In the first place, take the line,-" As when the stars in heaven around the bright moon shine beautiful,"—with what object on earth does the "bright moon" correspond in heaven? With none. The thousand watch-fires are like the thousand stars. But no great central queen watch-fire, that we are told of, burned below-therefore the moon, wanting her counterpart, had perhaps no business on high. Would not a starry but a moonless sky have better imaged the thousand fireencampments?

This natural, nay, inevitable feeling, has suggested the reading of ἄστρα φαει νῆν for φαεινὴν—not a very violent change; and if we suppose the moon new, it will be the next thing to no moon at all; and as our present wish is, at all events, to get rid of the full moon, that reading is for that effect commendable. But then, alas! nothing less, we fear, will satisfy the shepherd-not the Ettrick Shepherd, but Homer's-than the full moon. She must be an ample shiner so to gladden his heart. The stars alone-though aggsTiα-could not have done that sufficiently to justify Homer in mentioning his gladness on such an occasion. Was the moon then young or old, crescent or full-like Diana's bow when bent, or "round as my shield?"

It was round as my shield. The shepherd's delight is decisive. It is, then, a similitude of dissimilitude; and though haply not the less on that account Homeric-for Homer was a strange old star-gazer and moon-mouther, and would often absurdly yield to the temptation of a sudden glorious burst of beauty-it is so much less like that for resembling which all scholars have always admired it, except a few who, desirous to get rid of an unnecessary pasivnσλý, have tried to prove her infancy by a violent or false reading. The truth is, that we can imagine Homer mentioning the full moon for the sake of her own transcendent beauty, though imaging nothing at the time seen below; but why he should have mentioned her at all if vn, that is, scarcely visible, and equally imaging nothing at the time below, surpasses, we fear, all reasonable conjecture. Be it then, we repeat, the full moon.

But in all this there is no real difficulty-and we have, as you will have perceived, been merely throwing about the waters, "like a whirling mop, or a wild goose at play." Now comes the pinch. Read the Greek on to váraι, line sixth—

our English on to "groves," ditto, and you have a picture in which the stars are conspicuous-they are beautiful—paɛvǹv ἀμφι σελήνην φαίνετ' ἀριπρεπέα. What, then, mean the mysterious words immediately following? "The immeasurable firmament bursts from below, and all the stars are seen." Or how do you translate veġġάyn? Another vision is seen by Homer-whence and how comes it? You are mute.

Perhaps it thus fared with Homer. At first there was no wind. He says so, and we must believe him, however suspicious may seem the assertion. There were some stars seen around the shining moon-not many-but such as were seen, were "beautiful exceedingly"-ágigeria. By-and-by the wind, which was thought to be absent or dead, began to move in the region-the clouds falling into pieces, opened a new reach of heaven upwards-ὑπεῤῥάγη άσπετος αιθής—that is, to Homer's eyes looking from below-and he was not blind, not he indeed there came a bursting, or breaking, or expanding, or unfolding, a gradual clarification of the immeasurable firmament, and then, indeed, all the stars were seen-not merely ἄστρα φαεινὴν ἀμφι σελήνην ἀριπρεπέα, but πάντα δέ τ' siderai orga, or, in the more ornate, or rather gorgeous language of Milton,

She was

"Then glow'd the firmament with living sapphires." Observe, Homer does not again mention the moon. still there—shield or arc-like; but even her orb ceased to be central to that vast "starry host; and though doubtless beheld by Homer and his shepherd, as their hearts gladdened, the gladness came from the universal face of the boundless heavens.

The picture then is, if such be the right interpretation of the words, of a glory that is progressive; and if so, intended Homer, think ye, or did he so unintentionally, to depict, by the gradual illumination of the heaven, the gradual illumination of the earth-fires rising after fires, like stars after stars, till the lower and the upper regions were, respectively, all in a blaze, only the lower lights more flashful, the higher subdued by distance into a soft-burning beauty?

Remember, both regions were not brilliant at one and the same time—that was impossible in nature. The stars, in that clime so lustrous, would have bedimmed the fires; the

fires, fed each by fifty warriors, would have extinguished the stars. They would have neutralised each other, and the scene would have been "dark with excessive bright." But the earth-woke reality gave the heaven-born vision; and both to this day are glorious-and sufficient, even when separate, from dimness to redeem this article, and to shed a splendour over our third critique on Sotheby.

Let us say, that such is the double soul-the twofold life of Homer's Night-scene-and see if-bating all other objec tions-it has been transfused by Pope into his celebrated version. No. According to our interpretation,

moon.

"Around her throne the vivid planets roll,"

is so far right. "Vivid" may do for agingenia, but "roll" is very bad for φαίνετ'. Roll perhaps they may; indeed other wise they would not be planets; but certainly not round the Homer was perhaps no great astronomer-though he knew well the Planetary Five. But Homer, who had the use of his eyes, never, drunk or sober, thought, when looking at the moon, that he saw "around her throne the vivid planets roll." If by "her throne Pope means the firmament, then he forgets the Greek words; but it is manifest he means the moon herself, absurdly confusing with her throne the queen who sits thereon, whom by the way he had chosen, injuriously to Nature and to Homer, to call, a few lines before, "refulgent lamp of night." However, we have said the line is so far right; but that which follows, if our interpretation of Homer's heaven be true, is altogether wrong

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"for

And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole;" for Homer yet has made no mention of stars unnumbered; if ἄστρα ἀριπρεπέα mean “ vivid planets,” which it may, Pope had no right to surround them with "unnumber'd stars," it is afterwards, and when a great change has occurred to the immeasurable firmament, that πάντα δέ τ ̓ εἴδεται ἄστρα. Homer speaks not of clouds-though we have suggested the proba bility of clouds being there, the disparting of which, and their floating away into nothing, finally revealed this infinite starri ness; but be that suggestion of ours right or wrong, Pope had no right to assure us of what Homer did not, "that not a cloud o'ercast the solemn scene." Homer says merely that

"the eminences and pinnacles of the heights appear, and the groves." Pope makes but sorry work of that, by needless elaboration of its picturesque simplicity; we do not know that he makes it unnatural, though he does make it confused; though there is far more light, there is far more darkness; and the landscape is no longer in aught Homeric. That muchadmired line,

"A flood of glory bursts from all the skies,"

would almost seem to be intended for a version of oùgavóbɛv d ἄρ ̓ ὑπερράγη ἄσπετος αίθὴς, πάντα δέ τ ̓ εἴδεται ἄστρα—but then, unfortunately, Pope has given us before-" and stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole;" and really, after the refulgent lamp of night has been hung on high, and vivid planets roll round the throne of the moon, and stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, while not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene, how any farther flood of glory can burst from all the skies, we are not astronomer enough, either scientific or empirical, to comprehend or conjucture-nor do we believe that Pope himself had any theory on the subject, but wrote away by candle-light, perhaps in his grotto, from memory somewhat dim, while the shining moon, it may have been, was herself in heaven, and the boundless firmament thickstrewn with stars. The scriptural simplicity of, "and the shepherd rejoices in his heart," how far more touching to every one who has walked over the hills by night, than Pope's philosophical paraphrase! As for the application of the sky-sight to the ground-scene, we have no room to remark upon it, farther than that while it departs equally from the original, and is laboured overmuch,-it possesses a certain shadowy magnificence, for sake of which its faithlessness, or departure from the faith, may, in some moods of mind, be forgiven.

We find that the three questions we wished you to decide for us, are running, or have run, into one; but no great matter; so, what think you, on the whole, of this famous passage in Pope's Homer? Three of our best descriptive poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, have, as you probably know, declared it infamous; and Wordsworth, especially, has not hesitated to hint, in his unceremonious style, that the many millions of his fellow-Christians who have fallen into

admiration of this moonlight scene, painted on transparent paper, have been little better than blindfolded fools. The entire description, he avers, in words we forget, but we quoted them in our "Winter Rhapsody," is utter, contradictory, and unintelligible nonsense. It is no such thing. We have seen that it is not a translation of Homer's moonlight scene, scarcely even a paraphrase. And we have seen, too, that in departing from Homer, Pope departed from nature; but still the picture is beautiful. Forget that there is any such passage in Homer as that of which it pretends to be a translation. Read it by itself-try it by itself—and we are willing to wager a crown with Wordsworth, that even he will read with a benign aspect this very page of Maga. What are its faults? Why, we have told them already. There is some vagueness where there should be none; some repetition, where Pope believed he was adding new touches; and perhaps objects are made to appear in light which must have been in shadow; but these defects, in no offensive degree, once admitted, there

"Breathes not the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,"

this is extremely beautiful. In a description of external nature, no doubt a poet is sworn at her shrine to speak the truth-that is to say, to tell all manner of lies-provided only they do so coalesce and hang together in their beauty, that the poet believes them, and eke the whole world. That in poetry is true which, on sufficient grounds, and she is often easily satisfied, Imagination conceives to be so; and Reason has no right to step insolently in upon Imagination in her dream, and to dissipate all her dear delusions. As long as Imagination tells only white lies, her tongue should be encouraged to wag night and day, that she may people the air with pleasant fancies. But what we were wishing to say is this, that in the description of a moonlight scene, for example, we must not exact from the poet, at every touch, the utmost precision; words, after all, do not paint to the eye, but to the conceptive faculty; and the conceptive faculty delights at times in half-formed and hazy visionariness, which it may be prompted to behold by the power resident in terms collocated in an order that could not resist the onset of the logician. We do not mean to say that poets are not expected,