ing of one of the great divisions of the poem, and from its application to illustrate one of the most notable attributes of Deity, always attracted great attention. No simile, in fact, of any poet has so triumphantly travelled through the fine imaginings of a long series of philosophers, theologians, and poets, and been at the same time so very much improved in the travel. The fact is, there is something extremely simple, and to our conception even childish and ludicrous, in this way of illustrating the right of Jupiter to his most significant title of ALMIGHTY. The simple announcement of the (potentissimus), Gen. xvii. 1, if it gives nothing to amuse the imagination, is certainly much better calculated to excite reverence. To Homer, no doubt, who lived in simple times, and had to do with a simple, and at the same time not over-serious people, the simile was an effective one; but the thinkers and speculators of a more mature age, brought up from their infancy to reverence Homer as the Jews reverenced Moses and the Prophets, were led by a convenient sort of instinct to interpret a deeper significance into the simple thought of the old minstrel, and thus changed a picture meant to amuse children into a symbol fit to instruct men. The golden chain of Homer was interpreted in every physical and metaphysical way that the inventive wit of centuries could imagine; Plato (Theat. 153 c) gave currency to the idea that it meant the sun; but his followers in Alexandria, and the pious theosophists of the sixteenth century, looked more deeply into the matter, and asserted with truth that the σeph xpvorein, if it was to receive a meaning worthy of the greatest of all epic poets, could only signify the living chain of mysterious causes and effects which makes up the world, deriving its whole support from the divine volition, and its whole virtue from the divine energy. Those who are curious to see how widely the idea of the aurea catena Homeri has spread itself through the world of books, may consult a learned paper on the subject in Notes and Queries, January 24, 1857, which, starting from a notice of a curious work on Hermetic lore called the Aurea Catena Homeri, mentioned by Goethe in his autobiography, proceeds to give a series of quotations of the manner in pecu which this famous simile has been used and adapted for their liar purposes by various philosophers, theologians, and poets, from Plato down to Tennyson. Of these quotations I shall allow myself to appropriate three I. MACROBIUS. "Invenietur pressius intuenti a summo Deo usque ad ultimam rerum fæcem una mutuis se vinculis religans et nusquam interrupta connexio; et hæc est HOMERI AUREA CATENA, quam pendere de cœlo in terram Deum jussisse commemorat.” 1 II. LORD BACON. "Out of the contemplation of nature, or ground of human knowledge, to induce any unity or persuasion concerning the points of faith, is, in my judgment, not safe. Da Fidei, quae Fidei sunt; 'Give unto Faith the things that are Faith's.' For the heathens themselves conclude as much in that excellent and divine fable of THE GOLDEN CHAIN; that men and gods were not able to draw Jupiter down to the earth; but contrariwise, Jupiter was able to draw them up to HEAVEN. So we ought not to attempt to draw down or submit the mysteries of GOD to our reason, but contrariwise to raise and advance our reason to the divine truth." 112 III. TENNYSON. Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by PRAYER Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep and goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by strong chains about the feet of GOD."3 That our English translators, who were thoroughly impressed with the idea that Homer must always be grand, were completely in 1 Somn. Scip. 1. 14. 3 Morte d'Arthur. 2 Advancement of Learning (Pickering), p. 132. fected with this ideal metamorphosis of the simple old minstrel's childlike simile, is evident at a glance. Pope says strongly, as if he were borrowing a couplet from his own Essay on Man : "Let down our golden everlasting chain, Whose strong embrace holds heaven and earth and main." "Our chain" is evidently a part of the system of the universe; and Chapman, by the mere use of the same possessive pronoun, showed that he meant, though with no philosophical verbiage, to convey the same idea. Cowper, by the definite article the, not less certainly says the same thing. But Homer knew nothing of such a chain, any more than he did of the Book of Job or the first chapter of Genesis; he only supposes A chain literally to be brought into play, for the occasion, as the German faithfully gives it— “EINE goldene Kette befestigend oben am Himmel.” This is only one example, among many, of the chivalrous piety by which Homeric commentators and translators have been led to make their author say profound and sublime things which in his position a man even of the highest genius never could have been led to conceive; an error of æsthetical judgment of which we have many examples everywhere in the current interpretation given to various passages of the Christian Scriptures. How many ideas have been interpreted into the Psalms, for instance, of which David, when he sung them, had no conception, and which are manifestly foreign both to the plain meaning of the text and to the whole scheme and purpose of the composition! VER. 47.-Many-fountained Ida, nurse of wild beasts. Mount Ida forms the background of the great military drama. which the genius of Homer has made world-famous, and so demands a word here. In Homer (and with the ancients generally, I imagine), Ida is a generic name, signifying a range of mountains, like the Grampians in Scotland; and in this sense Strabo is to be understood when he says that it extends to the promontory of LECTUM, in the Egean, westward, and to Zeleia and the lower region of the sepus to the north-east (XIII. 583). This generic name the poet qualifies in the present passage by the specification Tápyapov, that is, the part of the range so called, just as in xiv. 284 he says first "Idŋv and then AÉKTOV. Now, with regard to the part of Ida thus specialized, there happily does not reign the slightest doubt; for not only do Hesychius (in voce) and Demetrius of Scepsis (Str. 583) expressly say that Gargarus is the akpov or highest part of Ida, but we are distinctly told that there was a town on the northern coast of the gulf of Adramyttium, between Assos and Antandros, bearing the name of Gargarus (Str. 606). This name of course it could only have received from its connexion with the part of Ida of the same name; and these indications all point with certainty to the modern KAZ DAGH Overlooking the north-east corner of the Adramyttian gulf as the genuine Homeric Gargarus. The mountain of Ida, more strictly so called, consists of this its loftiest peak (above 5000 feet high), and two other summits, the first to the north-east, called the Adjeuldere-dagh, and the other, forming the extreme north wing of the chain, called the Aghy-dagh, these three forming together an almost perfect semicircle (in the manner so common also in the Scottish Highlands), of which the hollow (or corrie) looks to the north-west, that is, direct to the south end of the Dardanelles and the plain of Troy (Tchihatcheff, Asie Mineure, i. p. 480). Looking out from these heights, a series of summits are seen gradually sinking in all directions towards the coast, so as to fall down into a gently undulated country before reaching the sea, and in some places, as at Troy and Adrasteia, to spread out into wide alluvial plains. Only on the south side, between Antandros and Lectum, there is no room for plains of any extent; but the coast, varied by the ridges of Gargarus spreading their straggling arms to the sea, is described as remarkably picturesque. Considering the celebrity of Mount Ida as a bearer of classical traditions, and its vicinity to Constantinople, it does not seem to have been ascended very frequently. That Texier and Tchihatcheff were at the top I presume from the minuteness and comprehen siveness of their descriptions. There is an account of an ascent by Dr. Hunt, in March 1801, in Walpole's Travels (i. p. 119), but this gentleman was unhappy in having his view blinded by a snow-storm. Dr. E. D. Clarke was more fortunate; and his description of the peril of the ascent is almost sufficient to tempt some member of the Alpine Club to court a sublime neck-breaking in this region. Clarke describes the scenery in ascending the Scamander towards Gargarus as "uncommonly fine, and resembling the country in the neighbourhood of Salerno, where Salvator Rosa studied and painted the savage and uncouth features of nature in his great and noble style." He then in the ascent passes the ruins of some mediæval oratories and hermitages, with rude paintings of the all-holy Virgin staring out from the old stuccoed wall; and, traversing the belt of forest from which the mountain got its name (ion, wood, Herod. and Theoc.), saw the marks of the wild boars which inhabit this region, and justify the Homeric epithet, μnrépa Inpŵv; nay, even leopards, he was assured, and tigers, still keep alive the classical memories of the ground. Onward still he mounted, and came into the zone of the summit, where all was icy, bleak, and fearful, and where, as usual, he was deserted by his guides, who have no conception of the dare-devil enterprise and persistency of a scientific John Bull on such an expedition. He was soon afterwards gratified, as all great mountain elimbers are, by finding himself "on the brink of a precipice so tremendous, that the slightest slip of the foot would have afforded a speedy passage to eternity." However, by cutting holes in the ice for his hands and feet, and following the footsteps of tigers, he overcame all difficulties, and stood victorious upon the summit; and then, what a spectacle! "It seemed as if all European Turkey, and the whole of Asia Minor, were lying modelled before him on a vast surface of glass. The great objects drew his attention first; afterwards he examined each particular place with minute observation. The eye, roaming to Constantinople, beheld all the Sea of Marmora, the mountains of Prusa, with the Asiatic Olympus, and all the surrounding territory, comprehending, in one survey. |