The excellencies of the Iliad, independent of the beau tiful and sonorous language to which it belongs, may be summed up in the vastness and variety of the picture of existence which it spreads before us ; the spirit and per petual motion of its agents ; the relieving interchanges of an interesting inferior world, and a heaven of voluptuous and gay mythology ; the progressive swell and import ance of the story ; and the art with which the very rest of Achilles is made subservient to the evolution of his gran deur; the full physiognomy of human character displayed in every age and situation of life ; the unstudied strength of his circumstances in description; and the contagious spirit with which he seizes the mind to sympathy with his martial passion : Such an apocalypse of life, from its subli mest tumults to its minutest manners, was never com municated by another human imagination.
If Homer has erred at all, it is from the wealth, or rather from the pathos, of his genius, in giving so strong a coun tervailing interest to the character of Hector. This un questionably diminishes our exultation in the triumph of Achilles. Yet who woula wish that fault undone ? Here is the generosity of genius, even in the poet, scorning the bigotry of national hatred that would depreciate the he roism of an enemy. It is, perhaps, repeating super fluously, what few have to be told, that the character of Achilles, so unlike the inexorabilis acer of Horace, has a relief of the noblest traits of compassion and generosity amidst the fury of his savage passions. The concluding book of the Iliad teems with the most touching circum stances of his generosity. He receives King Priam ; joins him in his tears at the recollection of their respective los ses ; perfumes the body, and orders it to be kept out of the father's sight, lest it should shock the grief of the king ; places it himself in a litter, fearing that Priam might burst into a lit of exasperation, and should exasperate him self also ; and, finally, refreshes him with food and sleep in his tent, and takes him by the right hand as a friend. In recognizing such traits of compassion in the proverbially savage Achilles, one is tempted to believe, that humanity is not so modern a virtue as some would have us be lieve.
The Odyssey speaks less to the imagination than the Iliad, but it introduces us to a still more minute and in teresting view of ancient manners, and it awakens with deeper effect the softer passions that appear but rarely in the other poem. It is strange, that La Harpe, who redeems much of his bad French taste by an apparently sincere enthusiasm for the genius of Homer, should say, that the Odyssey is devoid of the eloquence of sentiment.
If by sentiment we mean the sickly misanthropy, or the rampant enthusiasm which distinguishes so many modern productions, there is certainly nothing of the kind in the Odyssey ; and the difference of circumstances in which human nature was then placed must be fairly estimated,* before we can even pardon many maxims of moral con duct which Ulysses practically avows : but if by senti ment we mean the unsophisticated feeling of the heart, where, it may be asked, shall we find it, if it is not found in the pathetic situations of Telemachus, the conjugal love of Penelope, and the return of Ulysses to his home, with all the circumstances that attend it, his aged clog expir ing with joy at his feet, and his father relating to him, while he retains his disguise, all the little circumstances of his childhood that could awaken his tenderest associa tions ? Besides the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer is said to have composed another poem, entitled lllargitcs. It is now lost. It is said by some to have been a comedy ; but, from some verses in the contest between Homer and Hesiod, it may be rather conjectured to have been a piece of mockery and satire. Margites is the name of a person in a verse that is preserved by Plato, who is described as knowing many things, and knowing nothing well. Such a character may have been the original hero of Homer's satire, and been thus damned to everlasting memory, like the Mac Fleck noe of Dryden. The little mock heroic of the Battle of the Mice and Frogs, is well known, from Parnell's transla tion, to the English reader. Professor Ileyne supposes it spurious, because he finds scarcely any verses in it that breathe the spirit of Homer ; but this is no decisive argu ment, as Homer might be the worst of all parodists, though the best of original poets. The hymns attributed to him deserve more attention, as, along with those of Cal limachus, they fern) a curious historical monument of the popular superstitions of antiquity. Unfortunately, in the numerous collection of them which Clarke's Homer exhi bits, there is only one, perhaps, viz. the Hymn to Apollo, which is not apocryphal; and the scholiast of Pindar throws doubts even upon that one. But Thucydides recog nised in that ode the touch of Homeric genius, and the suffrages of a scholiast has certainly no right to be put in competition with that of so elegant a writer. As to the epigrams that have been occasionally ascribed to him, they carry internal proof of their spuriousness. (4)