dren now sport on their banks and quaff their salutary waters. Of all the Greek Poetry, I, for one, have no hesitation in saying that the Iliad and the Odyssey are the most delightful, and have been the most instructive works to me; there is a freshness about them both which never fades, a truth and sweetness which charmed me as a boy and a youth, and on which, if I attain to it, I count largely for a soothing recreation in my old age. MARGITES. THIS poem, which was a satire upon some strenuous blockhead, as the name implies, does not now exist; but it was so famous in former times that it seems proper to select it for a slight notice from amongst the score of lost works equally attributed to the hand of Homer. It is said by Harpocration, * that Callimachus admired the Margites, and Dio Chrysostom says, † that Zeno the philosopher wrote a commentary on it. A genuine verse, taken from this poem, is well known: Πόλλ' ἠπίστατο ἔργα, κακῶς δ ̓ ἐπίστατο πάντα. † For much he knew, but every thing knew ill. Two other lines, in the same strain, are preserved by Aristotle : Τόνδ' οὔτ ̓ αὖ σκαπτῆρα θεοὶ θέσαν, οὔτ ̓ ἀροτῆρα, "Him or to dig or plough the Gods denied, * In voce Μαργίτης. † Diss. 53. Plato, Alcib. 2. The Atticism of the augment, however, is attributable to Plato, as is well remarked by Mr. G. Penn. — Prim, § Eth. vi. 7. Arg. One other line less peculiar, is found in the Scholiast to the Birds of Aristophanes ; 66 Μουσάων θεράπων καὶ ἑκηβόλου Απόλλωνος. * Far-shooting Phoebus' and the Muses' slave." By others, however, the Margites was attributed to Pigres, and Mr. R. P. Knight is of opinion, † from the use of the augment in the few lines still preserved, that it was the work of an Athenian earlier than the time of Xerxes, but long after the lowest date of the composition of the Iliad. As it seems to me, it is certainly unphilosophical to suppose a pure satire to have been produced in the dawn of heroic poetry; for, contrary to all other kinds of poems, the satire is essentially the offspring of civilized manners and a complicated and artificial state of society. * Αν. 914. Μουσάων θεράπων Οτρηρὸς, κατὰ τὸν Ὅμηρον. † Proleg. in Hom. INTRODUCTION TO THE BATRACHOMYOMACHIA. THE Battle of the Frogs and the Mice is a short mock-heroic poem of ancient date. The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and corrupt to a great degree. It is commonly said to have been a juvenile essay of Homer's genius; but others have attributed it to the same Pigres whom I have mentioned before, and whose reputation for humor seems to have invited the appropriation of any wandering piece of ancient wit, the author of which was uncertain. So little did the Greeks, before the era of the Ptolemies, know or care about that department of Criticism which is employed in determining the genuineness of ancient writings! As to this little poem being a youthful prolusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the general spirit, but of numerous passages, of the Iliad itself; and even if no such intention to parody were discoverable in it, the objection would still remain that to suppose a work of the mere burlesque, to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse that order in the developement of national taste, which the history of every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost ascertained to be a law of the human mind. It is in a state of society much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that any popularity would attend such a ridicule of War and the Gods as is contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three other poems * of the same kind, attributed, for aught we can see, with as much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of them were, in reality, of the Homeric age. Mr. R. P. Knight † infers, from the usage of the word δέλτος - as a writing tablet instead of διφθερα or a skin, which, according to Herodotus,§ was the material employed by the Asiatic Greeks for that purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic ingenuity; and, generally, that the familiar mention of the cock || is a strong argument against so ancient a date for its composition. As to the merits of the Batrachomyomachia, * These were the Arachnomachia, Geranomachia, and Psaromachia; the Wars of the Spiders, the Cranes, and the Starlings. † Proleg. ad Hom. § Terpsich. 58. V. 3. |