BOOKS.

MR. GLADSTONE ON HOMER.*

Mit. GLADSTONE, besides doing much in the way of compressing and arranging the materials which were included in the Homeric Studies of 1858, has also reconsidered some of the judgments and modified some of the opinions which were set forth in that work. Nevertheless, he still occupies in the main the same position which he took up then, the position which has been so fiercely assailed by the whole body of destructive and sceptical critics. He maintains, that is to say, that the Homeric poems are a treasury of authentic information about the race, the history, the political and social life of the Greek tribes, a treasury unrivalled both for the extent and the accuracy of the knowledge which it contains by any book excepting the Hebrew Scriptures. There are many critics to whom such a position seems wholly untenable. We do not speak of extreme theorists like Mr. Cox, who believe that the whole story of Troy is a myth of the sunrise and the sunset. Where Mr. Gladstone sees allusions to customs of war or peace, these would find, we suppose, allegories descriptive of sunshine or storm. But there are others to whom it seems as absurd to construct a picture of prehistoric Greece out of the lliad, as it would be to construct one of Paradise out of Milton, or of post-Roman Britain out of Spenser's Faery Queene. On this point we feel very strongly with Mr. Gladstone, though we should be inclined to set a different value on different kinds of information thus obtained, —to rate, for instance, the ethnological deductions which he makes from the language of Homer less highly than those which refer to social life and the like. It seems a monstrous anachronism to suppose that the age of Homer, let that age be placed as late as may be, was capable of producing imaginative poems like those of Spenser or Milton. We should say that whatever the historical value of the incidents of the Troica, and it may well be little or none, the whole is true in the sense in which a good novel of manners is true.

To establish so much, however, it is evident that we must hold what may be called Conservative views about the authorship of the poems. The most extreme of the destruc- tive theories that we have seen supposes that they were collected from a mass of floating ballads somewhere about the middle of the sixth century. Mr. Gladstone, on the contrary, believes

Juoentus Mundi: the Gods and lea of the Heroic Age. By the Bight Hon. W. E. Gladstone. London: Macmillan and Co. 1869.

in the existence of a distinct Homer, and sets his face as well against the heresy of the Chorizontes, the critics who contended for a different authorship of the Iliad and of the Odyssey. The date of this poet he is inclined to put back to a very early time, not far distant, indeed, from the period to which the popular chronology assigns the Siege of Troy. He remarks with much force that with Homer xce)ottic (which he takes to be copper, but which we cannot help still believing to be bronze) is the ordinary metal for weapons and tools, iron being evidently rare, whereas in Hesiod iron has come to be in common use. Now, Hesiod's date is fixed with tolerable certainty for the middle of the eighth cen- tury; two centuries more would not be too great an interval to allow for so great a change, the passing, in fact, from one age to another ; and two centuries would bring Homer as near to the Siege as we are to the Jacobite risings of the last century.

"It may probably have been," says Mr. Gladstone, "the com- bined and intense effort of the Trojan war by which the Greeks first felt themselves, and first became a nation." The name of Hellenes, which in after days became specially significant of this unity, is used by him, it is true, of a tribe, though the appellation Pan-ltellenes once occurs as equivalent to Danaoi or Argeioi, but it cannot be a mere coincidence that the hero of the poem is dis- tinctively a Hellene. Here we have, as it were, a prevision. The pre-eminence of Achilles over the other Greek chieftains symbolizes the pre-eminence through which the noblest tribe of the Pelasgian Aryans, like the Germani in after days among the dwellers on the eastern bank of the Rhine, was ultimately to give its name to a nation which still recognized other centres of authority. While we agree in the main with what Mr. Gladstone says on these subjects, we feel, nevertheless, that he presses too far the inferences which he draws from Homeric usage ; and that the arguments by which he supports them are feeble and doubtful. The etymology especially, which is, of course, of the highest importance in such a subject, has often something of what may be called a "prescientific" character.

It is surprising to find that the derivation of Pelasgi from Peleg seriously mentioned, and the fancy that connects the name with --racepy6s, a stork (the black-and-white), regarded apparently not

without favour. To say, again, that the verb barbaiagni, "to embellish," is taken from the name of Dtedalus, the great legend- ary worker in metals, is obviously a reversal of the real connec- tion of the words, and indicates a habit of dealing with such questions that is not perfectly sound. But too much praise cannot be given to the careful and exhaustive examination which Mr. Gladstone has made of the text of Homer ; to his elaborate statement, for instance, of the poet's usage with regard to the terms by which the Greek nation is designated, though we may not attach much value to his inference that the Danaoi is a dynastic name, that that of the Achaioi represents the princely families, while that of the Argeioi (which is connected with 4126) was significant of the common people.

With much that Mr. Gladstone says about the character and meaning of the Homeric mythology we thoroughly agree. Some- times, we think, he is fanciful, as here :—

"With respect to the Trident, an instrument so unsuited to water, it appears evidently to point to some tradition of a Trinity, such as may still be found in various forms of eastern religion other than the Hebrew."

This is little better than ludicrous, especially when we remember how Virgil puts this "unsuitable instrument" (by the way, it is exactly the same shape as an eel-spear) to the very practical use in the hand of Neptune of lifting the ships of 2Eneas off a rock. Nor

does he convince us that Plato was wrong in the censure which he passed upon the Homeric conceptions of Deity. That conception, to the common eye at least, took its most prominent form in Zeus, and no philosopher who desired to see a purifying influence in

religion could endure the glorification of what Mr. Gladstone him- self calls the "brutal lusts" of the ruler of Olympus. The following pa ssage contains the essence of what is most original in Mr. Gladstone's theories "On the Olympian system." Readers of the Studies will remember something of the same purport

The traditions traceable in Homer, which appear to be drawn from the same source as those of Holy Scripture, are chiefly these :-1. A. deliverer, conceived under the double form, first of 'seed of the woman,' a being at once Divine and human ; secondly, of the Logos, the Word or Wisdom of God. 2. Next, the woman whose seed this Redeemer was to be."

According to this theory, Apollo represents the Deliverer, Athene the word, Latona the idea and sanctity of motherhood.

The argument is drawn out with great ingenuity and force. The two deities, who, though ranged on opposite sides during the

war, are kept from clashing by the skilful management of the poet, are shown to occupy a singular position in the celestial

hierarchy. They are superior in sanctity to the rest, they are exempt from infirmity and need, they are not excited by passion. They care for obedience rather than sacrifice. Special invocations are addressed to them. Their worship is bounded by no limits. Athene proceeds direct from the being of Zeus without the intervention of ordinary means of birth ; Apollo has a perfect conformity of will with Zeus, whose purposes he executes. These are peculiarly suggestive illustrations, and with many others are worked out by Mr. Gladstone with much fullness of detail and with copious refer- ences to the Homeric text. Every reader must judge for himself of the force of the argument, which it is impossible to transfer. We may express an a priori assent to the theory, at least in its broad features, if by "the same sources" to which these traditions, as well as those of Holy Scripture, are referred, is meant simply the Divine mind ; but not something which implies a common human origin. If the existence of a Divine Person, who is the Wisdom of God, is an eternal verity, what can be more reasonable than that, through intuitions of Divine origin, it should have been shadowed forth in the faith of one of the great educating races of mankind ?

Most readers will probably feel themselves to be on firmer ground when they reach the chapters on the ethics and poetry of the heroic age, and those which deal critically with some of the details of the poems, as the characters of the heroes, the similes, &c. We may quote, as a favourable specimen of Mr. Gladstone's style, from his sketch of Greek life in the heroic age :—

" The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now separated from the low, is educated under tutors in reverence for his parents, and in desire to emulate their fame; he shares in manly and in graceful sports, acquires the use of arms, hardens himself in the pursuit, then of all others the most indispensable, the hunting-down of wild beasts; gains the knowledge of medicine, probably also of the lyre. Sometimes, with many-sided intelligence, he even sets himself to learn how to build his own house or ship, or how to drive the plough down the furrow, as well as to reap the standing corn , and, when scarcely a man, he bears arms for his country or his tribe, takes part in its government, learns, by direct instruction and by practice, how to rule mankind through the use of reasoning and persuasive powers in political assemblies, attends and assists in sacrifices to the gods. For all this time he has been in kindly and free relations, not only with his parents, his family, his equals of his own age, but with the attendants, although they are but serfs, who have known him from infancy on his father's domain."

He is violent, liable to passion, sometimes unscrupulous to friends and merciless to enemies, but,— "His early youth is not solicited into vice by finding sensual excess in vogue, or the opportunities of it glaring in his eye and sounding in his ear. Gluttony is hardly known ; drunkenness is marked only by its degrading character and by the evil consequences that flow so straight from it, and it is abhorred. But he loves the genial use of meals, and rejoices in the hoar when the guests gathered in his father's hall enjoy a liberal hospitality, and the wine mantles in the cup. For then they listen to the lay of the minstrel who celebrates before them the newest and the dearest of the heroic tales that stir their blood and rouse their manly resolution to be worthy, in their turn, of their country and their country's heroes. He joins the dance in the festivals of religion; the maiden's hand upon his wrist, and the gilded knife gleaming from his belt as they course from point to point, or wheel in round on round. That maiden, some Nansicaa or some Hermione of a neighbouring district, in due time he weds, amidst the rejoicings of their families, and brings her home to cherish her from the flower to the ripeness of the grape,' with respect, fidelity, and love. Whether as governor or as governed, politics bring him, in ordinary circumstances, no great share of trouble. Government is a machine of which the wheels move easily enough, for they are well oiled by simplicity of usages, ideas, and desires ; by unity of interest ; by respect for authority, and for those in whose hands it is reposed ; by love of the common country, the common altar, the common festivals and games, to which already there is large resort. In peace he settles the disputes of his people ; in war he lends them the precious example of heroic daring. He consults them, and advises with them, on all grave affairs; and his wakeful care for their interests is rewarded by the ample domains which are set apart for the prince by the people. Finally, he closes his eyes, deliver- ing over the sceptre to his sons, and leaving much peace and happiness around him."

Truly, a fair picture. Did Mr. Gladstone, like Tacitus when he composed the Germania, write with a reference not altogether favourable to his own country? He has much to allege in support of this favourable view of the heroic ethics, particularly as to the important point of the relations of the sexes. Among other argu- ments a skilful use is made of the multiplicity of words which describes the relationships of affinity, of the existence, for instance, of such a word as Eiturip, a husband's brother's wife' (the singular word, by the way, is not found), to which we have no correlative, as indicating a strictness of rule in this matter. -

Much of the special criticism on the poems strike us as being very good, and we are sorry to have to pass it over with so brief a notice. The character of Diomed, for instance, is particularly well drawn out. To Hector scarcely enough is allowed. It could not have been against the intentions of so great a master as the poet, that the sympathies of thirty centuries have been almost unanimously in favour of the Trojan hero. Regarded from a literary point, the book is not without faults. Generally, the style is wanting in vigour and liveliness. There is a tendency to repeat which we may possibly trace to the habit of speaking. We are told, for instance, over and over again, with a most wearisome iteration, that the lay of Demodocus, about Ares and Aphrodite, was of foreign, i. e., Phoenician origin. Another fault we may trace to the same cause,—the occasional use of arguments which a listener might accept, but which a reader, with the opportunity of more detailed examination, can hardly fail to reject. Let any one note the reasoning in pp. 132-3 about the horse and the god Poseidon. The difficulty is that Poseidon is a Phoenician deity, while the Phmacians who are supposed to be eminently Phoenician have no horse-racing in their games. And the argument may be put thus,—the Phoenicians introduced games ; Poseidon was a Phoenician god, the Hellenea introduced horse-racing into games ; so the horse became attached to Poseidon. A propos of this subject, we cannot forbear quoting the follow- ing :—

"The Greek chieftains seem never among themselves to deviate from fairness, except in the case of the chariot race. It is singular that three thousand years ago, as now, horse-racing should have been found to offer the subtlest temptations to the inward integrity of man."

We take leave of the volume with an unusually strong feeling that it is one to which a critic can scarcely do justice; but which every reader will prize, however frequently he may dissent from its views, for the patience, the diligence, and the enthusiasm of learning of which it is the expression.