The Iliad (Wisehouse Classics Edition). Homer

It was at Bolissus, and in the house of this Chian citizen, that Homer is said to have written the Batrachomyomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice, the Epicichlidia, and some other minor works.

      ¹² Chandler, Travels, vol. i. p. 61, referred to in the Voyage Pittoresque dans la Grece, vol. i. P. 92, where a view of the spot is given of which the author candidly says — “Je ne puis repondre d’une exactitude scrupuleuse dans la vue generale que j’en donne, car etant alle seul pour l’examiner je perdis mon crayon, et je fus oblige de m’en fier a ma memoire. Je ne crois cependant pas avoir trop a me plaindre d’elle en cette occasion.”

      ¹³ A more probable reason for this companionship, and for the character of Mentor itself, is given by the allegorists, viz.: the assumption of Mentor’s form by the guardian deity of the wise Ulysses, Minerva. The classical reader may compare Plutarch, Opp. t. ii. p. 880; Xyland. Heraclid. Pont. Alleg. Hom. p. 531-5, of Gale’s Opusc. Mythol. Dionys. Halic. de Hom. Poes. c. 15; Apul. de Deo Socrat. s. f.

      ¹⁴ Vit. Hom. Section 28.

      ¹⁵ The riddle is given in Section 35. Compare Mackenzie’s note, p. xxx.

      ¹⁶ Heeren’s Ancient Greece, p. 96.

      ¹⁷ Compare Sir E. L. Bulwer’s Caxtons v. i. p. 4.

      ¹⁸ Pericles and Aspasia, Letter lxxxiv., Works, vol ii. p. 387.

      ¹⁹ Quarterly Review, No. lxxxvii., p. 147.

      ²⁰ Viz., the following beautiful passage, for the translation of which I am indebted to Coleridge, Classic Poets, p. 286.

      “Origias, farewell! and oh! remember me

      Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea,

      A hapless wanderer, may your isle explore,

      And ask you, maid, of all the bards you boast,

      Who sings the sweetest, and delights you most

      Oh! answer all — ‘A blind old man and poor

      Sweetest he sings — and dwells on Chios’ rocky shore.’”

      See Thucyd. iii, 104.

      ²¹ Longin., de Sublim., ix. Section 26. Othen en tae Odysseia pareikasai tis an kataduomeno ton Omaeron haelio, oo dixa taes sphodrotaetos paramenei to megethos]

      ²² See Tatian, quoted in Fabric. Bibl. Gr. v. II t. ii. Mr. Mackenzie has given three brief but elaborate papers on the different writers on the subject, which deserve to be consulted. See Notes and Queries, vol. v. pp. 99, 171, and 221. His own views are moderate, and perhaps as satisfactory, on the whole, as any of the hypotheses hitherto put forth. In fact, they consist in an attempt to blend those hypotheses into something like consistency, rather than in advocating any individual theory.

      ²³ Letters to Phileleuth; Lips.

      ²⁴ Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 191, sqq.

      ²⁵ It is, indeed not easy to calculate the height to which the memory may be cultivated. To take an ordinary case, we might refer to that of any first rate actor, who must be prepared, at a very short warning, to ‘rhapsodize,’ night after night, parts which when laid together, would amount to an immense number of lines. But all this is nothing to two instances of our own day. Visiting at Naples a gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he informed us that the day before he had passed much time in examining a man, not highly educated, who had learned to repeat the whole Gierusalemme of Tasso, not only to recite it consecutively, but also to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance of the sense, either forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first, alternately the odd and even lines — in short, whatever the passage required; the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state that this singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the same manner. But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person can have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could actually repeat, after a few minutes consideration any verse required from any part of the Bible — even the obscurest and most unimportant enumeration of mere proper names not excepted. We do not mention these facts as touching the more difficult part of the question before us, but facts they are; and if we find so much difficulty in calculating the extent to which the mere memory may be cultivated, are we, in these days of multifarious reading, and of countless distracting affairs, fair judges of the perfection to which the invention and the memory combined may attain in a simpler age, and among a more single minded people? — Quarterly Review, l. c., p. 143, sqq.

      Heeren steers between the two opinions, observing that, “The Dschungariade of the Calmucks is said to surpass the poems of Homer in length, as much as it stands beneath them in merit, and yet it exists only in the memory of a people which is not unacquainted with writing. But the songs of a nation are probably the last things which are committed to writing, for the very reason that they are remembered.”— Ancient Greece. p. 100.

      ²⁶ Vol. II p. 198, sqq.

      ²⁷ Quarterly Review, l. c., p. 131 sq.

      ²⁸ Betrachtungen uber die Ilias. Berol. 1841. See Grote, p. 204. Notes and Queries, vol. v. p. 221.

      ²⁹ Prolegg. pp. xxxii., xxxvi., &c.

      ³⁰ Vol. ii. p. 214 sqq.

      ³¹ “Who,” says Cicero, de Orat. iii. 34, “was more learned in that age, or whose eloquence is reported to have been more perfected by literature than that of Peisistratus, who is said first to have disposed the books of Homer in the order in which we now have them?” Compare Wolf’s Prolegomena, Section 33

      ³² “The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the eleventh to the twenty-second inclusive, seems to form the primary organization of the poem, then properly an Achilleis.”— Grote, vol. ii. p. 235

      ³³ K. R. H. Mackenzie, Notes and Queries, p. 222 sqq.

      ³⁴ See his Epistle to Raphelingius, in Schroeder’s edition, 4to., Delphis, 1728.

      ³⁵ Ancient Greece, p. 101.

      ³⁶ The best description of this monument will be found in Vaux’s “Antiquities of the British Museum,” p. 198 sq. The monument itself (Towneley Sculptures, No. 123) is well known.

      ³⁷ Coleridge, Classic Poets, p. 276.

Pope’s Preface to The Iliad of Homer

      HOMER IS UNIVERSALLY ALLOWED TO HAVE HAD THE GREATEST INVENTION ofany writer whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested with him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular excellences; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. It is the invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great geniuses: the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which masters everything besides, can never attain to this. It furnishes art with all her materials, and without it judgment itself can at best but “steal wisely:” for art is only like a prudent steward that lives on managing the riches of nature. Whatever praises may be given to works of judgment, there is not even a single beauty in them to which the invention must not contribute: as in the most regular gardens, art can only reduce beauties of nature to more regularity, and such a figure, which the common eye may better take in, and is, therefore, more entertained with. And, perhaps, the reason why common critics are inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great and fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to pursue their observations through a uniform and bounded