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production of indirect or negative effects ; and the power
of creating and sustaining dramatic interest without the
large use of wicked agents, in whom later poets have found
their most indispensable auxiliaries.
We are not sure that Mr. Gladstone has not
stated the last of these merits a little too
boldly. Do not Paris and Agamemnon in the
Iliad, and the nobles of Ithaca in the Odyssey,
to a great extent play the part of wicked
agents? They are at least as wicked as any
of the agents in the dEneid, and we are to con-
sider that a distinct power of evil residing
in a supernatural person was foreign to clas•
sical conceptions. In the importance assigned
to Homer as an educational work, even on the
ground of his poetry alone, and in the com-
parison drawn between him and the trage-
dians, we cordially agree with Mr. Gladstone,
and sincerely trust that his suggestions may
gain attention, at all events, from his own
University.
Of Homer as an historical authority, Mr.
Gladstone intimates that the opinion of scho-
lars has generally been too low. The follow-
ing remarks are exceedingly sensible :

But, first of all, may we not ask from whence comes the
presumption against Homer as an historical authority?
Not from the fact that he mixes marvels with common
erents ; for this, to quote no other instance, would destroy
along with him Herodotus. Does it not arise from this—
that his compositions are poetical—that history has long
ceased to adopt the poetical form—that an old association
has thus been dissolved—that a new and adverse associa-
tion has taken its place, which connects poetry with fiction
—and that we illogically reflect this modern association
upon early times, to which it is utterly inapplicable?

He then proceeds to show from internal
evidence that Homer evidently intended his
poems to serve also the secondary purpose of
chronicles. He comments especially on his
catalogues, genealogies, geographical notices,
and long and apparently irrelevant episodes.
We now pass on to the date of Homer, and
the remoteness or contiguity of his age to the
Heroic period. Here Mr. Gladstone must
speak for himself :

I would presume to argue thus : that Homer never
would have ventured to dispense with mere description,
and to adopt Action as his sole resource—to dramatise his
poem au he hag dramatised it—unless he had been strong
in the consciousness of this identity. It is no answer to

say that later writers—namely, the tragedians—dramatised
the subject still more, and presented their characters on
the stage without even those slender aids from narrative
towards the comprehension of them which Homer has,
here and there at any rate, permitted himself to use. For
the consequence has been, in their case, that they entirely
fail to represent the semblance of a picture of the heivic
age, or indeed of any age at all. They produce remote
occurrences or fables in a dress of feelings, language, and
manners suited to their own time, as far as it is suited to
any. Besides, as dramatists they had immense aids and
advantages of other kinds. But Homer has enjoyed no
aid of accessories, and has, notwithstanding, painted the
life : and yet, seeking to paint from the life, he commits it
to his characters to paint themselves and one another.
Surely, he never could have confined himself to this indi•
rect process, unless be had felt his own essential unity
with them all. He would have done as most other epic
poets have done, whose personages we feel that we know,
not from themselves, but from what the poet in the cha-
racter of intelligencer has been kind enough to tell us;
whereas we learn Achilles by means of Achilles, Ulysses
by means of Ulysses, and so with the rest.

But the assumption by an effort of mind of the manners
and tone of a remote age, and the consistent support of
this character throughout prolonged works, is of very rare
occurrence. In Greek literature there is, to my knowledge,
no example of it ; and this I think may fairly be urged as
nearly conclusive against ascribing it to Homer. The
tragedians in whose compositions we should chiefly look
for it do not apparently so much as attempt it; and it is
most difficult to suppose a poet so national as Homer to
be in this cardinal respect entirely different from all others
of his race.

May we not, however, go a good deal further, and say
boldly that the faculty of assuming in literary compositions
an archaic costume, voice, and manner, does not belong at
all either to an age like that of Homer, or to any age of
which the ►iterary conditions at all resemble it?
In the first place, an inventor, working like Homer for
the general public, must, by departing altogether from the
modes of thought, expression, and action current in his
own day, pro tont° lose his hold upon those on whose ap-
proval he depends. It seems to follow that this will not
be seriously attempted, except in an age which has ceased
to afford a liberal supply of the materials of romance. Is
not this presumption made good by experience ? The
Greek tragedians, it is indisputable, did not find it neces-
sary to aim, and did not aim at reproducing the whole
contemporary apparatus which was in strictness appro-
priate and due to their characters. Virgil made no such
attempt in the " £neid," of which, notwithstanding, the
manners abound in anachronisms. The romance poets of
Italy idealise their subject, not, however, by the revival of
antique manners in all their incidents, but by means of an
abundant preternatural machinery. In Shakspear's King
John, Henry IV., or Henry VIII., how little difference can
be detected from the Elizabethan age, or (in this point)

411

from one another. Again, in Macbeth or Lear, enough is
done to prevent our utterly confounding their ages with
the common life of the hearers; but there is nothing that
approaches to a complete or elaborate representation of
the time to which the personages are supposed to belong.
So again in Coriolanus, Julius Cesar, or Antony and Cleo-
patra, there is a sort of Roman toga thrown loosely over
the figures ; but we do not feel ourselves amidst Roman
life when we read them. And, in truth, what is done at
all in these cases is not done so much by reprolucing as
by generalising, in the same sense as a painter generalises
his draperies. A great instance of the genuine process of
reproduction is to be found in Sir Walter Scott; but he,
besides being a man of powerful genius, cut not in the
mould of his own age but in one essentially belonging to
the past, was a master of antiquarian knowledge. And
this leads me to name what seems to he the second
condition of serious and successful attempts (I need
not here speak of burlesques, of which all the
touches must be broad ones) at disinterring and
reviving bygone ages in the whole circle and
incidents of their life. The first, as has been already said.
is to live in an age itself socially old, so as not to abound
in proper materials for high invention. The second is to
live in an age possessed of such abundant documents and
records of a former time as to make it practicable to explore
it in all points by historical. data.

As in romance and poetry, so in the progress of the
drama, this method appears to be the business of a late
age. The strength of dramatic imagination is always
when the drama itself is young. It then confidently relies
upon its essential elements for the necessary illusion, and
knows little, and cares less, about sustaining it by elaborate
attention ta minor emblems and incidents. But when it
has lived into the old age of a civilised society, when the
critical faculty has become strong and the imagination
weak, then it strengthens itself by minute accuracy in
scenery and costume,—in fact, by exact reproduction.
We have sometimes thought that in determin-
ing the age of Homer enough importance has
scarcely been attributed to that tone of senti-
mentalism which is frequently observable in
his poems, and which is characteristic of an
age of more or less civilisation. The poets of
a rude era do not moralise upon death and
fate as Homer does, compare the generations
of men to the leaves of the forest, or give such
reasons for fighting bravely as are assigned by
Sarpedon to Glaucus.

But perhaps it is in the passages treating
of the trustworthiness of the text and the
preservation of Homer among the ancients.
that the peculiar intensitiveness of Mr. Glad-
stone's mind and the force of his analytic
faculty is most fully displayed. We allude
especially to his mode of examining those
scraps of evidence which remain to us from
ancient writers upon this subject. A good
specimen is his treatment of the passage in
Herodotus relating to Clisthenes :

Of these, the next, and a most !important one, is the
statement of Herodotus respecting Clisthenes the ruler of
Sicyon, who, when he bad been at war with Argos. pa.{ ulovs
iravcri :v ZixtNivi clywqfcreat, TL:Jv 'Opolpsioa. tirfyy avezar.,
OT/ •Aivtioi TS "Aiyoc Tir irox>ol irrivra eqhvierrets.
He proceeds to say, that clisthenes sought to banish the
memory of Adrastus, as being an Argive hero, from
Sicyon. It is not necessary to inquire what these Homeric
poems may have included; bat the argument of Grote
that they were " the ' Thebais ' and the ' Epigoni,' nut the
' Iliad,'' seems to me fallacious. Nor is it con ect that the
" Iliad " fails to supply matter to which the statement may
refer. The national honour of Argos in the " Iliad," it here
the name it bears is so nearly associated with the chief
seat of power, and becomes representative of the whole
Hellenic race in its heroic infancy, is infinitely higher than
any local fame it could derive from the civil feud with
Thebes. The " Iliad," too, marks most clearly both the
connection of Adrastus with Argos—for it makes Diemed
his sonin-law—and the subordinate position of Sicyon—

0' 4; 'ASocrzo; ;148scrix:viv—
by making it a mere town in the dominions of Agamemnon,
while Argos figures as a sovereign and powerful city.
There is therefore a uple room to doubt whether Herodotus
had the " Thebais " or " Epigoni " before him in the phrase
" Homeric poems." But the importance of the passage is
not wholly dependent on these considerations. It shows
That there were, at Sicyon, State recitations of Homer
six centuries before the Christian era, attended with
rewards for the successful performers.
That these recitations were in conformity with common
use; for they are named as something ordinary and estab-
lished, which was then set aside not as a custom peculiar
to Sicyon.
That the recitations depended upon the Homeric
poems, since they were entirely stopped on accpunt of
exceptionable matter which the Homeric poems were
deemed to contain.

That these recitations were in the nature of competitive
contests among the rhapsodists, when the best and most
approved, of course, would obtain prizes. This implies
that the recitations were not single, as if by poet laureates,
but that many shared in them.
This short Greek sentence is thus inten•o•
gated as it were by the magician, and com-
pelled to give up an amount of evidence which
the ordinary critic would never have sn:s.
peoted it to contain.

412

We have already trespassed on our limits in
order to convoy to our readers some adequate
notion of this scholarly and learned treatise,
by one su eminent in the absorbing politics of
the day as Mr. Gladstone. We have, we
trust, indicated its principal features ; and we
may conclude by saying that no student of
Homer ought to consider himself properly
equipped without this essay by his side.
Mr. Duffs description of Sicily, though
short, is varied and entertaining It is ranged
under the heads of the physical geography of
the island, its geology, vegetation, ruins,
scenery, and views—each subject in turn
yielding its quota to the general history. As
an instance of Mr. Duff's very agreeable style
we subjoin the following :

The view over the Straits of Messina from the Peloric
range is different from all of these. Around us grow the
arbutus and the tree-heath, and the wild bees of Sicily
burn amongst the thyme. Away to the left lie the Lipari
islands. sleeping in the sun. In front the Calabrian hills
rise to the height of several thousand feet, bolder and more
precipitous than the coast of Sicily. Beneath us the
Braccio of Messina guards the harbour of that beautiful
and hapless city. Beyond it Charybdis. undistinguished
from where we stand, twists its now all but harmless
eddies, while between it and the other coast is the broad
ocean-river which has seen so much. Through it the
Greek colonists sailed to Curnse. Alcibiades stood across
it in his galley to piead the cause of Athens in the Agora
of Messana. On its shore, just below us, the Romans
landed, nominally to aid the Mamertines, really to antici-
pate a Carthaginian invasion of Italy. By it Verres stored
his plunder ; up it St. Paul sailed to Puteoli, in the
Castor and Pollux. Alaric attempted to cross it, but was
foiled by a storm, in this the last enterprise which he
undertook before the waters of the Busentinus closed
over his schemes of conquest. Count Roger, under the
guidance of a more fortunate star, came over it to win a
kingdom. Coeur de Lion, landing on its shores, eclipsed
by his magniticence his liege lord and ally. In the city
below us he hoisted his flag, and there, too, he submitted
to penance for his presumption. There he listened to
the apocalyptic dreams of the Abbot Joachim, and thence
he sailed fur the " ports of sunny Cyprus " and the Holy
Land. Here Charles of Anjou received the ambassadors
of Peter of Arragon, biting his sceptre with impotent rage.
Hance, too, in later days, Don John sailed to conquer at
Lepanto, and Nelson to conquer at the Nile.

In his paper on " Schemes of Christian
Comprehension " Mr. Wilson very briefly
reviews the various efforts that have at diffe-
rent times been made both by Englishmen
and foreigners to devise some fundamental
creed on which all parties could agree ; and,
from the failure of these attempts to unite the
English, Galilean, and other continental
branches of the Church among themselves as
well as with the various bodies of dissenters,
t Ikea occasion to show the necessity of bring-
ing religious truth under the head of what
logicians call "probable matter," if Christen-
dom is ever again to be at unity. "It has
been," he says, "a misleading notion that an
" intellectual certitude, or some spiritual gift
" equivalent to an intellectual and demonstra-
" Live certitude, must lie at the basis of the
" fundamental doctrines of Christianity."
This essay is full of the most admirable and
cogent reasoning; but we fear it will be
addressed to an audience which has closed
its ears. Two passages strike us as so pecu-
liarly well adapted to expose the prevalent
error of what are called " serious people" that
we must quote them, even at the risk of ex-
tending our review beyond the limits we had
intended. It is the common sense and
clenching conclusiveness of these passages
that constitute their value, not anything
metaphysically deep or argumentatively
new :

Controversy itself, which has so largely prevailed in the
Cuistian world, is a proof to us, is an acknowledgment on
t ie part of Christendom, if any be really needed, that the
d .gmatie Christian statements are deeply involved in pro.
b ible matter. Controversy acknowledges, that there is
s mething to be said, with apparent reason and some show
o probability, on two or more sides of a question. Though
t amount and b.ilance of probabilities is differently esti•
m dea by the different parties to a controversy, each con-
fe eies, by the act of taking up his pen, that there is some
p °liability for the opinion which lie sets himself to
• mbat. If it had no show of reason whatever, he would
not argue against it; we confine a madman, we denounce
criminal, we pity a fool, but we do not argue with them,
sor try to convince them. Thus with respect to a doctrine
41-. baled by the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans and the
Zwinglians, as to the force of the words of institution of the
Eucharist; there is something to be said, and, to judge
from controversial tomes, a great deal to be said, for each
of their three interpretations ; whether hoe rBt = hoc fit,
or, hoc est s= hie est, or, est -= significat : and a discussion,
begun upon the mere words, ramifies also into almost in.
terminable philological, historical, ratristical, and even
subtle metaphysical disquisitions.

THE PRESS.

Again :
But it may be said, that this subject should not be die-
cussed without taking into account certain faculties with
which the true believer is endowed—that the genuine sense
of Scripture, the realfruit to be gathered from it,can only be
reaped by a gift from that same Divine Spirit which dictated
it; only to the illuminated do its words reveal themselves.
And so that, though, humanly speaking, the biblical records
are an historical collection, the evidences from them are
not to be sifted and weighed according to the laws of mere
human testimony—that there is a faculty of faith, a
spiritual r)crroxiai, which leaps to its due conclusion; or
to the less gifted, there is yet granted a faith, tentative
and hypothetical, which throws itself into the experiment
of belief, and becomes satisfied. if these are heaven•sent
faculties, immediately, sporadically bestowed on chosen
individuals, they who do not partake in them are not
responsible for their blindness; they do their best while
they still endeavour to grope their way according to those
other instincts which they possess, and which they, in their
ignorance, even think that they have from haaven—good
gifts to be used for truth and goodness—not from beneath.
Moreover, these supposed higher gifts do not always
testify alike ; spiritual insight and faith, in different com-
munions, perceive and are assured of contradictory pro-
positions. Either those faculties are delusive, or the
things wherein their testimonies differ are not essential.
And not only members of Romanist and Protestant com-
munions have appealed to such like inward witness, as
evidence of the truth of their respective doctrines, not only
Christians, but Mahommedans and Hindus.

Here Mr. Wilson hits off the true edfficulty
with which all lovers of truth have to contend,
and the fundamental weakness on which
fanaticism operates. But to hope for its dis-
persion is to expect an intellectual Utopia, or
a world like that sighed for by Euripides,
without women. Religious error we must
consider is almost the only one which neither
experience nor science can disprove. For he
who pretends to the exclusive possession of
spiritual truth is like a man intrenched in the
clouds : his strength is in his weakness—he
cannot be driven out, because he cannot be
touched. A fortress such as this, at once
unsubstantial and impregnable, is far too wel-
come a refuge for pride and credulity to permit
of our hoping that it will ever fall into decay.
The analogy between ancient Greece and
medival Italy is a paper that we like less
than any of the preceding. Not that it is not
abundant in knowledge, as well as thoughtful
and earnest ; but there is a tone about it of
what, for want of a better word, we must call
" bumptiousness." It is like a bunch of holly—
picturesque, but prickly. " Ptiestly despots,"
" barbaric infidels," and " upstatt brigands "
" stifle freedom in the bud," " inflict every
atrocity which earth and hell can devise," and
" gorge on the entrails" of nations. Mr Free-
man seems as if be were trying to imitate the
trenchant invective of the great Whig essayist,
and only succeeds in picking up his style of
florid exaggeration. One or twice, also, ho
unhappily aims at the humorous. But when
we mention that one of the blunders over
which he makes merry is that M. Lamartine
makes Alcibiades take refuge at the Court of
Prussia—as obvious a misprint as could well
be—our readers will be able to judge as well of
his humour as of his judgment. The style in
which he tries to play round this supposed
mistake is pitiably clumsy. Mr. Freeman is a
man of ability and learning, and has contri-
buted a valuable paper. Ho would do better
at once to recognise the truth that his forte
lies in narrative and description, but not in
either wit or declamation.
(To be continued.)

Letters of lioraoe Walpole. Now First Chro-
nologically Arranged. Edited by Peter
Cunningham, F.S.A. Vol. 11. London :
Bentley.
WE reviewed at considerable length the anno-
tated portions of the first volume of this
highly important edition of Walpole's corre
sponuence. Mr. Cunningham's notes in this
second volume are more careful and less pre-
tentious, and the text is not overloaded with
so many superfluous illustrations. We are as
yet disappointed in the original letters pro-
mised in the introductory preface, hut we sup-
pose that the succeeding volume; will contain
some better specimens of the correspondence
with Mr. Chute, of " The Vine." There are only
four new letters in the present volume, which
run from No. 205 to No. 450. We are still
convinced that the size of the volumes is too
large. The lines are extremely wide, and the
weight of the book in the hand is excessive.

SATURDAY,

So light a writer as Walpole ought not to be
encased in such heavy setting. We often see
miniatures placed in ponderous frames ; but
they are hung against the wall, and we have
not the trouble of handling them. We adhere
to our former opinion that twelve octavo
volumes would have been more convenient to
the reader than eight of these massive tomes.
Where the notes are so numerous, it may be
supposed that the editor will be often exposed
to criticism. Many notes will be found need-
less, while in sonic places we should like more
detail. For example, where the famous Gun-
nings are mentioned for the first time in this
volume, we are disappointed by the following
note:—

The Beauties Maria and Elizabeth, of whom we shall
read so much. They were the daughters ofJohn Gunning,
Esq., of Castle Coote, in Ireland, by Bridget, daughter of
Theobald Bourke, sixth Viscount Mayo. The elder was
now ( 1751 ) in her eighteenth year, the younger in her
seventeenth year. Maria married, b March, 175'2, the
sixth Earl of Coventry, and died, 1 October, 1760, many
years before her husband; Elizabeth married first, 14
February, 1752, the sixth Duke of Hamilton; and secondly,
3 March, 1759, Colonel John Campbell, afterwards filth
Duke of Argyll, for whom she had refused the Duke of
Bridgewater, the father of British Inland Navigation. The
Duchess of Hamilton and Argyll ( the adventurer Eliza.
both Gunning, who died 20 March, 1700) was the mother
of two Dukes of Hamilton and two Dukes of Argyll.--
CUNNINGHAM.

Mr. Cunningham might have given a neater
pricis on the Gunnings, and we should like to
have the question answered, " Who was John
" Gunning, of Castle Coote ?" There ought to
be more details about those famous beauties
which would interest general readers, and Mr.
Cunningham should have told us the best place
for seeing their portraits. The composition
of the whole note is inelegant. It is followed
by another :

It is remarkable that this great lady [the Duchess of
Hamilton], and her sister Lady Coventry, had been
originally so poor, that they had thought of being actresses;
and when they were first presented to the Earl of Harring-
ton, the Lord Lieutenant at the Castle of Dublin, Mrs.
Woffington the actress lent clothes to them—Mt/polo
Memoires of George in., vol. iii. p. 190.—CUNNINGHANI.

The statement of Walpole must be cautiously
accepted. It is possible that Mrs. Woffington
lent them jewellery or ostrich feathers when
they were presented to the Lord Lieutenant,
and it is not uncommon for young ladies going
to Court to add to their own charms by bor-
rowed finery from a fair friend. We do not
know of any evidence to show that Mrs. Wof-
fington was so intimate with the Gunnings at
Dublin, and we think it not likely that the
nieces of Lord Mayo (a wealthy peer) could
have been so poor as the note by Walpole seg•
gests. Mr. Cunningham might have, certainly,
made more effort to throw light on the ori-
ginal history of these two renowned sisters.
There is still some hasty writing in these
notes. In the employment of " now " and
" then " our too fluent annotator is careless. In
the first of the foregoing notes we have " now
(1751)." Further on (at p. '279) we read of
" Chesterfield-house . . . . now (1752) just
" completed." At p. 465, where Walpole
alludes to a certain picture, we have the note,
" now (1857) the property of the Duke of
" Sutherland." This double use of the word
" now" occurs in other places, and is incorrect.
In an annotator who has not much to com-
pose, critics consider neatness as an especial
virtue.

Some of the annotations read quaintly. Of
the betting-book at White's Club we have the
note :

This remarkable book ( I have seen it) is still preserved
at White's.—CUNNINOHANI.

The " I have seen it " reads with comical
effect, as if the book was more " remarkable "
because the annotator had seen it. In our
opinion, it would have been more "remarkable "
if it had escaped the notice of such a book•
glutton as Mr. Cunningham.
Sometimes Mr Cunningham is too flip
pant in deciding on the merits of a secondary
character. Ho writes of " Samuel Foote,
" the player and playwright." Foote was
more than " a playwright." Ho had wit
enough to set up half a dozen of our modern
"dramatists," and his Mayor of (htr'•att
lives still. When Lord Chatham's sister is
alluded to, Mr. Cunningham writes

Anne Pitt, sister of the great Lord Chatham. She was
a very clever woman, eccentric, said smart things, swore a
good deal, was privypurae to the Princess Dowager of

Ibi..