one as singularly appropriate. The chapter for vespers is from Eccles. xxxi.: 'Blessed is the man that is found without blemish, that hath not gone after gold, nor put his trust in riches and treasures. Who is he, and we will praise him? for in his life he hath done wonderful things.' And the antiphon to the Magnificat has in it a fine touch of irony, 'I will liken him to a wise man that built his house upon a rock.'

The Bollandists say of his deeds that they are miranda sed non imitanda,' but they touched on dangerous ground, for in the collect for this festival, good Catholics pray, 'Mercifully grant, that as we celebrate his birthday to immortality, we may also imitate his actions.'

As it happens, the 1st of July, on which day Symeon Salos is set down in the Roman Calendar, was not his birthday to immortality,' for he died on July 21, and we hope it will be a long time before good Catholics attempt to imitate the actions of such a scoundrel.

The remarks of Alban Butler are not a little amusing. Although we are not obliged in every instance to imitate St. Symeon, and though it would be rash ever. to attempt it without a special call; yet his example ought to make us blush '-we should think so, indeed-' when we consider — ah!' with what an ill-will we suffer the least things our pride.'

that hurt

keen controversy was alive in the classical schools concerning the composition of the Iliad. It was

assumed that the author did not possess the art and materials of writing; and out of certain marked peculiarities of the work it was deduced that it had been enlarged by a succession of poets. Theory after theory was advanced; of which the last perhaps is that of Grote, that it was an Achilleid before it became an Iliad. But the portions called new are in uniform style with the old, and have poetry as splendid. If any thing be denoted, it is successive editions with enlargement by the original poet. Only in the later books, and possibly in the gossiping speech of Nestor in the eleventh book (where ninety-eight lines may with great advantage to the poem be wholly omitted),' small diversities of phraseology are observed, which suggest that the last book especially may have come down less perfect, and may have been completed by the editor with many considerable freedoms. But as a whole it is essential to the poem. We may thus say, that the controversy has ended in a substantial acknowledgment of the unity of the Iliad. The assumption that the author did not possess the means of writing down

poem was unproved, improbable, and a mere gratuitous invention of difficulty.

In the course of this searching discussion, the Odyssey was in comparison neglected. Those who favoured the unity of the Iliad

as of course a belief that same poet composed both epics, and Mr. Mure elaborately maintains that so it was. Hence it is not at all superfluous to go into the question. Ancient opinion here cannot justly be allowed weight on that side. The ancients accepted as the work of one poet nearly all that is printed in our editions with the great epics, besides some lost poems. If we give no authority to Herodotus, when he refers to the Cyprian Epic as Homer's, to Thucydides when he quotes the Delian Hymn, or to Aristotle in quoting from the. Margites, we cannot reasonably give weight to current opinion concerning the Odyssey. If anyone ask, 'Is it certain then that the ancients were wrong in ascribing the Hymns to the poet of the Iliad ?' it here suffices to reply, that no competent modern scholar can believe it. Yet it may be a satisfaction to an English reader, if we refer in illustration to a phenomenon of the Hymn to Mars (Ares). Mars in the Iliad is the type of barbarous, ignorant, brutal war; no moral element is found in him: Jupiter insults him in his misfortunes, for he is always beaten. Now contrast the Homeric Hymn to Mars. is called, 'the Ally of Justice, the Leader of most just men,' and is identified with the planet Mars in very elegant lines, which denote a progress in astronomy far beyond Homer. The poet implores him 'to instil from on high a mild radiance and brave hardihood into our life,

He

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that we may be able to restrain the sharp force of anger from irritating us into a path of dismal battle.' 'Do thou, O Blessed One! give us confidence to abide in the harmless ordinances of Peace, escaping the turmoil of enemies and violent deaths.' Such an address to the God of Battles appears altogether an anachronism in Pagan Greece. A Thales rather than a Homer might be the writer. No doubt it was the poetical merit of these Hymns, and their general style and metre, which made them pass as Homeric, before criticism was born. The belief that all the chief poems were from one author was sucked in with the mother's milk, and became a sort of religious creed, accepted as unenquiringly as the ascription of all the Hebrew Psalms to David. The Hymns with all their merit show a tendency to degenerate into rhetorical ingenuity, by amassing long strings of descriptive epithets, such as the power of the Greek language facilitates. Thus they form a transition to the Orphic poems, which remind one of Catholic glorifications of the Virgin. Many of the Hymns have local allusions, which show that they are written after the Greek colonisation of the coast of Asia. It is the more remarkable that Thucydides did not see that the Hymn to Delian Apollo, indeed the very passage which he quotes, could not possibly be from the author of the Iliad. It is from that hymn that the belief arose that the Iliad was composed by a blind man living in Chios.' Nevertheless, as a well-known couplet says,

Seven mighty towns contend for Homer dead,

In which the living Homer begged his

bread;

which does but express the fact, that there were many poets concealed under the single name Homer. For us, therefore, the question whether the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by the same poet, is

wholly unprejudiced by any opinions of antiquity.

The first question, then, which presents itself to the student is, 'Does the poet himself, in continuing the tale of the Iliad, profess to continue his own work?' We may almost reply, On the contrary, his opening invocation to the Muse implies that he is not the same poet ; for in the closing line he says, 'Of these topics, O goddess daughter of Jove, tell to us also, from some source or other.' The phrase to us also has only one natural interpretation; viz. as to the poet of the Iliad who invoked thee, so also to us.' The somewhat prosaic phrase, 'from some quarter or other' (auolev ye) is unknown to the Iliad, and is called by the grammarians Attic. The young student, well acquainted with the Iliad alone, who enters the Odyssey, is soon struck and embarrassed by new words, even when things are not new. We should plunge into an immense sea of verbal criticism, if we tried at all duly to develop the contrast; yet it is expedient at once to remark on some words which surprise a learner. He finds in the Odyssey ipw, I say; páo, say thou; páɛ, it shone; páɛa, eyes, as in Latin poets lumina; kάuoc, fair, fine, for καλός; ἄεσε, ᾶσε, he slept ; βρώμη, food; wn, victuals; avrodior, for avrika, instantly; neravòs, plentiful; ἀποφώλιος (for ἀνωφελής ?), useless, abortive; ddevss, unpleasant; nains (for irwσios?), vain, empty; neoxɛ, he attacked; Avkáßaç, a year; oiun, a tune; ipɛpoc, slavery; ἐπητύς, courtesy; ἄρτος, a loaf; οὖλος for όλος, whole; οὐλὴ for ὠτειλή, scar, wound; ovλe, salve! hail! [though oulos is also ghastly, and curly (hair)]; ἀκήριος του ἀκήρατος. unharmed, while in the Iliad akipios is heartless, cowardly. Besides, there is a vast addition to the development of the language. It cannot be by accident that in the Odyssey, as in later Greek, kaŋ

means an oar, while in the Iliad it is only a handle, and is never said of an oar. Into syntactical peculiarities we cannot enter. It suffices at this point of the argument to say, that prima facie we seem in the very language to encounter marks of a different poet.

But the new poet borrows immensely from the material of the old, with whose works he evidently had a very familiar acquaintance. This borrowing has been most strangely advanced by Mure as proof of the unity; whereas justly viewed, it is a signal disproof. No great poet would garble and pervert his own fine passages. As some people who are intimately versed in texts and words of Scripture use them needlessly, or even quite out of place, for their own small convenience, so does the later poem deal. For instance, in Il. v. 751 is a celebrated and splendid passage concerning the Hours, warders of Heaven and of Olympus, to whom it is entrusted alike to lift or to drop the curtain of darkness (TUKIòv Vépoc). In the Odyssey the line is garbled by changing the accusative to TUKIVOY λóxov, the close ambuscade, itself borrowed from the Iliad, but in Od. xi. 524 made descriptive of Ulysses's duty in the Wooden Horse! So difficult is it of explanation, that Cowper arbitrarily translates Xoxov the door! Of course such a perversion of the original poet produces an unnatural phrase. Again, the winged sandals attributed to Mercury in the last book of the Iliad are very familiar; and the poet of the Odyssey applies them to Mercury in book v.; yet in book i. 96 he attributes them to the goddess Athena; which is surely a great literary offence. The earlier poet often represents his stalwart heroes as grasping something' with stout hand,' xεipì Taxɛin: the Odyssey (xxi. 6) stereotypes the phrase, applying it to Penelope, where she is to be depicted in great feminine

beauty.

may

Carelessness and haste

6 be here the cause: for slender hand' from Iliad v. 425 would have suited the metre as well. Just so, the description of evening, 'The sun sank down, and all the streets were shaded,' he perpetually uses, whether his travellers are in the open field, or on the sea. When he is describing the Phæacian rowers, whose sole accomplishment is that of the sailor, he gives them all witty names, alluding to nautical skill. The last is Euryalus, and he has the bad taste to add to it the phrase pilfered from the Iliad, poroλOLY toos "Apn, a match for mortaldestroying Mars,' where it is quite inappropriate. In a like spirit he calls the rowers of Telemachus (iii. 402) his well-greaved companions,' as if they had been heavyarmed warriors. The poet of the Iliad is too volatile to be logical, and with his great heroes he retains epithets out of place; but I do not think cases of this sort can be found in him. Again: in the Iliad wounds and slaughter are often inflicted vni xaλk, by the pitiless brass;' but in the Odyssey (viii. 507, xiv. 418) the phrase is misapplied for the cleaving of wood. This suggests to remark, that weapons of war in the Iliad are of brass or bronze, and iron is used only for knives, spits, and ploughshares, because of its rarity. Hence the phrase of the Odyssey, iron itself attracts a man' (xvi. 294), is unintelligible to a mere student of the Iliad, for it means, The very sight of a weapon of war allures a man' (to fight). Toio de púbwv pxe is common in the Iliad as preface to a speech made to many persons; as, 'To them did [Nestor] begin addresses;' but the poet of the Odyssey borrows the formula out of place, when two persons are in dialogue, one speaking to one (v. 202, xvii. 184). Achilles (Iliad xviii. 34) had described his father Peleus as 'cursed by grievous old age.' In the Odyssey (xxiii. 283)

the phrase is modified into 'cursed by opulent old age,' as applied to Ulysses, who is to live long in prosperity. Odyssey vi. 2 seems to say that Ulysses was 'cursed by sleep and toil.' That ἀρημένος meant strictly 'cursed' in the Iliad, is guaranteed to us by the kindred verbal ȧpnrosexecrable,' àparòç of Sophocles. If we admit an interval of time, we easily understand, that as the old French gehenné (tormented) was softened into the modern géné (ill at ease), so åpnμéros may have passed from its first sense cursed into (perhaps) subdued, though the latter sense has no justification in grammar. But a flagrant instance of inexcusable perversion needs closer attention. În his last words to Andromache (Iliad vi. 490-3) Hector bids her to go home, tend her domestic duties, and set her handmaids to their task; but 'WAR (says he) shall be a care to Men, to all men who are born in Ilion, and to me in chief.' In the Odyssey this is three times parodied, and each time detestably. Twice, by Telemachus to his mother. In i. 356-9 having exactly repeated the charge to her, he adds, 'But TALK shall be a care to Men, and to me in chief: for to this belongs sway in the house.' Again, in xxi. 350, all recurs, except that War (oleuoc) is now changed to the Bow (róžor), namely, the bow of Ulysses which has been shut in a closet for twenty years! Thus the poet travesties himself too. But it is hard to say which is more ridiculous, to represent that Talk gives sway, or that the Bow gives sway, in the house. Besides this, in Odyssey xi. 351, the passage is put into the mouth of King Alcinous, who has undertaken to send Ulysses home. Let the stranger (says he) wait, until I make up for him

the entire gift: but ESCORT (Oμm) shall be a care to Men, and to me in chief; roй yàp Kрáτng ẼOT' ¿vì chu. Again, he mocks himself, by changing house to people, with uncertain syntax. The contrast of men to women has here vanished: the pronoun Toυ apparently means this thing, viz. Escort (fem.), and we have to translate the last clause, either, For to this belongs sway in (among) the people; or, For over this the power rests in the people. But neither gives a moderately good argument. No great poet ever thus burlesqued his own writing.

But we will pass from words to things: and first we observe the new view given of Castor and Pollux. In the Iliad, they are named only as brothers of Helen, whom she wonders not to see in the army of Agamemnon: but, adds the poet, both had died in their native Lacedæmon (iii. 243). Not a word is dropt to suggest anything miraculous in their death, nor that after death their state differed from that of other men: but the poetical phrase is used, 'them already lifegendering Earthheld fast.' This very formula is garbled in the Odyssey (xi. 300) so as to reverse the meaning, by inserting the word wous, alive, both of whom life-gendering Earth holds fast alive.' The poet adds, 'Who even beneath Earth having honour from Jupiter, at one time live on alternate days, at another time are dead; and receive honour on the footing of gods.' Very obscure as this is, we see clearly that an entirely new superstition had had time to grow up since the poet of the Iliad wrote. Indeed, that hero-worship had advanced in the interval is clear, from the Odyssey representing Minos as judge of the dead, as also from his inexplicable allusion to Rhadaman