Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

"It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a writer, whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his proper station, have been NUMEROUS This is not the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it affects our poetical numbers alone, and there is matter of more importance that requires present reflection." The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him: (1)—

AND DEGRADING ENOUGH.

"But ye were dead

To things ye knew not of-were closely wed
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile; so that ye taught a school (2)
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and chip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask
Of poesy. Il-fated impious race,

That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face,
And did not know it; no, they went about
Holding a poor decrepit standard out

Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large
The name of one Boileau!"

A little before, the manuer of Pope is termed, "A scism,(3)

Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,

Made great Apollo blush for this his land."(4)

In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, lated Nov. 12, 1821, Lord Byron says,-"Mr. Keats died at lome about a year after this was written, of a decline proaced by his having burst a blood-vessel on reading the arcle on his Endymion in the Quarterly Review. I have read se article before and since; and, although it is bitter, I do ot think that a man should permit himself to be killed by it. ut a young man little dreams what he must inevitably enounter in the course of a life ambitious of public notice. ly indignation at Mr. Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly ermitted me to do justice to his own genius, which, malgré the fantastic fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly of reat promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually spired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Eschylus. He a loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, efore his death, is said to have been persuaded that he had ot taken the right line, and was re-forming his style upon le more classical models of the language.-L. E. (2) It was at least a grammar "school."

(3) So spelt by the author.

(4) As a balance to these lines, and to the sense and senment of the new school, I will put down a passage or two om Pope's earliest poems, taken at randon:

"Envy her own snakes shall feel,

And Persecution mourn her broken wheel,
There Faction roar, Rebellion bite her chain,
And gasping Furies thirst for blood in vain."
"Ah! what avails his glossy varying dyes,
His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes;
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold!"
"Round broken columns clasping ivy twined,
O'er heaps of ruin stalk'd the stately hind;
The fox obscene to gaping tombs retires,
And savage howlings fill the sacred quires."
"Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
Oh may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That on weak wings, from far pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes)
To teach vain wits a science little known,
T'admire superior sense, and doubt their own!"

I thought "foppery" was a consequence of refinement; but n'importe.

The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new performers on the English lyre of him who made it most tuneable, and the great improvements of their own "variazioni."

The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such lines and such

sentiments as the above. He says แ easy was the task" of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I presume. I recommend him to try, before he is so positive on the subject; and then compare what he will have then written and what he has now written with the humblest and earliest compositions of Pope, produced in years still more youthful than those of Mr. Keats when he invented his new Essay on Criticism, entitled Sleep and Poetry (an ominous title), from whence the above canons are taken. Pope's was written at nineteen, and published at twenty-two.

Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and such their scholars. The disciples of Pope were Johnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell, Crabbe, Gifford, Matthias,(5) Hayley, and the author of The Paradise of Coquettes; (6) to whom may be added Richards, Heber, Wrangham, Bland, Hodgson, Merivale, and others who have not had their full fame, because "the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," and because there is a fortune in fame as in all other things. Now, of all the new schools-I say all, for,

"Amphion there the loud creating lyre

Strikes, and behold a sudden Thebes aspire!
Citharon's echoes answer to his call,

And half the mountain rolls into a wall."
"So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of frost,
Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast;
Pale suns, unfelt, at distance roll away,
And on th' impassive ice the lightnings play;
Eternal snows the growing mass supply,
Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky,
As Atlas fix'd, each hoary pile appears,

The gather'd winter of a thousand years."
"Thus, when we view some well-proportion'd dome,
The world's just wonder, and even thine, O Rome!
No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to the admiring eyes:

No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;
The whole at once is bold and regular."

A thousand similar passages crowd upon me, all composed by Pope before his two-and-twentieth year; and yet it is contended that he is no poet, and we are told so in such lines as I beg the reader to compare with these youthful verses of the "no poet." Must we repeat the question of Johnson, "If Pope is not a poet, where is poetry to be found?" Even in descriptive poetry, the lowest department of the art, he will be found, on a fair examination, to surpass any living writer. (5) Thomas James Matthias, Esq., the well-known author of the Pursuits of Literature, Imperial Epistle to Kien Long, etc. In 1814, Mr. M. edited an edition of Gray's Works, which the University of Cambridge published at its own expense. Lord Byron did not admire this venerable poet the less for such criticism as the following:-"After we have paid our primal homage to the bards of Greece and of ancient Latium, we are invited to contemplate the literary and poetical dignity of modern Italy. If the influence of their persuasion and of their example should prevail, a strong and steady light may be relumined and diffused amongst us, a light which may once again conduct the powers of our rising poets from wild whirling words, from crude, rapid, and uncorrected productions, from an overweening presumption, and from the delusive conceit of a pre-established reputation; to the labour of thought, to patient and repeated revision of what they write, to a reverence for themselves and for an enlightened public, and to the fixed unbending principles of legitimate composition." Preface to Gray.-L. E.

(6) Dr. Thomas Brown, professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, who died in 1820.-L. E.

as he himself informed me in his answer, telling me by way of apology, that he'd be dd if he coul help it;" and I am not conscious of any thing lide "envy" or "exacerbation" at this moment which i duces me to think better or worse of Southey, Words worth, and Coleridge as poets than I do now, although I do know one or two things more which have added to my contempt for them as individuals. (5) And, ie | return for Mr. Wilson's invective, I shall content myself with asking one question:-Did he never compost, recite, or sing, any parody or parodies upon the Psalms (of what nature this deponent saith not), in certain jovial meetings of the youth of Edinburgh ?(6) It is not that I think any great harm if he did; because it seems to me that all depends upon the intention of such a parody. If it be meant to throw ridicule the sacred original, it is a sin; if it be intended to burlesque the profane subject, or to inculcate a moral truth, it is none. If it were, the Unbelievers' Creed, the many political parodies of various parts of the Scriptures and liturgy, particularly a celebrated one of the Lord's Prayer, and the beautiful moral parable in favour of toleration by Franklin, which has often been taken for a real extract from Genesis, would al be sins of a damning nature. But I wish to know Mr. Wilson ever has done this, and if he has, wig h should be so very angry with similar portions Don Juan? - Did no "parody profane appear in any of the earlier numbers of Blackwood's M

"like Legion, they are many"—has there appeared a
single scholar who has not made his master ashamed
of him?-unless it be Sotheby, who has imitated
every body, and occasionally surpassed his models.
Scott found peculiar favour and imitation among the
fair sex there was Miss Holford, (1) and Miss
Mitford, (2) and Miss Francis; (3) but, with the great-
est respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did
much honour to the original, except Hogg, the Ettrick
shepherd, until the appearance of The Bridal of
Triermain, and Harold the Dauntless, which in the
opinion of some equalled if not surpassed him; and
lo! after three or four years, they turned out to be
the Master's own compositions. Have Southey, or
Coleridge, or t'other fellow, made a follower of renown?
Wilson never did well till he set up for himself in the
City of the Plague. Has Moore, or any other living
writer of reputation, had a tolerable imitator, or rather
disciple? Now, it is remarkable, that almost all the
followers of Pope, whom I have named, have produced
beautiful and standard works; and it was not the
number of his imitators who finally hurt his fame, but
the despair of imitation, and the ease of not imitating
him sufficiently. This, and the same reason which
induced the Athenian burgher to vote for the banish-
ment of Aristides, "because he was tired of always
hearing him called the Just," have produced the tem-
porary exile of Pope from the State of Literature.
But the term of his ostracism will expire, and the
sooner the better, not for him, but for those who bagazine?
nished him, and for the coming generation, who

"Will blush to find their fathers were his foes."

I will now return to the writer of the article which has drawn forth these remarks, whom I honestly take to be John Wilson, a man of great powers and acquirements, well known to the public as the author of the City of the Plague, Isle of Palms, and other productions. I take the liberty of naming him, by the same species of courtesy which has induced him to designate me as the author of Don Juan. Upon the score of the Lake Poets, he may perhaps recall to mind that I merely express an opinion long ago entertained and specified in a letter to Mr. James Hogg, (4) which he the said James Hogg, somewhat contrary to the law of pens, showed to Mr. John Wilson, in the year 1814,

(1) Author of Wallace, or the Fight of Falkirk, Margaret of Anjou, and other poems.-L. E.

(2) Miss Mary Russell Mitford, author of Christina, or the Maid of the South Seas, Wallington Hall, Our Village, etc. etc.-L. E.

(3) Miss Eliza Francis published, in 1815, Sir Wilibert de Waverley; or the Bridal Eve.-L. E.

(4) "Oh! I have had the most amusing letter from Hogg, the Ettrick minstrel and shepherd. He wants me to recommend him to Murray; and, speaking of his present bookseller, whose bills' are never lifted,' he adds, totidem verbis, 'God d-n him, and them both.' I laughed, and so would you too, at the way in which this execration is introduced. The said Hogg is a strange being, but of great, though un

I will now conclude this long answer to a short article, repenting of having said so much in my defence, and so little on the "crying left-hand fallings-off and national defections" of the poetry i the present day. Having said this, I can hardly be expected to defend Don Juan, or any other ring poetry, and shall not make the attempt. And a though I do not think that Mr. John Wilson has this instance treated me with candour or consideration, I trust that the tone I have used in speaking of h personally will prove that I bear him as little as I really believe at the bottom of his heart be bea towards me; but the duties of an editor, like the of a tax-gatherer, are paramount and peremper. I have done.

BYRON.

couth, powers. I think very highly of him as a poet; ht he and half of these Scotch and Lake troubadours are q by living in little circles and petty societies."-B. Len -L. E.

(5) The reader will find, on reference to Moore's L Byron, that his Lordship was not less mistaken in attrib the "Remarks on Don Juan" in the Edinburgh Magazine Professor Wilson, than in supposing Dr. Chalmers to ha been the "Presbyter Anglicanus" who criticised his Beppo a the same journal.-L. E.

(6) The allusion here is to some now forgotten calum which had been circulated by the radical press, at the time when Mr. Wilson was a candidate for the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.-L.E

Miscellaneous Picces in Prose.

REVIEWS.

WORDSWORTH'S POEMS, 2 Vols. 1807.(1)

(From Monthly Literary Recreations, for August, 1807.)

THE volumes before us are by the author of Lyrical Ballads, a collection which has not undeservedly met with a considerable share of public applause. The characteristics of Mr. W.'s muse are simple and flowing, though occasionally inharmonious, verse, strong and sometimes irresistible appeals to the feelings, with anexceptionable sentiments. Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the poems possess a native elegance, natural and unaffected, totally devoid of the tinsel embellishments and abstract The hyperboles of several contemporary sonneteers. last sonnet in the first volume, p. 152, is perhaps the best, without any novelty in the sentiments, which we hope are common to every Briton at the present crisis; the force and expression is that of a genuine poet, feeling as he writes:

"Another year! another deadly blow!
Another mighty empire overthrown!
And we are left, or shall be left, alone-
The last that dares to struggle with the foe.
'Tis well-from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought,
That by our own right-hands it must be wrought;
That we must stand unpropp'd, or be laid low.
O dastard! whom such foretaste doth not cheerl
We shall exult, if they who rule the land
Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
Wise, upright, valiant; not a venal band,
Who are to judge of danger which they fear,
And honour which they do not understand."

The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, the Seven Sisters, the Affliction of Margaret– of-, possess all the beauties, and few of the defects, of this writer: the following lines, from the last, are in his first style:

"Ah! little doth the young one dream,
When full of play and childish cares,
What power hath e'en his wildest scream,
Heard by his mother unawares;
He knows it not, he cannot guess:
Years to a mother bring distress,
But do not make her love the less."

The pieces least worthy of the author are those entitled Moods of my own Mind. We certainly wish these "Moods" had been less frequent, or not permitted to occupy a place near works which only make their deformity more obvious: when Mr. W. ceases to please, it is by "abandoning" his mind to the most

(I) "I have been a reviewer. In 1807, in a Magazine called Monthly Literary Recreations, 1 reviewed Words. worth's trash of that time. In the Monthly Review I wrote some articles which were inserted. This was in the latter part of 1811." Byron.-L. E.

(2) "This first attempt of Lord Byron at reviewing is remarkable only as showing how plausibly he could assume the established tone and phraseology of these minor judg. ment-seats of criticism. If Mr. Wordsworth ever chanced to cast his eye over this article, how little could he have

commonplace ideas, at the same time clothing them in language not simple, but puerile. What will any reader or auditor, out of the nursery, say to such namby-pamby as Lines written at the Foot of Brother's Bridge?

"The cock is crowing,

The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter;

The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest,
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising,
There are forty feeding like one.
Like an army defeated,

The snow hath retreated,

And now doth fare ill,

On the top of the bare hill."

"The plough-boy is whooping anon, anon," etc. etc. is in the same exquisite measure. This appears to

us neither more nor less than an imitation of such

minstrelsy as soothed our cries in the cradle, with the shrill ditty of

"Hey de diddle,

The cat and the fiddle:

The cow jump'd over the moon,

The little dog laugh'd to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon."

On the whole, however, with the exception of the above, and other INNOCENT odes of the same cast, we think these volumes display a genius worthy of higher pursuits, and regret that Mr. W. confines his muse to such trifling subjects. We trust his motto will be in future, "Paulo majora canamus." Many, with inferior abilities, have acquired a loftier seat on Parnassus, merely by attempting strains in which Mr. Wordsworth is more qualified to excel.(2)

GELL'S GEOGRAPHY OF ITHACA, AND ITINERARY OF GREECE.

(From the Monthly Review for August, 1811.) THAT laudable curiosity concerning the remains of classical antiquity, which has of late years increased among our countrymen, is in no traveller or author more conspicuous than in Mr. Gell. Whatever difference of opinion may yet exist with regard to the success of the several disputants in the famous Trojan controversy,(3) or, indeed, relating to the present author's merits as an inspector of the Troad, it must universally be acknowledged that any work, which more forcibly impresses on our imaginations the scenes

expected that under that dull prosaic mask lurked one who, in five short years from thence, would rival even him in poetry!" Moore.-L. E.

(3) We have it from the best authority that the venerable leader of the Anti-Homeric sect, Jacob Bryant, several years before his death, expressed regret for his ungrateful attempt to destroy some of the most pleasing associations of our youthful studies. One of his last wishes was-" Trojaque nunc stares," etc.

of heroic action, and the subjects of immortal song, possesses claims on the attention of every scholar.

"Some have asserted that, in the comparison of place now existing with the descriptions of Homer, we ought t to expect coincidence in minute details; yet it seems o by these that the kingdom of Ulysses, or any other, can be identified, as, if such an idea be admitted, every small and rocky island in the lonian Sea, containing a good port, might, with equal plausibility, assume the appellation of Ithaca "The Venetian geographers have in a great degree c tributed to raise those doubts which have existed on the

Of the two works which now demand our report, we conceive the former to be by far the most interesting to the reader, as the latter is indisputably the most serviceable to the traveller. Excepting, indeed, the running commentary which it contains on a number of extracts from Pausanias and Strabo, it is, as the title imports, a mere itinerary of Greece, or rather of Argolis only, in its present circumstances. This being the case, surely it would have answered every purpose of utility much better by being printed as a pocket roadbook of that part of the Morea; for a quarto is a very unmanageable travelling companion. The maps (1) and drawings, we shall be told, would not permit such an arrangement: but as to the drawings, they are not in general to be admired as specimens of the art; and several of them, as we have been assured by eye-wit-presented in the title-page, might be adduced as a proef

nesses of the scenes which they describe, do not compensate for their mediocrity in point of execution, by any extraordinary fidelity of representation. Others, indeed, are more faithful, according to our informants. The true reason, however, for this costly mode of publication is in course to be found in a desire of gratifying the public passion for large margins, and all the luxury of typography; and we have before expressed our dissatisfaction with Mr. Gell's aristocratical mode of communicating a species of knowledge, which ought to be accessible to a much greater portion of classical students than can at present acquire it by his means:-but, as such expostulations are generally useless, we shall be thankful for what we can obtain, and that in the manner in which Mr. Gell has chosen to present it.

The former of these volumes, we have observed, is the most attractive in the closet. It comprehends a very full survey of the far-famed island which the hero of the Odyssey has immortalized; for we really are inclined to think that the author has established the identity of the modern Theaki with the Ithaca of Homer. At all events, if it be an illusion, it is a very agreeable deception, and is effected by an ingenious interpretation of the passages in Homer that are supposed to be descriptive of the scenes which our traveller has visited. We shall extract some of these adaptations of the ancient picture to the modern scene, marking the points of resemblance which appear to be strained and forced, as well as those which are more easy and natural: but we must first insert some preliminary matter from the opening chapter. The following passage conveys a sort of general sketch of the book, which may give our readers a tolerably adequate notion of its contents:

"The present work may adduce, by a simple and correct survey of the island, coincidences in its geography, in its natural productions, and moral state, before unnoticed. Some will be directly pointed out; the fancy or ingenuity of the reader may be employed in tracing others; the mind familiar with the imagery of the Odyssey will recognise with satisfaction the scenes themselves; and this volume is of fered to the public, not entirely without hopes of vindicating the poem of Homer from the scepticism of those critics who imagine that the Odyssey is a mere poetical composition, unsupported by history, and unconnected with the localities of any particular situation.

(1) Or, rather, map; for we have only one in the volume, and that is on too small a scale to give more than a general idea of the relative position of places. The excuse about a larger map not folding well is trifling; see, for instance, the author's own map of Ithaca.

identity of the modern with the ancient Ithaca, by giving, in their charts, the name of Val di Compare to the island. That name is, however, totally unknown in the country, where the isle is invariably called Ithaca by the upper ranks, and Theaki by the vulgar. The Venetians have equally corrupted the name of almost every place in Greece; yet, as the natives of Epactos or Naupactos never heard of Lepanto, those of Zacynthos of Zante, or the Athenians of Settines, it would be as unfair to rob Ithaca of its name, on such a

thority, as it would be to assert that no such island existed. because no tolerable representation of its form can be found in the Venetian surveys.

"The rare medals of the island, of which three are re

that the name of Ithaca was not lost during the reigns of the Roman emperors. They have the head of Ulysses, recognised by the pileum, or pointed cap, while the reverse of one presents the figure of a cock, the emblem of his vi gilance, with the legend IOAKON. A few of these metals are preserved in the cabinets of the curious, and one als with the cock, found in the island, is in the possession of Signor Zavo, of Bathi. The uppermost coin is in the e lection of Dr. Hunter; the second is copied from Newma and the third is the property of R. P. Knight, Esq.

"Several inscriptions, which will be hereafter produced, | will tend to the confirmation of the idea that Ithaca wasis

habited about the time when the Romans were masters of Greece; yet there is every reason to believe that few, if any, of the present proprietors of the soil are descended from ancestors who had long resided successively in the island. Even those who lived, at the time of Ulysses, in Ithaca seem to have been on the point of emigrating to Argos, and no chief remained, after the second in descent from th hero, worthy of being recorded in history. It appears that the isle has been twice colonised from Cephalonia in dern times, and I was informed that a grant had bee made by the Venetians, entitling each settler in Ithaca to t much land as his circumstances would enable him to cul tivate."

Mr. Gell then proceeds to invalidate the authority o previous writers on the subject of Ithaca. Sir George Wheeler and M. le Chevalier fall under his severe animadversion; and, indeed, according to his account, neither of these gentlemen had visited the island, and the description of the latter is "absolutely too absurd for refutation." In another place, he speaks of M le C. "disgracing a work of such merit by the intro duction of such fabrications; " again, of the inaccuracy of the author's maps; and, lastly, of his inserting a island at the southern entry of the Channel between Cephalonia and Ithaca, which has no existence. This observation very nearly approaches to the use of that monosyllable which Gibbon, (2) without expressing it, so adroitly applied to some assertion of his antagonist, Mr. Davies. In truth, our traveller's words are rather bitter towards his brother tourist: but we must conclude that their justice warrants their severity.

In the second chapter, the author describes his landing in Ithaca, and arrival at the rock Korax asd the fountain Arethusa, as he designates it with sufficient positiveness. This rock, now known by the name of Korax, or Koraka Petra, he contends to be

(2) See his Vindication of the 15th and 16th chapters of the Decline and Fall, etc.

the same with that which Homer mentions as contiguous to the habitation of Eumæus, the faithful swineheard of Ulysses. We shall take the liberty of adding to our extracts from Mr. Gell some of the passages in Homer to which he refers only, conceiving this to be the fairest method of exhibiting the strength or the weakness of his argument. "Ulysses," he observes, "came to the extremity of the isle to visit Eumæus, and that extremity was the most southern; for Telemachus, coming from Pylos, touched at the first southeastern part of Ithaca with the same intention."

Καὶ τότε δή ῥ ̓ Οδυσσήα κακός ποθεν ήγαγε δαίμων
Αγροῦ ἐπ' ἐσχατιήν, ἔθι δώματα ναῖς συβώτης
Ενθ' ἦλθεν φίλος υἱὸς Οδυσσήος θείοιο,
ἐκ Πύλου ἡμαθόεντος ἰὼν σὺν της μελαίνη

Οδυσσεί Ω.

[blocks in formation]

These citations, we think, appear to justify the auor in his attempt to identify the situation of his rock nd fountain with the place of those mentioned by lomer. But let us now follow him in the closer deription of the scene. After some account of the abjects in the plate affixed, Mr. Gell remarks: "It is npossible to visit this sequestered spot without being truck with the recollection of the fount of Arethusa ad the rock Korax, which the poet mentions in the ame line, adding, that there the swine eat the sweet (1) corns, and drank the black water."

Δήεις τόν γε σύεσσι παρήμενον ̇ αἱ δὲ νέμονται
Πάρ Κόρακος πέτρῃ, ἐπί τε κρήνῃ Αρεθούση,
Εσθουσαι βάλανον μενοεικέα, καὶ μέλαν ὕδωρ

Πίνουσαι"

Ὀδυσσεί" Ν.

"Having passed some time at the fountain, taken a drawB. and made the necessary observations on the situation the place, we proceeded to an examination of the preci ce, climbing over the terraces above the source, among ady fig-trees, which, however, did not prevent us from eling the powerful effects of the mid-day sun. After a ort but fatiguing ascent, we arrived at the rock, which tends in a vast perpendicular semicircle, beautifully inged with trees, facing to the south-east. Under the crag found two caves of inconsiderable extent, the entrance one of which, not difficult of access, is seen in the view the fount. They are still the resort of sheep and goats, id in one of them are small natural receptacles for the iter, covered by a stalagmitic incrustation.

"These caves, being at the extremity of the curve formed the precipice, open toward the south, and present us ith another accompaniment of the fount of Arethusa, menned by the poet; who informs us that the swineherd Eueus left his guests in the house, whilst he, putting on a ick garment, went to sleep near the herd, under the holw of the rock, which sheltered him from the northern ast. Now we know that the herd fed near the fount; for inerva tells Ulysses that he is to go first to Eumæus, whom should find with the swine, near the rock Korax and the unt of Arethusa. As the swine then fed at the fountain, it is necessary that a cavern should be found in its vicity; and this seems to coincide, in distance and situation, ith that of the poem. Near the fount also was the fold or athmos of Eumæus; for the goddess informs Ulysses that should find his faithful servant at or above the fount. "Now the hero meets the swineherd close to the fold, hich was consequently very near that source.

At the top

the rock, and just above the spot where the waterfall oots down the precipice, is at this day a stagni or pastoral welling, which the herdsmen of Ithaca still inhabit, on acunt of the water necessary for their cattle. One of these

(1) "Sweet acorns." Does Mr. Gell translate from the tin? To avoid similar cause of mistake, evocxia should -t be rendered suavem but gratam, as Barnes has given it.

people walked on the verge of the precipice at the time of our visit to the place, and seemed so anxious to know how we had been conveyed to the spot, that his inquiries re

minded us of a question probably not uncommon in the

days of Homer, who more than once represents the Itha censes demanding of strangers what ship had brought them to the island, it being evident they could not come on foot. He told us that there was, on the summit where he stood, a small cistern of water, and a kalybea, or shepherd's hut. There are also vestiges of ancient habitations, and the place

is now called Amarathia.

Convenience, as well as safety, seems to have pointed out the lofty situation of Amarathia as a fit place for the residence of the herdsmen of this part of the island, from the earliest ages. A small source of water is a treasure in these climates; and if the inhabitants of Ithaca now select a rugged and elevated spot, to secure them from the robbers of the Echinades, it is to be recollected that the Taphian pirates were not less formidable, even in the days of Ulysses; and that a residence in a solitary part of the island, far from the fortress, and close to a celebrated fountain, must at all times have been dangerous, without some such security as the rocks of Korax. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the house of Eumæus was on the top of the precipice; for Ulysses, in order to evince the truth of his story to the swineherd, desires to be thrown from the summit if his nar. ration does not prove correct.

"Near the bottom of the precipice is a curious natural gallery, about seven feet high, which is expressed in the plate. It may be fairly presumed, from the very remarkable coinci. dence between this place and the Homeric account, that this was the scene designated by the poet as the fountain of Arethusa, and the residence of Eumæus; and, perhaps, it would be impossible to find another spot which bears, at this day, so strong a resemblance to a poetic description composed at a period so very remote. There is no other fountain in this part of the island, nor any rock which bears the slightest resemblance to the Korax of Homer.

"The stathmos of the good Eumæus appears to have been little different, either in use or construction, from the stagni and kalybea of the present day. The poet expressly men. tions that other herdsmen drove their flocks into the city at sunset, a custom which still prevails throughout Greece during the winter, and that was the season in which Ulysses visited Eumæus. Yet Homer accounts for this deviation from the prevailing custom, by observing that he had retired from the city to avoid the suitors of Penelope. These trifling occurrences afford a strong presumption that the Ithaca of Homer was something more than the creature of his own fancy, as some have supposed it; for though the grand outline of a fable may be easily imagined, yet the consistent adaptation of minute incidents to a long and elaborate falsehood is a task of the most arduous and complicated nature."

After this long extract, by which we have endeavoured to do justice to Mr. Gell's argument, we cannot allow room for any farther quotations of such extent; and we must offer a brief and imperfect analysis of the remainder of the work.

In the third chapter, the traveller arrives at the capital, and, in the fourth, he describes it in an agreeable manner. We select his account of the mode of celebrating a Christian festival in the Greek church:

"We were present at the celebration of the feast of the Ascension, when the citizens appeared in their gayest dresses, and saluted each other in the streets with demonstrations of pleasure. As we sate at breakfast in the house of Signor Zavo, we were suddenly roused by the discharge of a gun, succeeded by a tremendous crash of pottery, which fell on the tiles, steps, and pavements, in every direction. The bells of the numerous churches commenced a most discor dant jingle; colours were hoisted on every mast in the port, and a general shout of joy announced some great event. Our host informed us that the feast of the Ascension was annually commemorated in this manner at Bathi, the popalace exclaiming ἀνέστη ὁ Χριστὸς, ἀληθινὸς ὁ Θεός» Christ

is risen, the true God."

In another passage he continues this account, as follows:-"In the evening of the festival, the inhabitants danced before their houses; and at one we saw the figure which is said to have been first used by the

« FöregåendeFortsätt »