HOMERIC HYMNS.*
MR. LANG'S translation and his introductory essay. are both characteristic of him. For the translation he has used
the same style with which teachers and learners have become familiar for something like a quarter of a century in his Odyssey (collaborated with Professor Butcher) and in his Iliad (where he worked with Mr. Myers and Mr. Leaf). On the whole it has been a success. It is euphonious, and it is dignified. It corresponds roughly with the diction of the Authorised Version of the Bible, and though there is no absolute logical reason for using it in dealing with Homer, it has been accepted by scholars with practical unanimity..
Attempts to employ modern English have always been failures, more or less ludicrous; and in default of any probably preferable substitute we shall continue to accept, and even to admire, Mr. Lang's graceful and harmonious diction. Here is a specimen of it, which it will be convenient to take from what is doubtless the best-known passage in the Hymns (partly quoted by Thucydides in the preface to his history) :—
" But now come, be gracious, Apollo, be gracious, Artemis ; and ye maidens all, farewell, but remember me even in time to come, when any of earthly men, yea, any stranger that much hath seen and much endured, comes hither and asks : Maidens, who is the sweetest to you of singers here conversant, and in whose song are ye most glad ?' Then do you all with one voice make answer : A blind man is be, and he dwells in rocky Chios ; his songs will ever have the mastery, ay, in all time t,o come.' But I shall bear my renown of you as far as I wander over earth to the fairest cities of men, and they will believe my report, for my word is true. But, for me, never shall I cease singing of Apollo of the Silver Bow, the Far-darter, whom fair-tressed Leto bore. 0 Prince, Lycia is thine, and pleasant Mxonia, and Miletus, a winsome city by the sea, and thou, too, art the mighty lord of sea-washed Delos."
We have only to suggest that "here conversant" might be changed into the more euphonious "who hither resort," which represents quite as closely the original iseill 2y.dairal. The mention of Thucydides's quotation suggests the interest- ing question of authorship. All scholars are now unanimous in pronouncing that the Hymns belong to an age later than that which produced the Iliad and the Odyssey. Thucydides,
however, had no suspicion of the truth. To him there is only one Homer, and the fact is a convincing proof of how feeble is the authority of tradition when matched against a really clear-sighted criticism. Some of the Alexandrian scholars seem to have doubted the Homeric authorship, but
it continued to be accepted even by the learned. Pausanias was certainly as well read a man as any of his contemporaries, and he was probably acquainted with the critical literature of Alexandria, but he seems to have no doubt about the Homeric authorship of the Hymns. In x. 37 he says of the city of Cirrha that "Homer calls the city by its original name of Crisa both in, the Iliad and in the Hymn to Apollo," where the coupling of the two poems is certainly more emphatic than a casual phrase, "Homer in the Hymn to Apollo," would have been. The quotation in iv. 30 from the Hymn to Demeter is still more significant. "Homer," he
says, "was the first to mention Fortune," and goes on to quote some lines in which various daughters of Oceanus are mentioned, TI/xn among them. He then adds that the poet says nothing about her being "the mightiest of divinities."
The remark has a certain critical force, for be goes on to quote Pindar as applying to Fortune the epithet "city supporter."
s The Homeric Hymns: a New Prose Translation ; and Essays, Literary ana Mythological. By Andrew Lang. London : George Allen. [7s, ad.]
It was just the oecasion to refer to the authorship question, if it had been in his mind.
Mr. Lang in his introduction concerns himself chiefly with the relation between the Hymns and the primitive beliefs of man. His general theory is thus stated :—
"To myself it now appears that among the lowest known races we find present a fluid mass of beliefs both high and low, from the belief in a moral creative being, a judge of men, to the pettiest fable which envisages him as a medicine-man, or even as a beast or bird. In my opinion the higher belief may very well be the earlier. While I can discern the processes by which the lower myths were evolved, and were attached to a worthier pre-existing .creed, I cannot see how, if the lower faiths came first, the higher faith was ever evolved out of them by very backward savages."
A corollary to this is that religious rites, by whatever name they are called, whether mysteries or any other, are of native growth. We need not seek about for their origin, and imagine ways by which they may have been transplanted from one region to another. They grew up everywhere from the "soil of human nature," and this human nature is so full of con- tradictions and varieties that we need feel no surprise at the strangest admixtures of the noble and the base. Do we not see in our own experience how the man who takes his part one hoar in the most solemn rites may be found indulging the next in jests that are not always of the seemliest? Mr. Lang brings a great deal of curious learning to support his theories. Without committing ourselves to them, we must own that he
makes out a powerful case.
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