The Press.
London, England, 1858-08-07 00:00:00

PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

Toe August number of Blackwood is not, upon the
whole, a strong number, although containing a good
deal of pleasant writing. The review of Mr. Glad.
stone's Homer is, however, an excellent paper, and
not, we think, more than fairly severe on the right
hon. scholar's ingenious theories. The following
general observations, having no particular application
to Mr. Gladstone, are worth remembering :
All historians and critics agree in portraying this period
in much the same colours. Some are more impressed
with the lights, some with the shadows, but the picture
cannot be very different to any two candid observers. Mr.
Gladstone dwells more frequently on the virtues than the
vices of this heroic period, but he does not omit the latter.
Perhaps the chief source of the difference that may be
noticed in the estimate formed of this period by any two
students of Homer, lies in this, that one will make a
greater allowance than another for the peculiar colouring
it has received from the imagination or the sentiments of
the poet. It is most true that the poet himself is but the
highest creation of his own age ; it is most true that he
cannot stir the minds of others, nor obtain their admire.
tion, unless he, to a certain extent, is in unison with his
own age; but it is equally true that a great poet will
occasionally attribute to his warriors sentiments which
would unl) arise in the minds of a few reflective men like
himself. We think that our Shakespeare has not unfairly
represented the English barons of the middle ages; but
how many thoughts and sentiments has he given them
which were quite unknown to Yorkist or Lancastrian!
Homer idealised; he could not otherwise have been the
great poet that he was. Something—how much it is hard
to say--of what we admire in Achilles and Hector belongs
exclusively to the poet, not to the warrior, of that age. In
some of the speeches assigned to his heroes we think we
see the reflective, meditative man giving out his own
especial thoughts; uttering them in the person of thatches
of fighting men amongst whom they would probably never
have originated.

And the reviewer quotes in illustration of his mean-
ing the famous speeches of Hector and Sarpedon in
the twelfth book of the liiad respecting augury, the
duties of kings, and tha impossibility of escaping
death. The general character of the work is summed
up in the following paragraph

We could select many passages from this work, and we
hope we shall be able to find room in our pages for some
of them, which contain separable observations both true
and admirably expressed; but we are compelled to report
that the nhilosophical and historical criticism which forms
the substance of the book is of a very slight, unstable
character—much of it fanciful and visionary. We do not
say that a painstaking student of Homer will have gained
nothing from a perusal of these three volumes; but we do
think that, in the course of his scholarly reading, he will
rarely have encountered three such bulky volumes from
which he has gained so little. He presses his hand, and
the more tightly he grasps the less be retains. So much
escapes in mere forth, mere fancy, vague and unaccredited
assertion. There is, too, a great deal of repetition; time
has not been taken to condense, and so to arrange the
material as to avoid this repetition. " Excuse the length
of my letter, I had not time to make it shorter," writes
the venerable John Wesley. The excuse is permissible in
a letter: is it equally permissible in a book?
The review of Mr. White's " Eighteen Christian
Centuries " is very favourable to the author, and
seems on the whole a good article. But we must
strongly protest against a paragraph at p. 166, where
the writer argues as if mere information were every-
thing, and the cultivation of the taste nothing. We
are glad to see another article that does full justice
to the beauties of Mr. Kingsley's " Andromeda."
And in " What will he do with it " we rejoice to find
the story beginning to move a little. Sophy has shot
up into a young lady, companion to Lsdy Mootfort,
and Lionel Houghton is in love with her. Darrell
has given up his notion of a second marriage, which
draws flrth the following regrets from Colonel
Morley :
Mere gossip—not true. No, he will never again marry.
Three days ago I thought it certain that he would—
certain that I should find for my old age a nook in his
home—the easiest chair in his social circle ; that my
daily newspaper would have a fresh interest, in the praise
of his name, or the report of his speech; that I should
walk proudly into White's, sure to hear there of Guy
Darrell ; that I should keep from misanthropical rust my
dry knowledge of life, planning shrewd panegyrics to bira
of a young happy wife, needing
all his indulgence—
panegyrics to her of the highminded sensitive man,
claiming tender respect and delicate soothing ;—that
day by day, I should have made more pleasant the home
in which I should have planted myself, and found in
bts
children boys to lecture and girls to spoil. Don't be
jealous, George. I like your wife, I love yoar little ones,
and you will have all I have to leave. But to en old