The Press.
London, England, 1858-05-01 00:00:00

Xittraturt.

Stidia on Homer and the Homeric Age. By the
Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, D.C.L.,
M.P. for the University of Oxford. Oxford :
University Press.
(Second Notice.)

Ma. GLADSTONE'S speculations upon the history
of Greece during the Homeric age appeared
to us to be vitiated by the character of the
historian upon whose statements they depend.
When he proceeds in his second volume to
discuss the religion of Greece during the
heroic age, we find another objection of the
same compzehensive character forbidding our
assent to his principal hypothesis. Both in
ethnology and mythology Mr. Gladstone rows
against the stream of fashion. While other
seholars are still discussing whether or no
Homer ever had an existence, our author has
satisfied himself that not only the poet but
even the heroes did really exist. So also at a
time when critics are in the habit of deriding
the theory that mythologies are corruptions of
a primeval revelation, Mr. Gladstone boldly
revives it, cites Bishop Horsley's hypo-
thesis about the Sibylline Books as if it were
generally accepted, and maintains that Zeus,
Apollo, and Pallas Ithenc„idjured together in
the often recurring line—

eti I:evr±h: xre. .15.7vrein xiic 'AroXXO),

are, in a distorted form, neither more nor less
than God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
It is not, however, because these doctrines
are not in fashion that we object to them.
The scholars who have exploded them have
not yet replaced them by anything so satisfac-
tory as to silence every appeal from their deci-
sion. Nor do we object to the supposed cor-
ruption of primeval revealed verities on the
ground that such corruption is impossible.
On the contrary, we have before our eyes an
'example of the process by which a simple and
spiritual creed may be transformed into a gross
and grotesque mythology. Those of our
great-grandchildren who may chance to travel
to the Salt Lake, will perhaps hardly recognize
in the polytheism they may find flourishing
there the disjecta membra of English Chris-
tianity and science. But we object, first,
that if Greek mythology presents such a
case of corruption, it is impossible to prove
it; and, secondly, that the principal in-
stance adduced of a correspondence between
Greek mythology and revelation is in
the highest degree unsatisfactory and unfor-
tunate. Mr. Gladstone's whole argument
depends upon an assumption which is implied
throughout his dissertation, and is more than
once explicitly stated. This assumption is
that in Homer's time the world was young ;
that the corruption of man had not then
-vitally affected his spiritual life ; that, though
banished from Paradise. he still, as it were,
felt himself a citizen of it—still in his exile
eemembered the ways, and the simplicity and
the savour of the bliss of that earliest home We
are afraid that this pretty theory is merely a
mistake in figures. In the time of Homer the
earth was three thousand years old. It is
true that we know little of what passed on it
during those three thousand years ; but what
little we do know would lead us to the conclu-
sion that the growth of wickedness was at
least as portentous in those ages as it has
been since. We hear tales of grinding tyranny,
grovelling idolatry, unnatural and promiscuous
lust. If the records of those three millenniums
could be recovered, we have no reason to doubt
that they would be similar in purport to the
chronicles of the second half of the world's
life. They would tell us of the growth of vast
Mesopotamnian and Egyptian monarchies ; of
short periods of heroic energy in action, in
inquiry, and fancy ; followed by periods of
wealth, comfort, enlargement of mind, then
by a certain sense of repletion, by a suspension
of activity, a palsy numbing the fancy, a scep-
ticism vexing the intellect, a consciousness of
decrepitude begun, an idle melancholy, a hope-
less admiration of the past. This process, so
familiar to the student of modern history, had
place, doubtless, in the times preceding
Homer; the rise and fall of dynasties, con-