(the horses,) fretting through grief for the loss of their charioteer."

II. Another almost decisive record of Homer's familiarity with Cretan life, lies in his notice of the agrimi, a peculiar wild goat, or ibex, found in no part of the Mediterranean world, whether island or mainland, except in Crete. And it is a case almost without a parallel in literature, that Homer should have sent down to all posterity, in sounding Greek, the most minute measurement of this animal's horns, which measurement corresponds with all those recently examined by English travellers, and in particular with three separate pairs of these horns brought to England about the year 1836, by Mr Pashley, the learned Mediterranean traveller of Trinity College, Cambridge. Mr Pashley has since published his travels, and from him we extract the following description of these shy but powerful animals, furnished by a Cretan mountaineer:-"The agrimia are so active, that they will leap up a perpendicular rock of ten to fourteen feet high. They spring from precipice to precipice; and bound along with such speed, that no dog would be able to keep up with them-even on better ground than that where they are found. The sportsmen must never be to windward of them, or they will perceive his approach long before he comes within musketshot. They often carry off a ball; and, unless they fall immediately on being struck, are mostly lost to the sportsman, although they may have received a mortal wound. They are commonly found two, three, or four together; sometimes a herd of eight and even nine is seen. They are always larger than the common goat. In the winter time, they may be tracked by the sportsman in the snow. It is common for men to perish in the chase of them. They are of a reddish colour, and never black or party-coloured like the common goat. The number of prominences on each horn, indicates the years of the animal's age."

Now Homer in Iliad, iv. 105, on occasion of Pandarus drawing out his bow, notices it as an interesting fact, that this bow, so beautifully polished, was derived from [the horns of] a wild goat, aos afgov; and the epithet by which he describes this wild crea

ture is 28-preternaturally agile. In his Homeric manner he adds a short digressional history of the fortunate shot from a secret ambush, by which Pandarus had himself killed the creature. From this it appears that, before the invention of gunpowder, men did not think of chasing the Cretan ibex; and from the circumstantiality of the account, it is evident that some honour attached to the sportsman who had succeeded in such a capture. He closes with the measurement of the horns in this memorable line, [memorable as preserving such a fact for 3000 years]

Του κέρα εκ κιφαλης έκκαίδεκα δωρα πεφυκείο

"The horns from this creature's head measured sixteen dora in length." Now what is a doron? In the Venetian Scholia, some annotator had hit the truth, but had inadvertently used a wrong word. This word, an oversight, was viewed as such by Heyne, who corrected it accordingly, before any scholar had seen the animal. The doron is now ascertained to be a Homeric expression for a palm, or sixth part of a Grecian foot; and thus the extent of the horns, in that specimen which Pandarus had shot, would be two feet eight inches. Now the casual specimens sent to Cambridge by Mr Pashley, (not likely to be quite so select as that which formed a personal weapon for a man of rank,] were all two feet seven and a half inches on the outer margin, and two feet one and a half inches on the inner. And thus the accuracy of Homer's account, (which, as Heyne observes, had been greatly doubted in past ages,) was not only remarkably confirmed, but confirmed in a way which at once identifies, beyond all question, the Homeric wild-goat ( algos) with the present agrimi of Crete; viz. by the unrivalled size of the animal's horns, and by the unrivalled power of the animal's movements, which rendered it necessary to shoot it from an ambush, in days before the discovery of powder.

But this result becomes still more conclusive for our present purpose; viz. for identifying Homer himself as a Cretan by his habits of life, when we mention the scientific report from Mr Rothman, of Trinity College, Cambridge, on the classification and habitat of the animal:-" It is not the bou

quetin," [of the Alps,] "to which, however, it bears considerable resemblance, but the real wild-goat, the capra ægagrus (Pallas,) the supposed origin of all our domestic varieties. The horns present the anterior trenchant edge characteristic of this species. The discovery of the @gagrus in Crete, is perhaps a fact of some zoological interest; as it is the first wellauthenticated European locality of this animal."

Here is about as rigorous a demonstration that the sporting adventure of Pandarus must have been a Cretan adventure, as would be required by the Queen's Bench. Whilst the spirited delineation of the capture, in which every word is emphatic, and picturesquely true to the very life of 1841, indicates pretty strongly that Homer had participated in such modes of sporting himself.

III. Another argument for the Cretan habitudes of Homer, is derived from his allusion to the Cretan tumblers-the unngs-the most whimsical, perhaps, in the world; and to this hour the practice continues unaltered as in the eldest days. The description is easily understood. Two men place themselves side by side; one stands upright in his natural posture; the other stands on his head. Of course this latter would be unable to keep his feet aloft, and in the place belonging to his head, were it not that his comrade throws his arm round his ankles, so as to sustain his legs inverted in the air. Thus placed, they begin to roll forward, head over heels, and heels over head: every tumble inverts their positions; but always there is one man, after each roll, standing upright on his pins, and another whose lower extremities are presented to the clouds. And thus they go on for hours. The performance obviously requires two associates; or, if the number were increased, it must still be by pairs; and accordingly Homer describes his tumblers as in the dual number.

IV. A fourth, and most remarkable, among the Homeric mementos of Cretan life, is the noλaλa-or conversation from a distance. This it is, and must have been, which suggested to Homer his preternatural male voices-Stentor's, for instance, who spoke as loud "as other fifty men ;' and that of Achilles, whom Patroclus

roused up with a long pole, like a lion from his lair, to come out and roar at the Trojans; simply by which roar he scares the whole Trojan army. Now, in Crete, and from Colonel Leake, it appears, in Albania, (where we believe that Cretan emigrants have settled,) shepherds and others are found with voices so resonant, aided perhaps by the quality of a Grecian atmosphere, that they are able to challenge a person "out of sight;" and will actually conduct a ceremonious conversation (for all Cretan mountaineers are as ceremonious as the Homeric heroes) at distances which to us seem incredible. What distances? demands a litigious reader. Why, our own countrymen, modest and veracious, decline to state what they have not measured, or even had the means of computing. They content themselves with saying, that sometimes their guide, from the midst of a solitary valley, would shout aloud to the public in general-taking his chance of any strollers from that great body, though quite out of sight, chancing to be within mouth shot. But the French are not so scrupulous. M. Zallony, in his Voyage à l'Archipel, &c., says, that some of the Greek islanders "ont la voix forte et animée; et deux habitans, à une distance d'une demi-lieue, même plus, peuvent très facilement s'entendre, et quelquefois s'entretenir." Now, a royal league is hard upon three English miles, and a sea league, we believe, is two and a half; so that half a league, et même plus, would bring us near to two miles, which seems a long interval at which to conduct a courtship. But this reminds us of an English farmer in the north, who certainly did regularly call in his son to dinner from a place two measured miles distant; and the son certainly came. How far this punctuality, however, might depend on the father's request, or on the son's watch, was best known to the interested party. In Crete meantime, and again, no doubt, from atmospheric advantages, the rλornoia, or power of descrying remote objects by the eye, is carried to an extent that seems incredible. This faculty also may be called Homeric; for Homer repeatedly alludes to it.

V. But the legends and mythology of Crete are what most detect the intercourse of Homer with that island.

A volume would be requisite for the full illustration of this truth. It will be sufficient here to remind the reader of the early civilization, long anterior to that of Greece continental, which Crete had received. That premature refinement furnishes an à priori argument for supposing that Homer would resort to Crete; and inversely, the elaborate Homeric use of Cretan traditional fables, furnishes an à posteriori argument that Homer did seek this island.

It is of great use towards any full Homeric investigation, that we should fix Homer's locality and trace his haunts; for locality, connected with the internal indications of the Iliad, is the best means of approximating to Homer's true era; as, on the other hand, Homer's era, if otherwise deduced, would assist the indications of the Iliad to determine his locality. And if any reader demands in a spirit of mistrust, How it is that Crete, so harassed by intestine wars from Turkish, Venetian, and recently from Egyptian tyranny, the bloodiest and most exterminating, has been able, through three thousand years, to keep up unbroken her inheritance of traditions? we reply, That the same cause has protécted the Cretan usages, which (since the days of our friend Pandarus) has protected the Cretan ibex; viz. the physical conformation of the island mountains; secret passes where one resolute band of 200 men is equal to an army; ledges of rock which a mule

cannot tread with safety; crags where even infantry must break and lose their cohesion; and the blessedness of rustic poverty, which offers no temptation to the marauder. These have been the Cretan safeguards; and a brave Sfakian population, by many degrees the finest of all Grecian races in their persons and their hearts.

The main point about Homer, the man, which now remains to be settled, amongst the many that might be useful, and the few that are recoverable, is this-could he write? and if he could, did he use that method for fixing his thoughts and images as they arose ? or did he trust to his own memory for the rough sketch, and to the chanters for publishing the revised copies?

This question, however, as it will again meet us under the head Solon and the Pisistratida, we shall defer to that section; and we shall close this personal section on Homer by one remark borrowed from Plato. The reader will have noticed that, amongst the cities pretending to Homer as a native child, stands the city of Argos. Now Plato, by way of putting a summary end to all such windy pretensions from Dorian cities, introduces in one of his dialogues a stranger who remarks, as a leading characteristic of Homer-that every where he keeps the reader moving amongst scenes, images, and usages which reflect the forms and colouring of Ionian life. This remark is important, and we shall use it in our summing up.

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