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 runs away with
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 from two 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 no
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 kl7myiaiiy, 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

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