Scotsmen, and other imperfect sympathies," to foster, or at worst, to puff one another. But yet, neither Burns nor Cowper needed these foreign aids. As great a reputation as they enjoy they would have enjoyed without them, though, perhaps, more tardily.

Churchill, though an ultra-Whig in his politics, must be classed with the Legitimates in poetry. He inherited their point and sarcasm, with somewhat more of Juvenalian vigour and animosity. Their floweriness he probably rejected, and their polish he had not time to attain.

The school of Pope can scarcely be said to have been overthrown by the Revolution. It had long been wearing out by a gradual slow decay.

We know not whether Darwin can fairly be reckoned among its disciples; the laboured lusciousness of his lines bears no resemblance to Pope's smooth poignancy, and his exclusive attention to the forms of external nature prevents any similitude of matter. Of Hayley we know nothing. Rogers still survives like one of those gentlemen of the old court whom we occasionally meet with in society, obstinately retaining their satin waistcoats and ruffles, their low bows, and antiquated gallantry.

Meanwhile, all things were preparing for change. The minds of men were called to the contemplation of first principles. Dogmas, which had been held indisputable, were weighed in the balance, and found wanting; and the portentous creations of German fancy affected poetry much as the American revolution influenced politics. It is not from a mere coincidence of time that we have bestowed on a modern class the title of the Revolutionary School; nor solely from that audacity of innovation, that contempt for established authorities, which was so remarkably contrasted with the prescriptions of the Legitimates.There is a yet deeper propriety in the name. Both the politicians and the poets of this school referred every thing to nature, to pure unmodified nature, as they imagined her to exist before the growth of social institutions. Whatever was acquired, whatever was positive, whatever would not bow to a levelling, uni

versal reason, was to be cast as a noisome weed away. Some, indeed, pretended to a certain imitation of classical models, especially in those points, such as metres, and universal suffrage, in which the ancients had been formerly supposed least imitable; but the greater part set up for unmitigated originality; and doubtless, much that was original, much that was of great promise, much that will be remembered, when the storms that accompanied its birth are but remembered, was produced at that time.

But licence sprang up with liberty: the strong used their strength tyrannously; and the feeble, casting away the restraints which had served to conceal and bolster up their feebleness, exposed themselves pitiably. All mankind became statesmen, and a very large part of them, to say nothing of womankind, became poets; and the Revolutionists of both classes had a strong tendency to form associations; as witness the Florence Miscellany, and the Corresponding Society. Happily, the poetical anarchy has not been succeeded by despotism; but, on the other hand, many approaches have been made to the restoration of the true old Constitution.

Still, however, our poetical theories are almost as imperfect as our political ones; and, as we have already hinted, from similar causes,-namely, a partial view of nature, an exclusive devotion to some of the elements of society, with a total disregard of the rest.

It is too often forgotten, moreover, that neither states nor men can re

turn to infancy. They may, indeed, sink back to its ignorance and impotence; but its beauty, its innocence, and docility, once past, are flown for ever. It is a paradise from which we are quickly sent forth, and a flaming sword prohibits our regress thither. Those who cry up the simplicity of old times ought to consider this. Human nature, and entire human nature, is the poet's proper study. With external nature he has nothing to do, any farther than as it influences the passions, the affections, or the imaginations, of his fellow men. Besides, Nature, as presented to the senses, is mere chaos. It is the mind that gives form, and

with limestone eye-balls, and a mouth like the mask of angry Chremes? He could shake his sides now and then: witness lame Vulcan playing the cup-bearer; bully Thersites; and the milling bestowed by Ulysses on Irus the beggar, in presence of the suitors, who seem to have been lads of the fancy.

I. I never could see much drollery in these incidents. Shakspeare has made Thersites, Ajax, and others, immeasurably more entertaining than Homer. After all, this is not even properly comedy; much less parody: it is history-painting; and I do not except such traditions respecting the gods as might appear to take a tincture of humour. The traits of ludicrous character came in his way: they belonged to the truth of his personages; they were recognised as touches of legendary portrait-painting; and do not seem to have been sought and singled out by that gust of satirical humour which sports itself with such luxuriant activity in the Troilus and Cressida. But if we admit certain descriptions and portraits in the Iliad and Odyssey to be properly comic, the conclusion is a great deal too violent, that the poet either did or could furnish out a work so different in its kind as the heroi-comic. Harles, with his usual sagacity, remarks that satire and burlesque are not the growth of such rude and simple times as those of Homer, but assort better with a certain refinement of institutions, and that fastidiousness which is the fruit of the corruption of manners; such, for instance, as prevailed in Greece after the importation of Persian luxury. In short, he boldly pronounces (and he has philosophy on his side) that in the rude and simple times of Homer, no such phenomenon as a mock-heroic poem could have had any existence.

A. Well, this is a short way of getting rid of the question, and pretty effectual. But if Homer did not write it pray who did?

I. Why, Plutarch, at the end of his book On the Malevolence of Herodotus, tells us that Pigres or Tigres (the letters are often, you know, interchanged in the old MSS.) was thought to be the real author. He lived about the time of Xerxes: and was the brother of Artemisia, the

dashing Carian Queen; who set the fashion of swallowing the ashes of dead husbands, and building mausoleums, which thus were necessarily cenotaphs. The former is a little out of date. Henry Stephens actually met with an ancient copy of the Batrachomyomachia, intituled

ΤΙΓΡΗΤΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΚΑΡΟΣ.

4. So-you have let the author out of the bag at last. As you dismiss the Frog-and-Mouse-battle with so little ceremony, I will lay my life you will not be more complaisant to the Hymns. Some I am ready to give up; but Thucydides and Pausanias quote one or two as Homer's. I suppose, if you profess to say anything of these, you will say it in good earnest; and not shuffle the trouble off your hands, as you did when you ran a tilt at me, instead of breaking a spear with clarissimo viro Barnesio. If you try to get off by such shabby shifts here, we will have you shut up in a dark stable, à la Morland, with one of your sleepy shaggy colts.

I. Nay, I mean to be quite particular and methodical, I assure you. Let me recommend you and your friends to the Abbé Suchay's Dissertations on the Hymns of the Ancients; or Snedorf's De Hymnis veterum Græcorum; or Ruhnken's Epistola Critica in Homeridarum Hymnos.

A. I shall scarcely set out to the Bibliothèque Royale to search for them. Can't you particularize? I thought you said you would.

I. Well then-the Scholiast on Pindar ascribes to Cinethus of Chios the Hymn to Apollo. This is the one quoted as Homer's by Thucydides. But as the latter wrote his history in the eighty-ninth Olympiad, and Cinethus lived only in the sixty-ninth, it seems scarcely probable that the historian should have mistaken a poem of so recent an era for Homer's; and yet Cinethus might have made free with Homer's name, as Onomacritus did with that of Orpheus. Pausanias mentions the Hymn to Ceres as Homer's; and quotes a passage from it which is extant in the copy discovered by Mathæi at Moscow. Ruhnken thinks the author uncertain (a most safe and politic guess), but places him near Homer's time. Groddeck argues that the notions contained in it savour of

the philosophical subtleties which obtained a footing in a later age. Proclus, in the fragment of the Life of Homer, where he enumerates his poems, makes no mention of any hymns at all. As to the Hymn to Mercury, the Sophist Apollonius, in his Homeric Lexicon, denied that Apollo was ever called by Homer Letoides (son of Leto, or Latona). Yet in this hymn the epithet occurs more than once. I leave you to draw the inference.

A. Do you mean to assert that Homer composed no hymns whatever? Why hymns are quite as ancient as war-songs. There were Pamphus, and Olen, and I don't know who besides to say nothing of Orpheus; though perhaps you think he never existed.

I. I don't think he ever did: and I use Homer's name more as the distinction of a particular point of antiquity, than of an identical bard, the author of extended poems. But I allow, that there were very ancient hymns called Orphic, and there might have been Homeric hymns also. The question is, are these the same?

A. Why not?

I. We have no evidence that they are, beyond a vague and conjectural tradition. Internal evidence is against the position. The style is a trifle more sweet and florid than the style of Homer. We have also very substantial grounds for belief that the Homeridae, or Homeric Rhapsodists, did not barely recite Homer's oral poems, but forged others. You will remember they were not mere re

citers: and it is likely, that from the spirit of emulation, and the power of habit, they might have acquired such a facility of imitating the Homerical style as might have deceived even sagacious judges, and those who lived much nearer to those ancient times than Thucydides and Pausanias. We have an instance of highly spirited imitation even in a comparatively modern poet; I mean Quintus Calaber. But Athenæus, b. 1, c. 19, directly hints at the idea that one of the Homeride was the author of the hymn to Apollo. I know that his name will have weight with you, and here I rest my cause.

A. I must say it is something refreshing to rest on so euphonious a name as Athenæus, after the stonecutting combinations with which you have lulled my ears for the_last quarter of an hour. Schott, Wetstein, Kuster, Groddeck:—pray, didn't you talk something about a "brazen candlestick?" I think the least you can do is to run off a few glib verses. I don't care whether you have the fear of Pope before your eyes, or whether you choose to astonish some dunder-head critic with the " numerous verse" of noble old Chapman; whom, my easel to a pig-stye, he never heard of. Suppose you try your hand at one of the hymns? If you don't choose to call it Homer's, you may call it Homerical, or rhapsodical, or Cinathian, or anything you will. What say you to BACCHUS or the PIRATES?

I. Aye, you find the picturesque in it. I will see what can be done. AN IDLER