those of its other heroes, I doubt not he will be convinced that their representative characters are thus rightly assigned; of which indeed the following lines, concerning America as represented by Circe, from the 10th Od. 135, (for I now return again to the consideration of the Odyssey,) furnish some confirmation; Αιαίην δ' ες νήσον αφικομεθ' ενθαδ' εναίε in these lines the duplication in the Greek names alam and amtäo of the word aid, did a country, is purposely intended to mark the vast extent of the country which Ajax (whose name has the same derivation,) represents; just as Awdwn and Awdwvam in Homer allude to China, from the abundance of boats there, called doas, or dows; and as Tartary has its name so doubled, in order to mark the height and prodigious extent of the mountains of that country, (quasi, Taugos, Tauyog). Having been thus incidentally led to the fable of Circe, as contained in the 10th Odyssey, I would observe that the words Ναύλοχον ες λιμένα, of the 140th line there, refer to the icein Baffin's Bay, which would hold a ship as in a harbour, in like manner as it has been above noticed, that the λιμην εύορμος would do within Bering's Straits, on the west side of America. Proceeding to the 205th line of the same book, Των μεν εγων ήρχον τωνδ' Ευρύλοχος θεοειδης Χληρος δ' εν κυνέη χαλκηρές παλλομεν ωκα Εκ δ' εοορε κληρος μεγαλήτορος Ευρύλοχοιο Βη δ' ιέναι αμα τω γε δυω και εικοσ ̓ εταιροι, I understand by the person of Eurylochus the great West Indian gulf, as intercepted between North and South America, and shaped like a helmet, κυνέη ; that gulf being in fact (δυω και εικοσι,) twenty-two degrees of latitude in width, from Pensacola to the bottom of the Gulf of Darien and that this is the space represented by him, is confirmed by the manner in which Eurylochus is mentioned in another place (429 :) Ευρύλοχος δε μοι οιος ερύκανε πάντας εταιρός where, by the word ερυκανε, there seems to be a very clear allusion to the hurricanes, to which those seas are subject, and to which the beginning of the name of Ευρύλοχος may itself have some reference. The ξεςοισι λάεσσι of the following lines will be explained by the rocks of ice with which the coast of Baffin's Bay are covered, and the remainder of the lines, by the amphibious animals, sea-lions, &c., found there, whose manners are very accurately described in them (240); Ευρον δ' εν βήσσησι τετυγμένα δώματα Κίρκης The reader, I am sure, will feel no small degree of wonder, at what I am going to state: he has doubtless heard of the tradition that the venereal disease is a native of America, and may perhaps have seen the histories of that tradition in the medical work of Astruc, or in the Philosophical Researches of De Pauw; but what will be think when he finds that Homer not only gives his tes timony in support of that tradition, but enters into details respecting the connexion of the disease with America, of which the moderns have not the slightest idea? This disease is called in English by a name which is a corruption of porcus, a hog, as the French name of it, verrole, is derived from verres, the male of the hog species; and the poet in like manner feigns, that those who drank of Circe's cup, or, in other words, contracted this discase, were turned into swine, on one account, perhaps, because such a transformation would be aptly indicative of its loathsomeness. That this complaint was in Homer's contemplation cannot be doubted for a moment, since the manner in which it is contracted, together with many of its most remarkable symptoms, are very clearly stated by him. The mode of contact, by which alone infection is communicated, is often pointed to disguisedly, and by allusions not very decently conceived, but in the 334th line it is plainly mentioned, and without indelicacy. Εύνης ημετέρης επιβηομεν οφρα μιγέντε and as to the symptoms attendant upon the disease, the manner in which the voice is affected by it, is expressed in the 246th line, Ουδε τι εκφασθαι δυνατο επος ιεμένος περ and in the 378th κατ' αρ' εξεαι ισος αναύδω the loss of the teeth is noticed in the 328th, Ος με τσιν και πρωτον αμείψεται έρκος οδόντων the dreadful pains attendant upon the disorder, in the 247th, |