working with such precision that, setting aside for the
moment any question as to the genuineness of his text, we may reason
in general from his minutest indications with the confidence that they
belong to some consistent and intelligible whole.
It may be right, however, to consider more circumstantially the
question of the historical authority of Homer. It has been justly
observed by Wachsmuth[12], that even the dissolution of his
individuality does not get rid of his authority. For if the works
reputed to be his had proceeded from many minds, yet still, according
to their unity of colour, and their correspondence in ethical and
intellectual tone with the events of the age they purport to describe,
there would arise an argument, founded on internal evidence, for
the admissibility of the whole band into the class of trustworthy
historical witnesses.
But, first of all, may we not ask, from whence comes the presumption
against Homer as an historical authority? Not from the fact that
he mixes marvels with common events; for this, to quote no other
instance, would destroy along with him Herodotus. Does it not arise
from this--that his compositions are poetical--that history has long
ceased to adopt the poetical form--that an old association has thus
been dissolved--that a new and adverse association has taken its place,
which connects poetry with fiction--and that we illogically reflect
this modern association upon early times, to which it is utterly
inapplicable?
If so, there is no burden of proof incumbent upon those, who regard
Homer as an historical authority. The presumptions are all in favour of
their so regarding him. The question will, of course, remain--In what
proportions has he mixed history with imaginative embellishment? And
he has furnished us with some aids towards the consideration of this
question.
The immense mass of matter contained in the Iliad, which is beyond what
the action of the poem requires, and yet is in its nature properly
historical, of itself supplies the strongest proof of the historic
aims of the poet. Whether, in the introduction of all this matter, he
followed a set and conscious purpose of his own mind, or whether he
only fed the appetite of his hearers with what he found to be agreeable
to them, is little material to the question. The great fact stands,
that there was either a design to fulfil, or, at least, an appetite to
feed--an intense desire to create bonds and relations with the past--to
grasp its events, and fasten them in forms which might become, and
might make them become, the property of the present and the future.
Without this great sign of nobleness in their nature, Greeks never
could have been Greeks.
I have particularly in view the great multitude of genealogies;
their extraordinary consistency one with another, and with the other
historical indications of the poems; their extension to a very large
number, especially in the Catalogue, of secondary persons; I take
again the Catalogue itself, that most remarkable production, as a
whole; the accuracy with which the names of the various races are
handled and bestowed throughout the poems; the particularity of the
demands regularly made upon strangers for information concerning
themselves, and especially the constant inquiry who were their parents,
what was, for each person as he appears, _his_ relation to the past?
and further, the numerous legends or narratives of prior occurrences
with which the poems, and particularly the more historic Iliad, is so
thickly studded. Even the national use of patronymics as titles of
honour is in itself highly significant of the historic turn. Nay, much
that touches the general structure of the poem may be traced in part
to this source; for all the intermediate Books between the Wrath and
the Return of Achilles, while they are so contrived as to heighten the
military grandeur of the hero, are so many tributes to the special and
local desires in each state or district for commemoration of their
particular chiefs, which Homer would, of course, have to meet, as he
itinerated through the various parts of Greece.
Now, this appetite for commemoration does not fix itself upon what
is imaginary; it may tolerate fiction by way of accessory and
embellishment, but in the main it must, from its nature, rely upon
what it takes to be solid food. The actions of great men in all times,
but especially in early times, afford it suitable material; and there
is nothing irrational in believing that the race which in its infancy
produced so marvellous a poet as Homer, should also in its infancy
have produced great warriors and great statesmen. Composing, with such
powers as his, about his own country, and for his own countrymen,
he could scarcely fail, even independently of conscious purpose,
to convey to us a great mass of such matter as is in reality of the
very highest historic truth and value. If, indeed, we advance so far
as to the conviction that his hearers believed him to be reciting
historically, the main question may speedily be decided. For each
generation of men, possessed of the mental culture necessary in order
to appreciate Homer, knows too much of the generations immediately
preceding to admit of utter and wholesale imposition. But it is a fair
inference from the Odyssey, that the Trojan War was thus sung to the
men and the children of the men who waged it. Four lays of bards[13]
are mentioned in that poem; one of Phemius, three of Demodocus; and out
of the four, three relate to the War, which appears to show clearly
that its celebrity must have been both instantaneous and overpowering;
the more so, as the only remaining one has reference not to any human
transaction, but to a scene in Olympus. And I shall shortly advert
to the question, whether the Homeric poems themselves were in all
probability composed not later than within two generations of the War
itself.
It may be true that, with respect to some parts of his historical
notices, the poet, adapting himself to the wishes and tastes of his
hearers, might take liberties without fear of detection, most of all
where he has filled in accessories, in order to complete a picture;
but I think we should be wrong in supposing that in the interest of
his art he would have occasion to make this a general practice, or
to carry it in historical subjects beyond matters of detail. Nor can
I wholly disregard the analogy between his history and his equally
copious and everywhere intermixed geographical notices: such of them,
I mean, as lay within the sphere of Greek experience. These indeed, he
could not, under the eyes of the men who heard him, cast into the mould
of fiction; yet there could be no call of popular necessity for his
unequalled and most minute precision, and it can only be accounted for
by the belief that accurate record was a great purpose of his poems. If
he was thus careful to record both classes of particulars alike, and
if, as to the one, we absolutely know that he has recorded them with
exemplary fidelity, that fact raises a corresponding presumption of
some weight as to the other.
But there is, I think, another argument to the same effect, of the
highest degree of strength which the nature of the case admits. It
is to be found in the fact that Homer has not scrupled to make some
sacrifices of poetical beauty and propriety to these historic aims. For
if any judicious critic were called upon to specify the chief poetical
blemish of the Iliad, would he not reply by pointing to the multitude
of stories from the past, having no connexion, or at best a very
feeble one, with the War, which are found in it? Such brief and minor
legends as occur in the course of the Catalogue, may have a poetical
purpose; it appears not improbable that they may be introduced by way
of relief to the dryness of topographical and local enumeration. But in
general the narratives of prior occurrences are (so to speak) rather
foisted in, and we must therefore suppose for them a purpose over and
above that, which as a mere poet Homer would have in view. It is hard
to conceive that he would have indulged in them, if he had not been
able to minister to this especial aim by its means. Thus, again, the
curious and important genealogy of the Dardanian House[14] is given by
Æneas, in answer to Achilles, who had just shown by his taunt that
he, at least, did not want the information, but knew very well[15]
the claims and pretensions of his antagonist. Again, the long story
told by Agamemnon, in the assembly held for the Reconciliation, when
despatch was of all things requisite, may best be accounted for by the
desire to relate the circumstances attending the birth of the great
national hero, Hercules. It certainly impedes the action of the poem,
which seems to be confessed in the rebuke insinuated by the reply of
Achilles:--
νῦν δὲ μνησώμεθα χάρμης
αἶψα μάλ’· οὐ γὰρ χρὴ κλοτοπεύειν ἐνθάδ’ ἐόντας
οὐδὲ διατρίβειν· ἔτι γὰρ μέγα ἔργον ἄρεκτον.[16]
Still more is this the case when Patroclus, sent in a hurry for news
by a man of the most fiery impatience, is (to use the modern phrase)
button-held by Nestor, in the eleventh Book, and, though he has ‘no
time to sit down,’ yet is obliged to endure a speech of a hundred and
fifty-two lines, ninety-three of which, containing the account of the
Epean contest with Pylos, are absolutely and entirely irrelevant.
It may be said, that these effusions are naturally referable to the
garrulous age of Nestor, and to false shame and want of ingenuousness
in Agamemnon. In part, too, we may compare them with the modern
fashion among Orientals of introducing parables in common discourse.
But many of these have no parabolic force whatever: and from all of
them poetical beauty suffers. On the other hand, the historic matter
introduced is highly curious and interesting for the Greek races:
why, then, should we force upon Homer the charge of neglect, folly,
or drowsiness,[17] when an important purpose for these interpolations
appears to lie upon the very face of them?
It will be observed, that if this reasoning in reference to the
interlocutory legends be sound, it supplies an historical character to
the poem just in the places where the general argument for it would
have been weakest; inasmuch as these legends generally relate to
times one or two generations earlier than the Troica, and are farther
removed, by so much of additional interval, from the knowledge and
experience of his hearers.
But, over and above the episodes, which seem to owe their place in the
poem to the historic aim, there are a multitude of minor shadings which
run through it, and which, as Homer could have derived no advantage
from feigning them, we are compelled to suppose real. They are part
of the graceful finish of a true story, but they have not the showy
character of what has been invented for effect. Why, for instance,
should Homer say of Clytæmnestra, that till corrupted by Ægisthus she
was good?[18] Why should it be worth his while to pretend that the iron
ball offered by Achilles for a prize was the one formerly pitched by
Eetion?[19] Why should he spend eight lines in describing the dry trunk
round which the chariots were to drive?[20] Why should he tell us that
Tydeus was of small stature?[21] Why does Menelaus drive a mare?[22]
Why has Penelope a sister Iphthime, ‘who was wedded to Eumelus,’ wanted
for no other purpose than as a _persona_ for Minerva in a dream?[23]
These questions, every one will admit, might be indefinitely multiplied.
But, after all, there can be no point more important for the decision
of this question, than the general tone of Homer himself. Is he, for
ethical and intellectual purposes, the child of that heroic age which
he describes? Does he exhibit its form and pressure? Does he chant in
its key? Are there a set of ideas of the writer which are evidently
not those of his heroes, or of his heroes which are not those of
the writer, or does he sing, in the main, as Phemius and Demodocus
might themselves have sung? Wachsmuth says well, that Homer must be
regarded as still within the larger boundaries of the heroic age.
There are, perhaps, signs, particularly in the Odyssey, of a first
stage of transition from it; but the poet is throughout identified
with it in heart, soul, speech, and understanding. I would presume to
argue thus; that Homer never would have ventured to dispense with mere
description, and to adopt action as his sole resource--to dramatise
his poem as he has dramatised it--unless he had been strong in the
consciousness of this identity. It is no answer to say that later
writers--namely, the tragedians--dramatised the subject still more,
and presented their characters on the stage without even those slender
aids from interjected narrative towards the comprehension of them,
which Homer has here and there, at any rate, permitted himself to
use. For the consequence has been in their case, that they entirely
fail to represent the semblance of a picture of the heroic age, or
indeed of any age at all. They produce remote occurrences or fables
in a dress of feelings, language, and manners suited to their own
time, as far as it is suited to any. Besides, as dramatists, they had
immense aids and advantages of other kinds; not to mention their grand
narrative auxiliary, the Chorus. But Homer enjoyed little aid from
accessories, and has notwithstanding painted the very life. And yet,
seeking to paint from the life, he commits it to his characters to
paint themselves and one another. Surely he never could have confined
himself to this indirect process, unless he had been emboldened by the
consciousness of his own essential unity with them all. He would have
done as most other epic poets have done, whose personages we feel that
we know, not from themselves, but from what the poet in the character
of intelligencer has been kind enough to tell us; whereas we learn
Achilles by means of Achilles, Ulysses by means of Ulysses, and so with
the rest. Next to their own light, is the light they reflect on one
another; but we never see the poet, so to speak, holding the candle.
Still, in urging all this, I feel that more remains and must remain
unspoken. The question, whether Homer speaks and paints essentially
in the spirit of his own age, or whether he fetches from a distance
both his facts and a manner so remarkably harmonizing with them, must
after all our discussions continue one to be settled in the last resort
not by arguments, which can only play a subsidiary part, but first
by the most thorough searching and sifting of the text; then by the
application of that inward sense and feeling, to which the critics of
the destructive schools, with their ἀναποδεικταὶ φάσεις, make such
copious appeals.
But the assumption by an effort of mind of the manners and tone of
a remote age, joined with the consistent support of this character
throughout prolonged works, is of very rare occurrence. In Greek
literature there is nothing, to my knowledge, which at all approaches
it; and this I think may fairly be urged as of itself almost conclusive
against ascribing it to Homer. The later tragedians, in whose
compositions we should look for it, do not apparently so much as think
of it; and it is most difficult to suppose a poet so national as Homer
to be in this cardinal respect entirely different from all others of
his race. Indeed the supposition is radically at variance with the
idea of his poetical character; of which the very groundwork lies in a
childlike unconsciousness, and in the unity of Art with Nature[24].
May we not, however, go a good deal further, and say boldly that the
faculty of assuming in literary compositions an archaic costume, voice,
and manner, does not belong at all either to an age like that of Homer,
or to any age of which the literary conditions at all resemble it?
In the first place, an inventor, working like Homer for the general
public, must, by departing altogether from the modes of thought,
expression, and action current in his own day, _pro tanto_ lose his
hold upon those on whose approval he depends. It seems to follow that
this will not be seriously attempted, except in an age which has
ceased to afford a liberal supply of the materials of romance. Is not
this presumption made good by experience? The Greek tragedians, it is
indisputable, did not find it necessary to aim, and did not aim, at
reproducing the whole contemporary apparatus, which was in strictness
appropriate and due to their characters. Virgil made no such attempt in
the Æneid, of which, notwithstanding the manners abound in anachronisms
of detail. The romance poets of Italy idealize their subject, not,
however, by the revival of antique manners with their proper apparatus
of incidents, but by means of an abundant preternatural machinery.
Even in Shakespeare’s King John, Henry IV, or Henry VIII, how little
difference can be detected from the Elizabethan age, or (in this point)
from one another[25]. Again, in Macbeth or Lear, enough is done
to prevent our utterly confounding their ages with the common life
of the hearers; but there is nothing that approaches to a complete
characteristic representation of the respective times to which the
personages are supposed to belong. So, again, in Coriolanus, Julius
Cæsar, or Antony and Cleopatra, there is a sort of Roman _toga_ thrown
loosely over the figures; but we do not feel ourselves amidst Roman
life when we read them. And, in truth, what is done at all in these
cases is not done so much by reproducing as by generalizing, in the
same sense as a painter generalizes his draperies. A great instance
of the genuine process of reproduction is to be found in Sir Walter
Scott. He, however, besides being a man of powerful genius, cast not
in the mould of his own age, but in one essentially belonging to the
past, was a master of antiquarian knowledge. And this leads me to
name what seems to be the second condition of serious and successful
attempts (I need not here speak of burlesques, of which all the touches
must be broad ones) at disinterring and reviving bygone ages in the
whole circle and scheme of their life. The first, as has been already
said, is to live in an age itself socially old, so as not to abound in
proper materials for high invention. The second is, to live in an age
possessed of such abundant documents and records of a former time as to
make it practicable to explore it in all points by historical _data_.
This condition was wanting to Virgil, even supposing him to have had
the necessary tastes and qualifications. It was not wanting to Scott,
with reference especially to the period of the Stuarts, who, besides
a vast abundance of oral and written traditions, had laws, usages,
architecture, arms, coins, utensils, every imaginable form of relic
and of testimony at his command, so that he could himself first live
in the age of his works, and then, when himself acclimatised, invent
according to it.
In all this it is not forgotten that a certain amount of archaism is
indispensable in all works purporting to draw their subject from a
long-past age. But this _minimum_ need only be slight and general,
as in the Æneid; and it consists rather in the exclusion of modern
accessories, than in the revival of the original tone. And again,
the very choice of subject, as it is grave and severe or light and
gay, will to some extent influence the manners: the former will
spontaneously lean towards the past, the latter, depending on the zest
of novelty, will be more disposed to clothe itself in the forms of the
present. Thus we have a more antique tone in Henry the Fifth, than in
the Merry Wives of Windsor. But archaic colouring within limits such as
these is broadly different from such systematic representation of the
antique as Homer must have practised, if he had practised it at all.
As in romance and poetry, so in the progress of the drama, this
method appears to be the business of a late age. The strength of
dramatic imagination is always when the drama itself is young. It
then confidently relies upon its essential elements for the necessary
illusion; it knows little, and cares less, about sustaining it by
elaborate attention to minor emblems and incidents. But when it has
lived into the old age of civilized society, when the critical faculty
has become strong and the imagination weak, then it strengthens
itself by minute accuracy in scenery and costume,--in fact, by exact
reproduction. This is indeed the novel gift of our own time: and by
means of it theatrical revivals are now understood and practised among
ourselves in a manner which former generations could not emulate, but
did not require.
Nor must we forget the importance, with reference to this discussion,
of Homer’s minuteness, precision, and multitude of details. Every one
of these, be it remembered, if we suppose him not to be painting from
the life, affords an additional chance of detection, by the discrepancy
between the life habitually present to the poet’s experience, and that
which he is representing by effort. But the voice of the Homeric poems
is in this respect, after all, unisonous, like that of the Greeks,
and not multiform, like that of the Trojan army[26]. We are driven,
therefore, to suppose that Homer practised this art of reproduction on
a scale, as well as with a success, since unheard of, and this at a
period when, according to all likelihood and all other experience, it
could only in a very limited sense be possible to practice it at all.
The extravagance of these suppositions tells powerfully against them,
and once more throws us back on the belief that the objects which he
painted were, in the main, those which his own age placed beneath his
view.
This view of the historical character of Homer, I believe,
substantially agrees with that taken by the Greeks in general. If I
refer to Strabo, in his remarkable Prolegomena[27], it is because he
had occasion to consider the point particularly. Eratosthenes had
treated the great sire of poets as a fabulist. Strabo confutes him.
Eratosthenes had himself noticed the precision of the geographical
details: Thisbe, with its doves; Haliartus and its meadows; Anthedon,
the boundary; Lilæa by the sources of Cephissus; and Strabo retorts
upon him with force--πότερον οὖν ὁ ποιῶν ταῦτα ψυχαγωγοῦντι ἔοικεν ἢ
διδάσκοντι; his general conclusion is, that Homer used fiction, as his
smith in the Odyssey used gold for plating silver:--
ὡς δ’ ὅτε τις χρυσὸν περιχεύεται ἀργύρῳ ἀνὴρ,
that so Homer adjoined mythical ornaments to true events. But history
was the basis:--ἔλαβεν οὖν παρὰ τῆς ἱστορίας τὰς ἀρχάς[28]. And, in
adopting the belief that Homer is to be taken generally for a most
trustworthy witness to facts, I am far from saying that there are no
cases of exception, where he may reasonably be suspected of showing
less than his usual fidelity. The doctrine must be accepted with
latitude: the question is not whether it is absolutely safe, but
whether it is the least unsafe. We may most reasonably, perhaps, view
his statements and representations with a special jealousy, when they
are such as appear systematically contrived to enhance the distinctive
excellencies of his nation. Thus, for instance, both in the causes
and incidents of the war, and in the relative qualities and merits of
Greeks and Trojans, we may do well to check the too rapid action of
our judgments, and to allow some scope to the supposition, that the
historical duties of the bard might here naturally become subordinate
to his patriotic purpose in glorifying the sires of his hearers, that
immortal group who became through him the fountain head to Greece, both
of national unity and of national fame.