to Homeric honours, but which few productions of any age and otherwise acknowledged excellence can sustain. It must not, however, be forgotten, that much of what is objectionable in theory may possess considerable merit in the execution; and many, consequently, of those conceptions which, in the existing outline or skeleton, lie open to serious objection, may, as worked up by a fervid imagination in glowing colours, have possessed their own characteristic value, which we are now deprived of competent means of estimating. In partial illustration of these remarks appeal might be made to the expressive gloom and melancholy which, dimly beaming through the fragments of the Thebaïs, harmonise so well with the spirit of the action; and to the fantastic grace and levity which, with equal adaptation to the genius of the poem, distinguish the extant passages of the Cypria. lation of the poems to the Iliad and Odys 17. It remains but to advert once more, with the Special reform and character of these poems thus more fully before us, to the evidence they supply of the fallacy of the late popular theories regarding the origin of sey. the Iliad and Odyssey. Even those who have here carried scepticism to the greatest length have hardly ventured to maintain that all these bulky epopees, with other equally voluminous non-Homeric compositions of remote date, were, as the Iliad and Odyssey have been pronounced, compilations of fugitive ballads, rather than integral works by single authors. Nor will it now probably be disputed in any reasonable quarter, after the more searching investigation to which this chapter of literary history has of late years been subjected, that several at least of the Cyclic poems date, in their integral form and com pass, from a period several centuries prior to the rise of the supposed primitive system of bookmaking to which their two great prototypes have been assumed to owe their existence. When, therefore, we find, with all the variety of their subjects, how carefully those among the Cyclic poems devoted to the Trojan war abstain from trespassing on the action of the Iliad and Odyssey; when we find the Cypria, at the expense of a most impotent conclusion, halting at the close of its thirty years' narrative, in what is still but the middle of its own subject, lest it should encroach on the commencement of the Iliad; when we find Arctinus taking up the thread with equal servility where the Iliad lays it down, and both Arctinus and Lesches concluding where the Odyssey commences; when we find, lastly, the Nosti, the only poem which ventures to interfere with the Odyssey in regard to time, carefully avoiding all encroachment on its action, running a parallel but completely independant course; when we add to this the united testimony of the antients, confirmed by the existing remains, to the imitative character of these works, and to the obsequious manner in which their authors borrowed incidental allusions or episodical details from the text of Homer, as materials for their own most important heads of action; we cannot fail to recognise, in the earlier Cyclic poems, inferior specimens of the same order of comprehensive epopee, of which the genuine Homer had in the Iliad and Odyssey furnished the standard models. The two prototypes must by consequence emanate, in their existing substantial integrity, from a far more remote period of antiquity. The Cyclic poets, it must also be remembered, are the same "Homerids" who in the Wolfian school of commentary, whether as amplifiers or interpolators of a more or less entire Iliad and Odyssey, figure as authors of many of the very noblest and most characteristic passages or episodes of each poem. The question then occurs: How happens it that minstrels who, in their subordinate capacity of botchers of existing works, stand forth as bards of surpassing genius, should, the moment they turn that genius to the composition of an original poem, of a Cypria for example, or an Ethiopis, relapse into mediocrity or plagiarism? He must be a very indulgent, but not very discerning critic, who can believe that the united talents of the authors of all the preserved passages of Homeric epopees, passages representing, we are entitled to assume, the cream of the original compositions, should ever have produced the episode of "The Shield," the Deputation Scene of the ninth book, or the Interview between Priam and Achilles in the last book of the Iliad. CHAP. XX. HOMERIC HYMNS AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 1. GREEK HYMNS AND THEIR VARIOUS ORDERS.-2. HOMERIC HYMNS. THEIR Greek nymns, and their vari ous orders. 1. A HYMN may be defined a Song or Ode in honour of the Deity or other object of religious veneration. The term, consequently, in familiar usage, both antient and modern, is limited solely or chiefly to lyric composition. To the Lyric Hymn in the stricter sense, that is, the melic and choral orders of poetry comprised under that title, attention will be directed in the ensuing Book devoted to the lyric literature of this period. The epic or Homeric hymns, however, claim, on special grounds, a place in its epic literature; first, owing to their immediate relation, both in origin and style, to the school of poetry from which they derive their title; secondly, as really partaking more of the epic than the lyric character. To this branch of composition tradition refers the earliest efforts of the Hellenic Muse, the works of her Olen, Orpheus, Thamyris, and other bards of mythical ages. Any general remarks, therefore, on the origin or distinctive properties of the hymn might appear, on strictly chronological principles, to belong to a former chapter, devoted to the history of these mysterious personages. The purely mythical character of those poets, however, and the consequent absence of all genuine materials for any practical illustration of the subject in connexion with their names, render it obviously preferable to combine its entire treatment with a period when such materials were abundantly at hand. The Hellenic hymns may be classed under the three heads of mythical, mystical, and philosophical. Those of the mythical order celebrate the genealogy, actions, or attributes of the popular Pagan deities, in their familiar anthropomorphic capacity. In those of the mystical order the more recondite notions of the Divinity were expounded, either as typified by the same popular deities under some more subtle variety of title and character, or by other essentially mystical members of the Pantheon. The philosophical hymns celebrated the divine attributes of power, wisdom, or justice, as conceived in the schools of national philosophy. These attributes here also were frequently symbolised in the persons of popular deities to whom they were held to be peculiar, or under such other variety of moral or physical abstraction as the fancy of the individual poet, or of the sect to which he belonged, may have suggested. To the hymns of the two latter classes, which do not, as may be supposed, always admit of being very accurately distinguished from each other, may be numbered a large proportion of those in the Orphic collection, as also of those ascribed to Linus, Musæus, and other fabulous poets. The hymns of the mythical class, to which the entire Homeric collection belongs, with the exception of one to Mars |