The Litchfield County post., 1827-09-20

pus. their HelieOn, their PaFnassus and Pin
dus, are Thessalian mountains. There,
says the learned Heyne. ''lay the most ancient
region of the religion, philosophy, music, and
poetry of Greece" Thele the Tyre and the
harp were invented. In Thessaly and Betia
there Il not a fountain, a river, or (which
poetrv has not immOrtaliZed. Esculapius
was Of Thessaly, and Thamyris and Orpheus
were of Thrace.t With regard to Us, it is
true that the poetry of Orpheus is like the
music we may have heard in dream; and
the fable of the Greeks that the nightingales
haunted his tomb, is finer compliment to
his memory. than all the works that have
been ever ascribed to him. Yet, developed
in fable as the name of Orpheus is, the inn
preston which it has left upon tradition as
clearly Indicates some great humanizing spir-
it having come into Greece out of Thrace, as
the print of human foot in the desert would
be token to US of man having already WIS.,
tied the spot.
The history of extant Greek poetry, never
theless, begins with Homer, as not single
genuine relic ofits antecedent strains has come
down to us; and the cOnjectures that may be
formed respecting the influence of an Orphe-
US, Mureus, or an Glen, on the mysteries
and manners Of Greece, belong to antiquarian
more than literary speculation.
Homer brings the Greek bard before US no
longer in the light of a mystagOgue, law
giver, priest, or prophet, but simply as the
minstrel of horoic life; welcomed indeed
wherever he went, but sacred only from gen
ius and popularity. 1t would be hopeless
task to add any novelty to the ten thousand
descriptions that have been given of this
mighty poet. Simple as he is, he exhibits the
language, already possessing in its hexame-
tiers structure diverse the most unpalling to
the ear that was ever invented, and the most
susceptible of varied and majestic harmony.
The artlessness of his age and manners, which
though remote from savage monOtony, yet
exhibit nature still fresh, and free from con-
ventional formalities, and render his heroes
as ineligible as the patriarchs of the Bible !;
the fitness of his narrative the faithfulness
of his painting, the range of his characters,
gradually receding from similarity into con-
trast; the breadth and interest of his picture
Of earth, and the power with which he makes
glowing ethereal mythology seem SO near
and so natural to its atmosphere and his
spell (for it is skill without an efort) in ANAL
gamating the credible with the superstitious
all these circumstances make, HOmer's
works the most venerable relics of human
genius.
Ifyou should ever find yourselves plunged in
to doubts as to the utility of the author of the
Had by reading the dissertations of that scep-
teal school which was begun by Hedelin and
Perrault, and was first raised to reputation by
Wolf-though you may meet with able an
swers to them in the writings of Paine, Night,
and Sainte Croix-yet would refer you to
Homer himself, as his own best defender. If
a snfnh ku Nd hos
mony Of character, repelling the suspicion of
motley group of authors, It is the Had and
salso great creation of genius, shading off the
forms of human character into high and life
like resemblances ofnatnre, land Of giving them
a collectively harmonious spirit, as was ever
produced by crowd ofartists in the memo
ry ofnan. 1t is not, however. forgetting this
argument, to rec0llect also that this Wolfian
theory, which would so tastelessy and irrev-
erendly dismember the memory Of the best of
poets, exhibits the doubts Of few moderns,
In AN ancient subject affronting the collective
opinion Of antiquity. Truth and Taste have
nowOrse enemies than superfuous scepticism.
1t is parasite plant about the cares ofknowl-
edge. at -s.. ,r-
Homer's views of scenery and geography
are evidently those of an inhabitant Of Asia
Minor. The ingenious Wood has successful
~ illustrated this idea from the poets image
ry and description, and by general consent he
is considered an Ionian. / am unwilling to
enter on SO obscure question as the period
of his birth, which Wood conjecturally ar
CUES to have been before the great Ionic mi
grafton from Greece to ASIA but which ma
ny learned opinions have placed later than
that era. cannot help noticing, however,
that Woods hypothesis has the greater APP
pearance of being right. The Ionic migra-
ton was led by the son of Codrus. it was CO.
eval with the rise Of republicanism in Athens,
and it was preceded by the restoration of
Hercules descendants to dominion in the
Peloponnesus, as well as by the destruction
ofthe Pelopid@, and other events Of the deep
est historic inhsrest. But Homer is staunch
nionarchist-he alludes to no republics, nor to
single event posterior to the return of the
Heracleids. On the contrary, he speaks of
the happy reign of Eneas' family, which
must have been disturbed oy the great inva-
sion from Greece-circumstance almost neg
atiyely demonstrating that he lived before t.
propose to touch only on works forming,
either siDgly Or collectively, great epochs Of
literature without intering or intervening pc
RODS Of minor c0mposition. The Homerd@,
or earliest rhaps0dists, who recited Homer.
and prefxed hymns Of their own composition
70 portions of his works, constitute the most
ancient post-domeric periods of poetry in A.
siai whilst Hesiod shows the muses. almost
contemporaneously with Homer appearing ia