It is not known what separated Homer from his but he quitted Chios, according to this account, at an ad vanced age, to recommence his wanderings. Those were principally at sea ; and the knowledge which the poet dis plays of all the rude art that was known to the shipwright and seamen of ancient times, sufficiently evince that Homer had witnessed a considerable deal of navigation. Many of his voyages are said to have been disastrous ; a circum stance which we can well believe, when we consider that the only ships which his experience enabled him to de scribe were destitute of anchors, and built without a nail of metal to secure them. An illness, which at last seized him, obliged him to stop at the island of Jos, and there he died. Strabo, Pliny, Pausanias, Aristotle, and Aulus agree with this account of the place of his death and inter ment. A tomb in that island was long celebrated as tile depository of his venerated remains, to which the states of Argos sent a solemn deputation every five years to oiler li bations.
Such are a few of the traits of his life which arc given in the work attributed to Herodotus. Among the places that have laid claim to the honour of his birth, Antima chus thinks that he was born at Colophon ; Aristarchus, at Athens ; Pindar, at Smyrna ; Aristotle supposes that he was born, as well as that he died, in the island of Chios. Suidas assigns him to Cyprus, others to Pylos, Rhodes, Mymne, Ithaca, Salamis, and Argos. In fact, the guesses at his birth-place lead us pretty nearly over the whole map of Asia Minor, the Peloponnesus, and the Archipelago. Even Egypt has had its advocates for this distinction; so that the whole ancient world may be said to have claimed him. The poet Martial, when called upon for his opinion on the subject, could only reply in an epigram, that such a genius belonged to the world at large ; and it is true that genius, like the light, belongs to all that can enjoy it ; but unfor tunately epigrams will not settle points of history. The Emperor Adrian applied to the oracle to solve the ques tion, and was told that he was certainly born in Ithaca ; but the oracle seems to have converted few to its opinion. The opinion of antiquity seems generally to lean towards either Chios or Smyrna having been his birth-place. Wood, who, after describing Balbec and Palmyra, travelled through Greece with the works of Homer in his hand, has adopted, as we have already mentioned, an ingenious mode of infer ring, from the landscapes and natural similes of the poet, the place in which Homer first received his impressions of the scenery of nature. If we survey," says that travel ler, 44 the map of the world with attention, I think we may discover that his first impressions of the external face of nature were made in a country east of Greece, at least as far as we may be allowed to form a judgment, from his de scribing some places tinder a perspective, to which such a point of view is necessary ; as, for example, when he places the Locrians beyond Eubcea. This piece of geography, though very intelligible at Smyrna Or Chios, would appear strange at Athens or Argos. His description of the situa tion of the Echinades beyond sea, opposite to Elis, has something equivocal in it, which is cleared up, if we sup pose it addressed to the inhabitants of the Asiatic side of the Archipelago. But if, with Mr Pope, we understand the words beyond sea' to relate to Elis, I think we adopt an unnatural construction to come at a forced meaning ; for the old Greek historians tell us, that those islands are so close upon the coast of Elis, that in their time, many of them had been joined to it by means of the Achelous, which still continues to connect them with the continent, by the rubbish which that river deposits at its mouth. I think I can discover another instance of this kind in the 15th book of the Odyssey, where Eummus, the faithful servant of Ulysses, is described entertaining his disguised master with a recital of the adventures of his youth. He opens his story with a description of the island of Syros, his na tive land, and places it beyond or above Ortygia. Now, if we consider that Ithaca was the scene of this conference between Ulysses and Eumxus, it will appear that the situ ation of Syros is very inaccurately laid down ; for in reality this island, so far from being placed beyond or farther from Ortygia, should have been described as nearer to it. An ingenious friend thinks that ICZTV7CECOEY may relate to the la titude, and that Homer meant to describe Syros as north of Ortygia ; but I cannot help thinking that the application of high to northern latitudes is much later than Homer.
" As therefore the same description would have been per fectly agreeable to truth had it been made in Ionia, is it not reasonable to suppose that the poet received his early itn, pressions of the situation of Syros in that part of the world, and had upon this occasion forgotten to adapt hiS ideas to the spot to which the scene is shifted ? If my conjecture is thus far admitted, I beg leave to proceed to a farther use of it, in attempting to throw sonic light on this obscure ex pression i3 A1010 • It is important to that part of the poet's character now under consideration, to have his sense of these words restored, if possible; for they have been urged as an argument of his gross ignorance of geography, by those who think they relate to the latitude of Syros, and that this description places that island under the tropic " " I beg leave to carry the reader for a moment to the Asiatic side of the Archipelago, in order to examine whether a view of the landscape under that perspective of fers any appearances to which those words can be natural ly applied without violence to their literal meaning. No part of our tour afforded more entertainment than the clas sical sea prospects from this coast and the neighbouring islands, where the eye is naturally carried westward by the most beautiful terminations imaginable, especially when they are illuminated by the setting sun, which shows ob jects so distinctly in the clear atmosphere, that from the top of Ida I could very plainly trace the outline of Athos on the other side of the .rEg-ean Sea, when the sun set behind that mountain. This rich scenery principally engaged the poet's attention ; and if we consider him as a painter, we shall generally find his face turned this way. In the infancy, and even before the birth of astronomy, the distinct variety of this broken horizon would naturally suggest the idea of a sort of ecliptic to the inhabitants of the Asiatic coast and islands, marking the annual northern and southern progress of the sun. Let us suppose the Ionians looking south-west from the heights of Chios at the winter solstice, they would see the sun set behind Tenos and towards Syros, the next island in the same south-west direction ; and having ob served, that when he advanced thus far he turned back, they would fix the turnings (reo:rar) of the sun to this point. I submit it as -matter of conjecture, whether this explanation does not offer a more natural interpretation of the passage than any which has yet been suggested. In pur suance of the same method of illustrating Homer's writ ings, I shall draw some conjectures with regard to the place of his birth, or at least of his education, from his si miles. Here we may expect the most satisfactory evidence
that an enquiry of this obscure nature will admit. It is from these natural and unguarded appeals of original ge nius to the obvious and familiar occurrences of common life, that we may not only frequently collect the customs, manners, and arts of remote antiquity, but sometimes dis cover the condition, and, I think, in the following instances, the country of the poet." After enumerating several si miles to support his theory, the essayist proceeds to the fol lowing : " When the formidable march of Ajax is com pared.to a threatening storm coining from the sea, I must observe, as an illustration, not of the obvious beauty of the simile, but of the poet's country, that this can be no other than an Ionian, or at least an Asiatic storm ; for it is raised by a west wind, which, in those seas, can blow on that coast alone. When, again, the irresistible rage of Hector is compared to the violence of Zephyrus buffeting the waves, we are not immediately reconciled to that wind's appear ance, in that rough appearance so little known to western climates, and so unlike the playful Zephyrus of modern poetry. But before we condemn Homer as negligent of na ture, we should see whether be is not uniform in this re presentation, and whether this is not the true Ionian cha racter of Zephyrus. The very next simile of the sante book is as much to our purpose, where the numbers, tu mult, and eagerness of the Grecian army collecting to en gage, are compared to a growing storm which begins at sea, and proceeds to vent its rage upon the shore. The west wind is again employed in this Ionian picture, and we shall he less surprised to see the same allusion so often re peated, when we find, that of all the appearances of nature, of a kind so generally subject to variation, there is none so constant upon this coast. For at Smyrna, the west wind blows into the gulf for several hours, almost every day during the summer season, generally beginning in a gentle breeze before twelve o'clock, but freshening considerably towards the heat of the day, and dying away in the evening. During a stay of some months in this city, at three differ ent times, I had an opportunity of observing the various degrees of this progress, nom the first dark curl on the surface of the water to its greatest agitation, which was sometimes violent. Though these appearances admit of variation, both as to the degree of strength, and the precise time of their commencement, yet they seldom entirely fail. This wind, upon which the health and pleasure of the in habitants so much depend, is by them called inbat. The Frank merchants have long galleries running from their houses, supported by pillars, and terminating in a chiosque or open summer-house, to catch this cooling breeze, which, when moderate, adds greatly to the oriental luxury of their coffee and pipe. We have seen how happily the poet has made use of the growing violence of this wind, when he paints the increasing tumult of troops rushing to battle; but in a still, silent picture, the allusion is confined to the first dubious symptoms of its approach, which are perceived rather by the colour, than by any sound or motion of the water ; as in the following instance. When Hector chal lenges the most valiant of the Greeks to a single combat, both armies are ordered to sit down to hear his proposal. The plain thus extensively covered with shields, helmets, and spears, is, in the moment of this solemn pause, com pared to the sea, when a rising western breeze has spread a dark shade over its surface. When the reader has com pared the similes I have pointed out.•ith the original ma terials, which I have also laid before him, I shall submit to his consideration, as a matter of doubtful conjecture, whe ther the poet, thoroughly familiarized to Ionianicatures, may not have inadvertently introduced some of them in the following picture, to which they do not so properly belong. When Eidothea, the daughter of Prater's, informs Mene laus; at Pharos, of the time when her father is to emerge from the sea, the circumstance of Zephyrus, introduced in a description of noon, darkening the surface of the water, is so perfectly Ionian, and so merely accidental to the coast or Egypt, that I cannot help suspecting the poet to have brought this image from home." That the Iliad displays abundance of geographical know ledge is certainly no internal proof, either for or against its being the work of one individual ; but if we suppose it to be the work of a single genius, upon the grounds of that mind alone which had conceived so lofty a plan being able to accomplish its magnificent execution, we shall find in the geography of its author unquestionable proofs of his having been an extensive traveller. Strabo has left a com mentary on the geographical parts of the Iliad and Odys sey ; and others, such as Apollodorus and Mcnogenes, wrote on the same subject, though unfortunately only the titles of their works have reached posterity. Homer, in the midst of all his splendid machinery, was regarded as so faithful a painter of real existence, that his catalogue of the Grecian forces was respected as a valuable record in an cient Greece, and appealed to by its jurisprudence. In some cities it was enacted by law, that the youth should get the catalogue by heart. Solon, the lawgiver, appealed to it, in justification of the Athenian claim against the pre tensions of the Megarcads, when the right to Salamis was so warmly contested by Athens and Megara. And the de cision of that, matter was at last referred to five Spartan judges, who, on their part, admitted the nature of the evi dence, and the affair was accordingly determined in favour of the Athenians. Three other litigated cases of property and dominion arc said to have been determined by reference to Homer's geOgraphy. In Homer's age there was no other way of acquiring knowledge but by travelling. To the curiosity respecting his own species, which must have possessed the ardent mind of the poet, and impelled him to brave the dangers of sea and land, the veracious Strabo adds another very probable motive of his travels, which was the wish to make his fable accord with the mythology of the people whom he introduced on his scene of action. For this purpose, says Strabo, he consulted the religious records and the oracles that were suspended in the tem ples. At that period there were hardly any other histori cal monuments known. The priests held the sceptre of public opinion, and all history was consigned to the oracles. Diodorus says, that Homer visited the isle of Delphos. After the second sacking of Grecian Thebes by Alcmcon, the prophetess Manto, daughter of the famed Tiresias, had been sent to Delphi as making part of the spoils, where she acquired great renown by her talent for composing ora cles. The meeting of Homer with such a lady is interest ing to the imagination. Homer, says the historian, bor rowed some striking verses of the oracle, either as orna ment or authority to give weight to his works.