to the first volume, nothing more is to be expected concerning two such long poems as the Iliad and the Odyssey, than a mere sketch of their contents. A better method, as to most purposes, would undoubtedly be, that of printing the text of both at large, with notes or a comment subjoined; and, as to many detached portions of them, particularly in what regards India, China, and America, a considerable progress has been made in such a plan ; in which the evidence, arising from the setting extracts at length from modern travellers, by the side of the old statements of Homer, is most striking, as well as most amusing, in proof of the identity of their subjects; but as to my present purpose, which professes to give only a general notion of some of the various methods of inventing fable, devised and practised by the ancients, a succinct summary view is perhaps preferable: suspending therefore the execution of the more enlarged plan, I have done little more here than reprint these chapters with the Introduction to them in their original state, as follows.

-The controversy* respecting Homer, which engaged the public attention ten or fifteen years ago, is not yet forgotten. It is well known to have originated with the late Mr. Bryant, who contended, that the true scene of the Iliad is not the Troad on the coast of Asia Minor, but lies probably somewhere in Egypt; and that the Odyssey is nothing but an account of Homer's own Travels. These opinions, though advanced by a venerable student, who was admitted to be one of the profoundest scholars in Europe, other learned writers called in question, and both sides zealously maintained their argument.

Not indifferent to the merits of a contest so interesting, I read over the Iliad and Odyssey again and again; and at length obtained, as I thought, some insight into the mysteries, which it was the poet's intention and his art to conceal. I found, in the first instance, that he has a secondary fable,

The date of this introduction and dissertation, as originally printed, but not published, was May 19, 1806.

constantly concealed under his primary and more obvious meaning; and, upon further investigation, became convinced that he does not even content himself with a secondary story, but that he is Toros at the least: that every part of his poems comprehends three distinct fables, each separate from the others, yet each concurrently proceeding with the others to its respective end : and from this method, till then unsuspected, arose, as I imagined, those apparent inconsistencies in the conduct of his characters, which, among others, Bayle has so much triumphed in developing.

In the course of the inquiry, it struck me, that the same conclusion, the proofs of which had become apparent in regard to Homer, might be drawn possibly, in respect to the other Grecian poets the suspicion was justified by the fact ; and in proceeding afterwards from the poets to the historians, the orators, and the philosophers of Greece, I found that Homer and all the Grecian writers reflect a strong light upon each other, not under common aspects only, but in the view of

them which I was taking; and from all together arose the fullest evidence, that the poets of the Greeks, in all their various departments, epic, dramatic, or odaic, have at least three meanings, two mysterious and one ostensible; and all their other writers at the least two. On examining the Latin writers I found the same conclusions, were fully warranted; that ars est celare artem is the principle of composition uniformly had in view by all the classics; and that no part of any of their writings is to be understood, without supposing that they are mere vehicles of knowledge, not intended to meet the eye on the first inspection; but that they have often, in fact, a third meaning, and sometimes a fourth; and that from thence, or from the confusion in composition likely to arise from thence, originated the well-known rule of Horace, nec quarta loqui persona laboret; the real meaning of which rule this explanation may serve to convey. This will not seem so extraordinary as it may appear at first, if a comparison be made between the literary compositions of the ancients and the specimens of other

arts which have come down to us from them : Ut pictura poesis is the language of Horace ; and there might be reason, à priori, to imagine that the method of the ancients would be the same, in all the arts conversant with the same objects. If the gem and the vase, representing the same gods and heroes as the classic writings, are admitted to be descriptive of certain dormant unknown matters (as they undeniably are in most instances, however it may be supposed in others, but incorrectly even in regard to them, that nothing has been aimed at in the execution of them, further than an exhibition of the manual skill of the artist,) it should not seem improbable, that the ostensible, and, as it were, external meanings of the poets (and the same is true of the prose writers,) are but a disguise for other mysteries, hidden secretly beneath such exterior.

This analogy I found in fact to exist, and that the mysterious mode of composition, in which the writer or artist

Ψευδεα πολλα λεγων ετυμοισιν ομοία,