have been the object of no assuring faith to sore-tried mortals, and the anchor of no tempest-tossed conscience. But with the supreme Jove we have order at once brought into the confusion. The minor gods may brawl and battle as they please; one may shoot his pestilential arrows at the Greeks, while another shakes her Gorgonian ægis at the Trojans; the poet and the pious old Greek heart know with assured faith that all this will pass away, like a squall on a Highland loch. Above all the thunder and rain, and dust. and smoke, and fury of an atmosphere fretted with eager strife, and madded with hostile spears, reigns the counsel of Jove-Διὸς δ' ετελείετο βουλή - that is, translated into our language, Divine Providence-which with dark hand leads us surely through this strange embroglio of good and evil forces. which we call life. Nor is Jove the steward of war onlythe Tauías Toléμoto, as Homer loves to call him he is the god of truth, the god of justice, and the god who protects the weak against the strong, and the meek against the violent. In each of these capacities the supreme king had epithets as familiar to the Greek conscience as the Ten Commandments are to a modern Christian. Does Solomon, in the impressive and beautiful prayer which he offered up at the consecration of the Temple, use these words :--" If any man trespass against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house then hear thou in heaven, and do, and judge thy servants, condemning the wicked, to bring his way upon his head; and justifying the righteous, to give him according to his righteousness"?-the pious Greek no less knew that an act of untruthfulness in the relations of social life, of which truth is the bond, would expose him to the 1 1 Kings viii. 31, 32.

special wrath of Zevs oprios, and to the castigation of those dark-vested powers, the Furies, the special ministers of his wrath against perjured offenders. Does the royal Hebrew psalmist, while bowing before the awful majesty of Him who rideth upon the heavens, driving His enemies away like smoke before His face, delight in the same breath to set forth the Omnipotent as "a father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows in his holy habitation?"-Homer is not less forward to assure us that all suppliants and poor wandering houseless strangers come from Jove, who, in this mild aspect of his thunder-loving nature, is called čévios and iKéotos by all his true worshippers, rejoicing that they are Greeks in this respect, and not Barbarians on the shores of the inhospitable Euxine.

It were foreign to the plan of these discourses to follow out in detail the exhibition of the practical parts of heathen piety as they appear in the Homeric pictures of daily life and in the general tone of Homer's morality. I shall only say, in a single word, that if we compare Homer with any great popular poet, such as Chaucer, Shakspeare, Goethe, Burns, or Walter Scott, in point of moral complexion he shows as fair and fresh a hue as any of them, and fewer blotches than most. What rank corruption lay in thicklysown germs at the bottom of Hellenic, as of every form of polytheistic faith, a man must be a very superficial reader of Greek books not to know. A thick folio volume of strange uncomely commentary on St. Paul's first chapter to the Romans might be written by any well-read Hellenist who should have pleasure in that sort of work; but he certainly would not find his materials in Homer. The great national poet glorifies the national virtues, but does not patronize the national vices. Homer, indeed, is no preacher, neither a

a prophet nor the son of a prophet- men of his class never are; he was no philosopher, no reformer, and shared generally in the current opinions and prejudices of his time; his theology, in which the gods are minutely and curiously made after the likeness of men, is full of acts of puerility and baseness at which any child now may smile, and any man of English honour blush; but though he could not, as a popular poet, shake himself free from inadequate views and unworthy materials, he never gave prominence, or even a side look of approbation, to what was bad. He belonged essentially to the class of noble minds, which nothing that defiles can approach. He wore his laurels cleanly, and never soiled them with the sweat of any ignoble conflict. He was one of those whom Virgil in vision saw in the Elysian fields with Orpheus, Linus, Musæus, the founders of sacred mysteries and the singers of pious hymns--

"Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti."

I cannot agree with what appears to me in some few points the hyper-virginal sensibility of Gladstone,' when he says that there are certain passages in Homer which a moral bard would like to see expunged. Homer is never immoral; he is only natural, he is merely not squeamish. He is simply a man of perfect physical and moral health, according to my judgment."

1 See Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone (1858), vol. ii. p. 464, referring to Iliad xx1. 130.

The moral and religious element in Homer finds special prominence in my Notes. Some suggestive parallelisms

will be found in Duport's Gnomologia, Cantab. (1660), and in Bogan's Homerus Hebraizans, Oxon. (1678), where, however, there is much that is more curious than significant, not a little that is puerile, and a great deal that is absolutely worthless.

DISSERTATION VI.

THE UNITY OF THE ILIAD- THE WOLFIAN THEORY.

THE great literary question which falls to be discussed in the present chapter has been declared by Mr. Gladstone to have been "bolted to the bran." For us, at least," he goes on to say, "the controversies that rose out of the Wolfian theory are all but dead, and to me it seems little better than lost time to revive them." I should be most happy, if it were in my power to agree with this dictum of so able and eloquent a writer, with whose general foundation of Homeric studies, as set forth in his introductory chapter, the previous discussions will have shown that I in the main agree. The scholar who can content himself with this dictum will save himself from the task of sweating severely through many quarries of harsh erudition, and keep the wings of his intellect unentangled by many subtle tissues of ingenious but unsubstantial criticism; but he will not have done his duty thoroughly either to the venerable Hellenic records which he desires to appreciate, or to the spirit of the age in which he lives. The name of Wolf in connexion with Greek literature, and of Niebuhr in reference to Roman history, wear a significance that extends far beyond the particular spheres where their gigantic critical excavations were con

1 Vol. i. p. 4.

ducted. If the Wolfian theory with regard to the origin and composition of the Homeric poems be looked at beyond the surface, it will be found to underlie a great number of the most important literary, historical, and theological questions that stir the mind of England at the present hour. Like a great earthquake, the idea started in those masterly 'Prolegomena' is working potently even now in many far distant places, where no fair cities, and no old crazy dwellings have fallen to attest its force. So far, therefore, from considering the discussion of the Wolfian theory at the present day as little better than lost time, I should say rather that whoever has not gone over with some serious care the great critical campaigns of Niebuhr and Wolf, does not know properly in what position the grand army of European scholars now stands, nor has he any means of estimating by what strategical move the next effective blow shall be delivered. I myself,

The following extract from the Prolegomena, p. 156, will show how clearly Wolf foresaw the wide application to which his theory was destined; and those who are most intimately acquainted with the literary activity of the present day in the most cultivated countries of Europe, will be best able to testify how far the spirit of the Wolfian theory can be truly said to be dead for us now, or for any thinking man- -"Hæc quum ita sint, sub imperio Pisistratidarum Græcia primum vetera Carmina vatum mansuris monumentis consignari vidit. Talemque ætatem sub incunabula litterarum et majoris cultus civilis apud se viderunt plures nationes, quarum comparatio accurate instituta iis, quæ hic disputamus, multum lucis afferre possit. Nam, ut duas obiter tangam, et inter se et Græcis omni parte dissimillimas,

constat inter doctos, in Germania nostra, quæ domestica bella et principum ducumque suorum gesta jam ante Tacitum Carminibus celebraverat, has primitias rudis ingenii a Carolo M. tandem collectas esse et libris mandatas; itemque Arabes non ante vII. sæc. inconditam poësin priorum ætatum memoria propagatam collectionibus (Divanis) comprehendere cœpisse, ipsumque Coranum diversitate primorum textuum similem Homero fortunam fateri. Præter hos et alios populos comparandi erunt Hebræi, apud quos litterarum et scribendorum librorum usus mihi quidem haud paullo recentior videtur, quam vulgo putatur, et minus adeo genuinum corpus scriptorum, præsertim antiquiorum. Se de his et Arabicis illis collectionibus viderint homines eruditi litteris Orientis."