But this is in commiseration: or would the critic apply to Andromache the epithet of goose-cap? After all, who in his senses would dream of singling out a word from an author’s context, and delving in other authors for a meaning? The question is, not how it is used by other authors, but how it is used by Hesiod. Till the Critic favours us with some proofs of Hesiod’s namby-pamby tenderness towards the brother who had cheated him of his patrimony, I beg to return both the quotation and the appellatives upon his hands.[2]
The London Reviewer censures my choice of blank-verse as a medium for the ancient hexameter, on the ground that the closing adonic is more fully represented by the rounding rhyme of the couplet: but it may be urged, that the flowing pause and continuous period of the Homeric verse are more consonant with our blank measure. In confining the latter to dramatic poetry, as partaking of the character of the Greek Iambics, he has overlooked the visible distinction of structure in our dramatic and heroic blank verse. With respect to the particular poem, I am disposed to concede that the general details of the Theogony might be improved by rhyme: but the more interesting passages are not to be sacrificed to those which cannot interest, be they versified how they may: and as the critic seems to admit that a poem whose action passes
“Beyond the flaming bounds of time and space”
may be fitly clothed with blank numbers, by this admission he gives up the argument as it affects the Theogony.
In disapproving of my illustration of Hesiod by the Bryantian scheme of mythology, the London Reviewer refers me for a refutation of this system to Professor Richardson’s preface to his Arabic Dictionary; where certain etymological combinations and derivations are contested, which Mr. Bryant produces as authorities in support of the adoration of the Sun or of Fire. Mr. Richardson, however, premises by acknowledging “the penetration and judgement of the author of the Analytic System in the refutation of vulgar errors, with the new and informing light in which he has placed a variety of ancient facts:” and however formidable the professor’s criticisms may be in this his peculiar province, it must be remarked that a great part of “The New System” rests on grounds independent of etymology; and is supported by a mass of curious evidence collected from the history, the rites, and monuments of ancient nations: nor can I look upon the judgment of that critic as infallible, who conceives the suspicious silence of the Persic historians sufficient to set aside the venerable testimony of Herodotus, and the proud memorials and patriotic traditions of the free people of Greece: and who resolves the invasion of Xerxes into the petty piratical inroad of a Persian Satrap. I conceive, also, with respect to the point in dispute, that the professor’s confutation of certain etymological positions is completely weakened in its intended general effect, by his scepticism as to the universality of a diluvian tradition. If we admit that the periodical overflowings of the Nile might have given rise to superstitious observances and processions in Ægypt; and even that the sudden inundations of the Euphrates and the Tigris might have caused the institution of similar memorials in Babylonia, how are we to account for Greece, and India, and America, each visited by a destructive inundation, and each perpetuating its remembrance by poetical legends or emblematical sculptures? Surely a most incredible supposition. Nor is this all; for we find an agreement not merely of a flood, but of persons preserved from a flood; and preserved in a remarkable manner; by inclosure in a vessel, or the hollow trunk of a tree. How is it possible to solve coincidences of so minute and specific a nature[3] by casual inundations, with Mr. Richardson, or, with Dr. Gillies, by the natural proneness of the human mind to the weaknesses and terrors of superstition?
As to my choice of the Analytic System for the purpose of illustrating Hesiod, I am not convinced by the argument either of the London or the Edinburgh Reviewer, that it is a system too extensive to serve for the illustration of a single author, or that my task was necessarily confined to literal explanation of the received mythology. In this single author are concentrated the several heathen legends and heroical fables, and the whole of that popular theology which the author of the New System professed to analyse. Tzetzes, in his scholia upon Hesiod, interpreted the theogonic traditions by the phenomena of nature and the operations of the elements: Le Clerc by the hidden sense which he traced from Phœnician primitives: and to these Cooke, in his notes, added the moral apologues of Lord Bacon. In departing, therefore, from the beaten track of the school-boy’s Pantheon, I have only exercised the same freedom which other commentators and translators have assumed before me.
Clifton,
October, 1815.
FOOTNOTES
[1] A blank-verse translation of the Battle of the Titans may be found in Bryant’s “Analysis:” and one of the descriptive part of “The Shield” in the “Exeter Essays.” Isaac Ritson translated the Theogony; but the work has remained in MS.
[2] The untimely death of the writer unfortunately precludes me from offering my particular acknowledgments to the translator of Aristotle’s Poetics, for the large and liberal praise which he has bestowed upon my work in the second number of The London Review: a journal established on the plan of a more manly system of criticism by the respectable essayist, whose translations from the Greek comedy first drew the public attention to the unjustly vilified Aristophanes.