[432] Mr. Ellis, a missionary in the South-Sea Islands, says of the inhabitants, ‘Their traditionary ballads were a kind of standard, or classical authority, to which they referred for the purpose of determining any disputed fact in their history.’ And when doubts arose, ‘as they had no records to which they could at such times refer, they could only oppose one oral tradition to another; which unavoidably involved the parties in protracted, and often obstinate debates.’ Ellis, Polynesian Researches, vol. i. pp. 202, 203. Compare Elphinstone's Hist. of India, p. 66; Laing's Heimskringla, 8vo. 1844, vol. i. pp. 50, 51; Twell's Life of Pocock, edit. 1816, p. 143.
[433] The inspiration of poetry is sometimes explained by its spontaneousness (Cousin, Hist. de la Philosophie, IIe série, vol. i. pp. 135, 136); and there can be no doubt that one cause of the reverence felt for great poets, is the necessity they seem to experience of pouring out their thoughts without reference to their own wishes. Still, it will, I believe, be found, that the notion of poetry being a divine art is most rife in those states of society in which knowledge is monopolised by the bards, and in which the bards are both priests and historians. On this combination of pursuits, compare a note in Malcolm's Hist. of Persia, vol. i. p. 90, with Mure's Hist. of the Lit. of Greece, vol. i. p. 148, vol. ii. p. 228, and Petrie's learned work, Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, Dublin, 1845, p. 354. For evidence of the great respect paid to bards, see Mallet's Northern Antiquities, pp. 234–236; Wheaton's Hist. of the Northmen, pp. 50, 51; Wright's Biog. Brit. Lit. vol. i. p. 3; Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, 1840, vol. i. pp. xxvi. xl.; Grote's Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 182, 1st edit.; and on their important duties, see the laws of Mœlmund, Villemarqué, Chants Populaires de la Bretagne, 1846, vol. i. pp. v. and vi.; Thirlwall's Hist. of Greece, vol. i. p. 229; and Origines du Droit, in Œuvres de Michelet, vol. ii. p. 372.
[434] Villemarqué, Chants Populaires, vol. i. p. lv.
[435] As to the general accuracy of the early ballads, which has been rashly attacked by several writers, and among others by Sir Walter Scott, see Villemarqué, Chants Populaires, vol. i. pp. xxv.–xxxi., and Talvi's Slavic Nations, p. 150. On the tenacity of oral tradition, compare Niebuhr's History of Rome, 1847, vol. i. p. 230, with Laing's Denmark, pp. 197, 198, 350; Wheaton's Hist. of the Northmen, pp. 38, 39, 57–59. Another curious illustration of this is, that several barbarous nations continue to repeat the old traditions in the old words, for so many generations, that at length the very language becomes unintelligible to the majority of those who recite them. See Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands, vol. i. p. 156, vol. ii. p. 217, and Catlin's North-American Indians, vol. i. p. 126.
[436] That the invention of letters would at first weaken the memory, is noticed in Plato's Phædrus, chap. 135 (Platonis Opera, vol. i. p. 187, edit. Bekker, Lond. 1826); where, however, the argument is pushed rather too far.
[437] This inevitable decline in the ability of the bards is noticed, though, as it appears to me, from a wrong point of view, in Mure's Literat. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 230.
[438] Varro mentions forty-four of these vagabonds, who were all called Hercules. See a learned article in Smith's Biog. and Mythology, vol. ii. p. 401, 8vo. 1846. See also Mackay's Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews, vol. ii. pp. 71–79. On the relation between Hercules and Melcarth, compare Matter, Hist. du Gnosticisme, vol. i. p. 257, with Heeren's Asiatic Nations, vol. i. p. 295, 8vo. 1846. And as to the Hercules of Egypt, Prichard's Analysis of Egyptian Mythology, 1838, pp. 109, 115–119. As to the confusion of the different Hercules by the Dorians, see Thirlwall's Hist. of Greece, vol. i. p. 257; and compare p. 130.
[439] This appears to be the opinion of Frederick Schlegel; Schlegel's Lectures on the History of Literature, Edinb. 1818, vol. i. p. 260.
[440] The habit of generalizing names precedes that more advanced state of society in which men generalize phenomena. If this proposition is universally true, which I take it to be, it will throw some light on the history of disputes between the nominalists and the realists.
[441] We may form an idea of the fertility of this source of error from the fact, that in Egypt there were fifty-three cities bearing the same name: ‘L'auteur du Kamous nous apprend qu'il y a en Egypte cinquante-trois villes du nom de Schobra: en effet, j'ai retrouvé tous ces noms dans les deux dénombremens déjà cités.’ Quatremère, Recherches sur la Langue et la Littérature de l'Egypte, p. 199.