The Iliad (tr. Pope) | Page 2

the standard which human experience, whether actual
or traditionary, has furnished. To form correct views of individuals we must regard them
as forming parts of a great whole--we must measure them by their relation to the mass of
beings by whom they are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or
condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider the general
bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective probability of its details.
It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know least, and talk most.
Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere [Footnote: "What," says Archdeacon Wilberforce, "is
the natural root of loyalty as distinguished from such mere selfish desire of personal
security as is apt to take its place in civilized times, but that consciousness of a natural
bond among the families of men which gives a fellow-feeling to whole clans and nations,
and thus enlists their affections in behalf of those time-honoured representatives of their
ancient blood, in whose success they feel a personal interest? Hence the delight when we
recognize an act of nobility or justice in our hereditary princes
"'Tuque prior, tu parce genus qui ducis Olympo, Projice tela manu _sanguis meus_'
"So strong is this feeling, that it regains an engrafted influence even when history
witnesses that vast convulsions have rent and weakened it and the Celtic feeling towards
the Stuarts has been rekindled in our own days towards the grand daughter of George the
Third of Hanover.
"Somewhat similar may be seen in the disposition to idolize those great lawgivers of
man's race, who have given expression, in the immortal language of song, to the deeper
inspirations of our nature. The thoughts of Homer or of Shakespere are the universal
inheritance of the human race. In this mutual ground every man meets his brother, they
have been bet forth by the providence of God to vindicate for all of us what nature could

effect, and that, in these representatives of our race, we might recognize our common
benefactors.'--_Doctrine of the Incarnation,_ pp. 9, 10.] have, perhaps, contributed more
to the intellectual enlightenment of mankind than any other three writers who could be
named, and yet the history of all three has given rise to a boundless ocean of discussion,
which has left us little save the option of choosing which theory or theories we will
follow. The personality of Shakespere is, perhaps, the only thing in which critics will
allow us to believe without controversy; but upon everything else, even down to the
authorship of plays, there is more or less of doubt and uncertainty. Of Socrates we know
as little as the contradictions of Plato and Xenophon will allow us to know. He was one
of the dramatis personae in two dramas as unlike in principles as in style. He appears as
the enunciator of opinions as different in their tone as those of the writers who have
handed them down. When we have read Plato or Xenophon, we think we know
something of Socrates; when we have fairly read and examined both, we feel convinced
that we are something worse than ignorant.
It has been an easy, and a popular expedient, of late years, to deny the personal or real
existence of men and things whose life and condition were too much for our belief. This
system--which has often comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations
of Strauss for those of the New Testament--has been of incalculable value to the
historical theorists of the last and present centuries. To question the existence of
Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable act, than to believe in that of Romulus.
To deny a fact related in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory developed
from an Assyrian inscription which no two scholars read in the same way, is more
pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured old king whom the elegant pen of Florian
has idealized--_Numa Pompilius._
Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer, and the state of our
Homeric knowledge may be described as a free permission to believe any theory,
provided we throw overboard all written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the
Iliad and Odyssey. What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily dismissed,
although the arguments appear to run in a circle. "This cannot be true, because it is not
true; and, that is not true, because it cannot be true." Such seems to be the style, in which
testimony upon testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and oblivion.
It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies of Homer are partly forgeries,
partly freaks of ingenuity and imagination, in which truth is the requisite most wanting.
Before taking a brief review of