A LEARNED writer for the Quarterly Review of July, having prepared a paper in which he contends, with considerable erudition, ingenuity, and taste, that there is "reasonable cause of doubt, whether the open vowels in Homer's poetry, which suggested to Bentley the remedy of the Digamma, be really a defect;" is indignantly disappointed, because he meets with nothing about a digamma in a work engaged on a subject totally distinct, namely, an Examination of the Primary Argument of the Iliad; and he complains, that he "does not find an efficient co-adjutor and co-partner for his undertaking, in the author of the Examination," whom he therefore denounces, as having thrown away "his time, his talents, his philology-in short, his whole book." That is; a gentleman passionately fond of wild-fowl, accepts an invitation to eat venison; and, because he finds no wild-fowl provided for his entertainment, he declares, that his host's venisou is not worth the eating. Finding at length that his paper, in spite of all the extension which he has given to it, is still too brief to form a separate publication, our offended critic casts about to see how he can bring it before the learned world; and, instead of sending it to some Classical Repertory, for which it was so well fitted, he has fallen on the ingenious expedient, through a little malversation of office, of hanging it out in his Review on the title-page of the Examination, so as wholly to cover and conceal that work. The work itself, which is formally summoned for reviewal, is dismissed in twenty lines savoring of his disappointment; whilst his own History of the Eolic Digamma, of which he shows no relation whatever to the subject of the Examination, is distended into 30 closely printed pages; exercising, (if we are bound to believe his modesty,) a narcotic influence, both over his own senses, and those of his readers." We might here remark, (we copy the regal style of our censor) on this oblique method of obtruding a subject; and on the surprise, which the substitution of a thing unlooked for, for the thing expected, must naturally produce. As if, (for our comparison here changes,) a gentleman were to invite his friends to eat venison, and nothing were to be served up but varieties of wild-fowl. Although this oblique method, of by-viewing publications, has become so frequent as to have lost much of its strangeness, still we are not become so intirely accustomed to it as not to be surprised, that, when we are invited to an Examination of the Primary Argument of the Iliad, which is the venison in our comparison, we are only served with an History of the Eolic Digamma, which is the wild-fowl. But, though we shall not dwell on this obliquity, we know not how we can refrain from remarking on the apparent dereliction of critical justice, in citing, as the title of an author's work, that which bis title does not bear; and in exhibiting, as his argument, that which he has not proposed as such. The author of the History, has thought fit to fabricate a new and presumptuous title for the Examination, which he has compounded of detached sentences culled from the body of the work; and to fabricate also a new argument, consisting of a corollary deduced by himself from the argument professed. The motive which governed these fabrications is obvious; it was such a motive as would be condemned in a civil court, namely, to bias the jury before the pleadings have commenced, or to strain the evidence before the verdict is delivered. We should condemn such a measure in a civil court; and are our self-erected literary courts freed, by public opinion, from the obligation of those principles by which all other courts are bound? There is always, however, this satisfaction for those who experience such artifices of malversation; that they demonstrate a consciousness of inability in the judge fairly to meet the question before him. This disclosure, though insensible to the party using the artifice, is glaring to every by-stander; and there is nothing which more effectually convinces a plain understanding that a cause is good, than when the party evincing hostility to it does not hazard an attempt to show that it is bad, but endeavours to conceal his inability to disprove it, under an outward bearing of silence and contempt. The true title of the work cited by the learned By-viewer, is simply this an Examination of the Primary Argument of the Iliad; and the true argument which it professes to maintain, is simply the Unity of that Argument. The treatise on the Æolic Digamma, however learnedly and ingeniously that subject may be therein treated, will not over-rule, so easily as its author wishes it to be supposed, the powerful and consentient evidences which establish and confirm the other, very different subject-the Unity of the argument of the Iliad. In vain will he endeavor to smother those evidences, by spreading over them the variegated tissue of his own History; he only betrays, by that stratagem, a sense of his inability to grapple with the argument which he shuns; and a desire to act the victor before his readers, without making them the witnesses of his failure. The argument of the Examination still challenges his best abilities. Let him not expect thus to get rid of it; it may militate against some learned prejudices, deeply rooted and partially cherished, but those prejudices will, in the end, be extensively unrooted by it. Let him not so cast up the counter-scores of reasoning, as to exhibit a balance of credit on his own side, which he will find himself obliged to strike off. Instead then of making a demonstration of having thrown his antagonist, let him fairly face it; let him descend into the arena, and make some trial of his strength with it. Quis circum pagos et circum compita pugnax The adversary is soon found; it stands before him, prepared and collected, in all gymnastic guise and attitude: φαῖνε δὲ μηροὺς στήθεά τε, στιβαροί τε βραχίονες αὐτὰρ 'ΑΘΗΝΗ If he cannot discern it in this athletic form, it must be owing to the "complication" of his own views, and not to that which he is pleased to attribute to the arguments of the Examination. In order to frustrate all similar pretensions to a dustless triumph, the Examination has taken the precaution of concentrating, into three pages,' the point and force of its main argument. Let our secure critic, then, adventure the task of encountering his adversary only in those three pages; which we will presently produce to him; before he affects to walk as conqueror over the field of the work. If he can fairly overcome it, we pledge our critical honor, that he shall find in us no symptom of dissatisfaction at his success; for, we are zealous for the argument of the Examination, only because we believe it to be sound and true. The causes of "the innovations projected and carried into effect by modern critics," in the poem of the Iliad, are not correctly or adequately stated to the reader by the Reviewer; indeed, he appears not to have been clearly and perfectly aware of them himself, and on that account it is, that he depreciates the argument of the Examination. The causes of those innovations, are principally two; which the Reviewer does not show. 1. The first cause, was an assumption; that the apparent irre 1 p. 162-4. gularity of the open and closed vowels in the text of Homer, proved the text to be vitiated. This assumption, which belonged to Bentley, is ingeniously, but only partially, met by the Reviewer, in his History of the Eolic Digamma. But Bentley, after a long course of learned and laborious experiment to restore the text by means of the digamma, abandoned the arduous undertaking; evidently deterred, by the prospect of the difficulties which perpetually multiplied before him. 2. The second, and much the most dangerous cause of innovation, was the gratuitous assumption; that the poem of the Iliad is destitute of all Unity of general argument evincing original unity of design; that it is, therefore, not an uniform body of poetry, but a congeries of separate matter, the contributions of different ages. This assumption, which belongs to Wolfe and Heyne; and which they took up, merely because they could not perceive any connecting argument in the poem; is the substantial and ultimate support of all the extravagant innovations projected by them in the substance of the Iliad; and this assumption is thoroughly refuted by the Examination, which proves, to the conviction of the commonest capacity that has kept itself free to judge upon the subject; that one, simple, sublime, argument, demonstrating original unity of design, pervades, connects, and articulates all the parts of the poem, in perfect harmony of composition. The two latter critics, and especially Heyne, far from being deterred by those multiplied difficulties which awakened the prudence of Bentley, were, on the contrary, fascinated by their very magnitude; and were inspired by them with a restless spirit of critical knighterrantry. Bentley's "sic corrige," engendered Heyne's "debuit esse;" and the child was resolved, to out-do its parent in intrepidity. To facilitate the operation which they were determined to undertake, those critics laid down for themselves certain principles, which the former called, "altior critice," and the latter, "de digammo placita ;" and which, like the true balsam of Fierabras, were to cure all diseases of the Iliad; and all those cases which resisted their efficacy, were to be adjudged cases of interpolation, and were to be rejected from the text. Finding, however, that those adjudged cases multiplied so fast as to become fearfully suspicious to others, and exceedingly embarrassing to themselves; instead of questioning the soundness of their own principles, they only thought of looking out for, and establishing, some other principle, of a broader basis and more comprehensive nature; which should justify all their charges of interpolation, in the lump, and thus relieve them from the irksome responsibility which they felt, in imputing so large a portion of interpolated matter to the Iliad. System engenders system; and these learned and doughty correctors soon devised that sweeping principle; that the Hiad possesses no unity of general argument; but only a succession of distinct and independent arguments, denoting distinct and independent poems; the productions of different authors, and of different ages; mutilated in the course of tradition, but variously darned and tacked together by different later hands: that this internal evidence of meddling and mixture, rendered the text of the Iliad justly liable to suspicion in all its parts, and confirmed the charges of interpolation which they found it expedient to direct against particular passages. They did not so much reason, from manifest corruption of the parts, to the general corruption of the whole; as, assume the corruption of the whole, in order to deduce aggravated charges of corruption against those parts which resisted their favorite principles of correction. Sometimes, indeed, they reasoned in a circle ; inferring, as it suited them best, each from the other. At all times, interpolation was to them, what revolutions are to the mineral geology; an easy and convenient universal principle, for gaining establishment for a favorite system. This was, indeed, a principle calculated to "render the question complicated and interminable;" and it therefore became indispensably necessary to meet it on its own ground, before proceeding to the arguments of detail which affected particular cases. Wolfe and Heyne were anxious, above all things, to establish this ground in the opinion of scholars; because they were sensible, that if they could do this, they might then speculate and dogmatise upon the text with undisturbed security, and with unlimited latitude. But, this ground being wrested from them by the Examination, it will follow; that the mere evidence, of attempts to adapt the text to the varying habits of ages following Homer, can, of itself, afford no legitimate ground whatever for suspecting interpolation of the matter. We ourselves have witnessed examples of a natural disposition to modernise the language of Chaucer, and the orthography of Spenser, yet without awakening any idea of violating the matter of their poetry; and a similar disposition, inspired by a similar motive, of adapting the text of Homer to the habits of a later age, might as naturally have actuated the Greeks, without necessarily inspiring a desire of adulterating the substance of the poem; an operation, which its diffusive publicity, and its venerated character, rendered by no means easy, to the extent that Wolfe, and Heyne, and some other systematic critics, have wished it to be supposed. The Examination of the Primary Argument has exposed one notable example, of the mischievous rashness of attempting to correct Homer, upon the false assumption of interpolation; and we shall presently adduce another, equally fruitful in salutary admonition. It would be an easy task to multiply these examples; for, it is a fact as true as it is lamentable, that the illustrious Heyne has neutralised one half of his gigantic learning |