is not to be given to Homer, we must believe it was written since the Iliad, from the evidence of its title; but if the author's name was lost in Aristotle's time, his antiquity is probably little short of Homer's: some scholiasts have given this poem to Lesches, but when Lesches lived, and of what country he was, I find no account.

The Cypriacs are supposed to contain the loveadventures of the Trojan ladies during the siege, and probably was a poem of fiction. Herodotus has an observation in his second book upon a passage in this poem, in which Paris is said to have brought Helen from Sparta to Troy in the space of three days, whereas Homer says they were long driven about on their voyage from place to place; from this want of correspondence in a fact of such consequence, Herodotus concludes upon fair grounds of criticism, that Homer was not author of the Cypriacs, though Pindar ascribes it to him; some give the Cypriacs to Hegesius of Salamis, others to Stasinus, a poet of Cyprus, and by some Homer is said to have given this poem, written by himself, by way of portion to his daughter married to Stasinus; this daughter of Homer was called Arsephone, and his sons Theriphon and Theolaus; Nævius translated the Cypriacs into Latin verse: many more poems are ascribed to Homer, which would be tedious to particularize; they are enumerated by Suidas, whom the reader, if his curiosity so inclines him, may readily consult.

As to any other information personally respecting this great poet, it has been given to the world so ably by the late Mr. Wood, in his essay on the original genius and writings of Homer, that I can add nothing on the occasion, except the humble recommendation of my judgement in its favour. The in

ternal evidence which this essayist adduces to fix the birth-place and early residence of his poet in Ionia, is both learnedly collected and satisfactorily applied: he observes that Homer, in his general manner of describing the geography of countries, speaks of them as more or less distant in proportion to their bearing from Ionia; he describes Zephyrus as a rude and boisterous wind, blowing from Thrace; this circumstance had been urged against Homer as a proof of his error in geography, and the soft and gentle quality of Zephyrus, so often celebrated by poets in all times, is quoted in aid of the charge; but the sagacity and local knowledge of Mr. Wood divert the accusation, and turn it into an argument for ascertaining the spot of Homer's nativity and residence, by reminding us, that when the poet describes the wind blowing from the Thracian mountains upon the Ægean sea, it must of course be a west wind in respect to Ionia, from which circumstance he draws his consequence that Homer was an Ionian. This argument must surely be satisfactory as to the place in which the poem was written, and when we have located Homer in Ionia, whilst he was employed in writing his poem, we have one point of doubt at least cleared up in his history to our conviction, and his accuracy in one branch of knowledge vindicated from the cavils of critics.

Having established this point, viz. that Homer was an Asiatic Greek, inhabiting the sea-coast, or an island on the coast of Ionia, and having vindicated his accuracy in geographical knowledge, the ingenious author of the essay proceeds to show, by way of corollary from his proposition thus demonstrated, that Homer must have been a great traveller: that geographical knowledge was in those days no otherwise to be acquired; that he appears to have been

thoroughly conversant in the arts of building and navigating ships, as then understood and practised: and that his map of Greece, which both Strabo, Apollodorus the Athenian, Menogenes and Demetrius of Scepsis illustrated in so diffusive a manner, puts it out of doubt, that he must have visited the several countries, and surveyed them with attention, before he could have laid them down with such geographical accuracy: certain it is, that so great was the authority of Homer's original chart, that it was a law in some cities that the youth should learn it by heart that Solon appealed to it for establishing the right of Athens to Salamis in preference to the claims of the Megarensians; and that territorial property and dominion were in several instances decided by referring to this Homeric chart: another evidence of Homer's travels he derives from his lively delineations of national character, which he observes are marked with such precision, and supported throughout with such consistency, as not to allow us to think that he could have acquired this knowledge of mankind from any other source but his own observations.

It is more than probable Homer did not commit his poems to writing; it is mere conjecture whether that invention was actually in existence at the time he lived; there is nothing in his works that favours this conjecture, and in such a case silence is something more than negative: the retention of such compositions is certainly an astonishing effort of the human memory, but instances are not wanting of the like nature in early and uncivilized states, and the memory is capable of being expanded by habit and exercise to an extraordinary and almost unlimited compass. Unwritten compositions were always in verse; and metre was certainly used in

aid of memory. It must not, however, be taken for a consequence that writing first came into use when Pherecydes and Cadmus first composed in prose, as some have imagined; for it undoubtedly obtained before their time, and was probably brought into Greece from Phoenicia.

The engraving of the laws of Draco is supposed to have been the first application of that art: but it was a work of labour, and required the tool of the artist, rather than the hand of the penman. Thales and Pythagoras left us no writings behind them, though they spread their learning over Greece, and from their schools peopled it with philosophers. The unwritten drama was long in existence before any compositions of that sort were committed to writing. Solon's laws were engraved in wood or stone, and there appears to have been but one table of them. Of Lycurgus's regulations there was no written record; the mind of the judge was the depository of the law. Draco published his laws in Olymp. xxxix; Pisistratus died in Olymp. lxiii; a century had nearly passed between the publication of these laws and the first institution of a public library at Athens; great advances no doubt were made within that period in the art of writing; nevertheless it was by no means an operation of facility in Pisistratus's time, and his compilation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey was a work of vast labour and of royal expense: the book remained at Athens as a princely monument of his munificence and love of letters; his library was resorted to by all men of science in Greece, but copies of the work were not circulated till the time of the Ptolemies; even Alexander of Macedon, when he had possessed himself of a complete copy of his favourite poet, locked it up in the rich chest of which he had despoiled King Darius, as the most

worthy case in which he could inclose so inestimable a treasure; when a copy of Homer was considered by a prince as a possession so rare, it cannot be supposed his written works were in many hands as for the detached rhapsodies which Lycurgus in more early times brought with him out of Asia, they must have been exceeding imperfect, though it is to be presumed they were in writing.

NUMBER CXXIII.

FROM the scarcity of transcribers in the time of Pisistratus, and the difficulties of collecting and compiling poems, which existed only in the memories of the rhapsodists, we are led to consider the institution of the Athenian Library, as a most noble and important work; at the same time, when we reflect how many compositions of the earliest poets depended on the fidelity of memory, we cease to wonder that we have so many more records of names than of works. Many poets are enumerated antecedent to the time of Homer; some of these have been already mentioned, and very few, indeed, of their fragments, are now in existence.

Conjecture, and even fiction, have been enviously set to work by grammarians and others within the Christian era to found a charge of plagiarism against Homer, and to dispute his title to originality. We are told that Corinnus, who was a scholar of Pala