The Press. — London, England, 1858-04-24 00:00:00

Yittrature. Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, D.C.L., M.P. for the University of Oxford. Three Vols. Oxford : University Press. Tux appearance of these volumes should in duce those who exclaim against the useless ness of classical studies to reconsider their unfavourable opinion. No man certainly can better judge what studies are practically use ful than Mr. Gladstone. His life has not been spent in the cloister. He has needed more than most men whatever may make a man able in business. prompt and brilliant in de bate, and he has few political adversaries who will not admit that he has succeeded in ac• quiring no mean share of administrative abi lity, and a very large share of eloquence. It is, therefore, a high testimony to the practical utility of classical learning when such a man, after so large an experience of public life, sends into the world three bulky volumes filled with the praises of Homer, and deliberately pro nounces that this particular classical writer at least, so far from being too much studied, is too much neglected in our schools and col leges. On another account, too, these volumes aro interesting. They are interesting for the picture they present of the subtle and salutary virtue of good poetry. Blessed are the poets, not only fur the lessons they teach, but also for "knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care," for pouring balm into hurt minds, for refresh ing minds jaded with business and contro versy. A statesman, out of favour with his countrymen, tired of finding himself on the losing side, tired of hearing himself called a traitor and sophist, resolves to forget all his cares in Homer. He fights over again the war between Greeks and Trojans, enters into all the details with zest, sifts various readings, weighs rival theories, and, with an elasticity of mind which we cannot refuse to admire, Rings himself into the Homeric controversy u unreservedly as if his whole life had been spent in harmless philological studies What enjoyment for the tired politician ! It is like Phteacia to the storm-tost Odysseus. And with what new insight must he read the old legends ! He himself has mixed with leaders of men, with shepherds of the people ; he has been the Odysseus of a greater council than that which met on the banks of the Helles pont, and astonished spectators more expe rienced in oratory than Antenor with ilrta s‘fialeoll/ 101%074 X111.41f;70'17. We do not wonder that to such a reader all previous commenta ries upon the two poems, which more com pletely than any other represent the whole in finite movement and variety and vivacity of human affairs, seem poor, mean, and unworthy of their subject. And yet we do not greatly wonder that, with all the intense relish for the poetry of Homer which he evidently feels, his success as a commentator should not be very eminent. The lessons of experience cannot be forestalled. Mr. Gladstone observes that a man's appreciation of Homer improves as his knowledge of the world increases. If so, to those who want this extensive knowledge of the world, Mr. Gladstone's exposition will be a poor substitute for it, and those who have such knowledge will want no more. Moreover, Mr. Gladstone's eloquence, though somewhat too subtle for practical politics, is scarcely subtle enough, and is much too diffuse for literary criticism. The profuse abundance and excellence of his diction will strike every reader, but it is too overwhelming ; such elo quence is an inundation submerging everything: tue unhappy reader is bewildered, lost, deowned in it. Since the book has been written, it is probable that it can be read ; but we should consider the man who could master it almostas great a prodigy as the man who could com pose it. Further, Mr. Gladstone's argumenta tion has all the faults which may be supposed t 3 he cherished by the practice of oratory. His late successor in the Chancellorship of the Exchequer is as much more successful in his torical criticism as he is inferior in debate. Sir G. C. Lewis's pen never r u ns awa y w ith him ; he is never eloquent, and seldom makes mistakes. Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, THE PRESS, APRIL 24, 1858. never sees both sides of a question at price ; he hushes up inconvenient facts, not inten tionally, but from a kind of habit ; afterwards, in another connection, he produces these same facts, and quite unconsciously furnishes the materials for his own refutation. In short, while we find much in these volumes to admire and much to agree with, while we admit that they abound in curious observations, many of which, to us at least, are new, we do not find that our own concep tion of Homer is altered by anything which they contain; nor, though Mr. Gladstone in sist's that we do not think rightly of this poet, can we clearly perceive what ho considers our error to be. He writes an introductory essay to prove that we ought to regard Homer as an historian, because we may perceive that he had an historical aim. But ho should con sider that a man does not always hit the mark at which he aims. We concede to Mr. Gladstone that Homer sincerely believed much that he relates. This is proved, we allow, by the fact that he relates much which, if it were not believed to be true, could not have been worth relating. But we are not aware that any, the most sceptical, critic has ever main tained that nothing in Homer is true. On the other hand, we beg Mr. Gladstone, before he makes any use of this admission, to fur nish us with some criterion by which we may distinguish the true in Homer from the false. Mr. Gladstone himself must acknowledge that, if Homer is an historian, he is one of the worst historians that ever lived. If he will not acknowledge this, he must retract all the praises which he has lavished on Homer's invention. Homer is an historian, yet he is to have credit, according to Mr. Gladstone, for the eloquence of the speeches he records, for the brilliancy of all the super natural machinery he introduces, and, to an undefined extent, for the poetical propriety of the actions of his heroes. It is clear that whatever credit of this kind he gets as a poet he loses as an historian. If we ask Mr. Glad stone what part of Homer is to he considered as poetical and what part as historical, he answers, as far as we understand him, that whatever is brilliant is poetical, and whatever is dull is historical. It this very questionable canon be admitted, another problem presents itself. These historical fragments, aro they true or false ? Let Homer be an historian, is he a trustworthy historian ? Certainly the presumption is very strong against his histo rical accuracy. He was under no obligation whatever to be accurate. Accuracy was not expected from him—a brilliant and interesting story was. If we can suppose that at certain intervals he tightened the reins of his vagrant imagination, and undertook a rigid and con scientious historical investigation, what means had he of ascertaining the truth ? He may be trusted, with some limitations, when he paints manners; he is an authority for insti tutions, customs, the feelings and opinions of his age. Mr. Gladstone enlarges upon this quite needlessly ; no one has ever questioned it. But what means had he of ascertaining the events of past history ? He could but repeat the traditions that were current around him; the events which had happened in his father's time he might know with tolerable accuracy ; he would probably know something of events which were within the memory of his grandfather. Beyond this, in the absence of written monuments, all would be confused and utterly uncertain. The question, then, arises how far was Homer removed in time from the events he commemorates. We do not see how this question can ever be settled, though Mr. Gladstone thinks that he may have belonged to the generation immediately succeeding the Trojan war. Mr. Gladstone's argument is this : Homer manifestly identifies himself with the heroes of whom he sings ; he belongs himself to the heroic age, " lie ex• " hibits its form and pressure, he chants in its "key. This can only arise f rom t wo causes— either Homer is an antiquarian, reviving by an effort of learned imagination the image of a remote past, which is quite incredible ; or he must have been nearly contemporary with the events which he celebrates. It is really marvellous that Mr. Gladstone should not perceive that there is a third possibility. In stead of himself assuming the tone of a remote age, Homer may have Riven to his heroes the tone of his own. This is what Shakespeare has done in Hamlet —this is what an unlearned poet in an unlearned age gene. rally does. It is not only that such a poet is unable to play the antiquarian ; having n o record of past ages, ho forms no conjecture of the changes which are wrought by time, but supposes that one age is like another, that the ancients were like the moderns, only no doubt better, wiser, and more valiant. When Mr. Gladstone declares that Homer " chants ill " the key of the heroic age," he forgets that it is equally probable that he makes the heroic age chant iu his own key. If, then, we have hitherto misconceived Homer, we am quite unable to discover how Mr. Gladstone would have us conceive him. We have always regarded his poems as treasures of information about primitive Greek manners, institutions, and opinions, and, fur ther, as priceless works of imagination. Mr. Gladstone's very minute analysis of them has deepened this impression. Again, we have always considered that these poems contain a certain amount of historical truth, but that it is impossible to distinguish this in the mass of fables, while both fact and fiction are backed by the same authority and related with the same implicit belief. Now, Mr. Gladstone himself cannot be greatly surprised that we should still adhere to this opinion when, after the interminable wiredrawn dis sertations of the first volume, using hypothesis and conjecture with the utmost profusion, he arrives at no conclusions which commend themselves as at all more certain or more trustworthy than those of a host of specula. tors who have preceded him. We shall not on this occasion speak of the discussions of the manners, religion, Sto., of Homer which are contained in the second and third volumes, but shall confine ourselves to a few remarks upon those on ethnology which occupy the first. Everywhere we trace marks of careful and laborious investigation of the text of Homer—everywhere we find the mark? of respectable scholarship. We have indeed noted some errors, and a good deal of in correct accentuation : bellum and sox o ; are spoken of as possibly kindred words, though there is no doubt that bellum is merely a contracted form of duellum, and therefore derived from duo. A charge of bombast against the tragedians is founded upon the word kl7my i aiiy, used in the sense of ranting. whereas Mr. Gladstone observes that such a word as I.;ol.4spivy would be at once condemned as a solecism. Now, the word lx7iapubitY con• veys an imputation of bombast against the ziar. , A;, or tragic actor, and not against the •rf").4oS.Ovioseo.o ; , or tragic poet ; and the cor responding word is not but ia4.4i.095. which is actually used by Plato, in his " Phas, drus," in the sense of empty declamation- But these are trifling matters, and if Mr.. Gladstone'd scholarship has been suffered, amid graver pursuits, to grow a little inexact, he has a right to expect consideration. In his dissertation on the appellatives, Danaans, Argives, and Achasans, we observe a siagular example of Mr. Gladstone's oratorical method of argumentation. Every reader of Homer observes that he recognizes both a city and a country called Argos. The adjective Argive is accordingly used both as a local and as a national epithet. When it is used as a na tional epithet, it, appears at least to be entirely convertible with the epithet Achrean. Now Mr. Gladstone is perfectly aware of this double force of the word, for he discusses it at large, and yet earlier in the discussion, when lie is pleading for a distinction between "Argive' as a national epithet and " Aclifean," he cakes advantage of this very ambiguity, and asks how, if " Argive " be a general name for Greek, it comes that Helen and Juno are dis tinguished by the epithet of " Argive," which on that supposition could have nothing dis• tinctive about it. For two or three whole pages he entirely forgets, what he afterwards plainly acknowledges, that " Argive," when ap plied to Juno and Helen, refers to the city, and not to the country, Argos. We had some intention of analyzing closely one of these ethnological dissertations ; but, on second thoughts, we find that the count less particular objections which occur to us I