had the good-will, and even friendship, of all his captains; is modest, sober, frugal, and attentive, and very deserving of promotion. I recommended him to Mr. Oswald, who always protected him, but can no longer be of service to him. He is of a very good family, though his father spent his estate and died a bankrupt; and the poor lad has now scarce any other friends than what I can procure him: permit me the freedom of recommending him to your protection. If I did not think him worthy of it, I should not venture to do so, notwithstanding his near relationship to me. I think I ought to make some apologies for this liberty I use with you; but I think it would be wronging our friendship to make too many. I am, dear sir, your most obedient humble servant."[29:1]
Wilkie's Epigoniad, of which few ordinary readers now know more than the name, if even that be very generally remembered south of the Tweed, inspired many zealous Scotsmen of the day, with the belief that their country had, at last, produced a great epic poet: but the national feeling was not responded to in England.[29:2]
Finding that the Epigoniad was attacked by the English critics, Hume was determined to be the champion of his countryman's fame against all comers; and accordingly addressed a letter to the editor of The Critical Review , containing a long complimentary criticism, in which he says,—
There remained a tradition among the Greeks, that Homer had taken this second siege of Thebes for the subject of a poem, which is lost; and our author seems to have pleased himself with the thoughts of reviving the work, as well as of treading in the footsteps of his favourite author. The actors are mostly the same with those of the Iliad; Diomede is the hero; Ulysses, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Nestor, Idomeneus, Merion, even Thersites, all appear in different passages of the poem; and act parts suitable to the lively characters drawn of them by that great master. The whole turn of this new poem would almost lead us to imagine, that the Scottish bard had found the lost manuscript of that father of poetry, and had made a faithful translation of it into English. Longinus imagines, that the Odyssey was executed by Homer in his
old age; we shall allow the Iliad to be the work of his middle age; and we shall suppose that the Epigoniad was the essay of his youth, where his noble and sublime genius breaks forth by frequent intervals, and gives strong symptoms of that constant flame which distinguished its meridian. . . .
The story of a poem, whatever may be imagined, is the least essential part of it; the force of the versification, the vivacity of the images, the justness of the descriptions, the natural play of the passions, are the chief circumstances which distinguish the great poet from the prosaic novelist, and give him so high a rank among the heroes in literature; and I will venture to affirm, that all these advantages, especially the three former, are to be found, in an eminent degree, in the Epigoniad. The author, inspired with the true genius of Greece, and smit with the most profound veneration for Homer, disdains all frivolous ornaments; and relying entirely on his sublime imagination, and his nervous and harmonious expression, has ventured to present to his reader the naked beauties of nature, and challenges for his partisans all the admirers of genuine antiquity.[31:1]
In his conduct on this occasion, Hume exhibited strong national partiality. It may seem at first sight at variance with some of his other characteristics; but it is undoubtedly true, that Hume was imbued with an intense spirit of nationality. It was a nationality, however, of a peculiar and restricted character. He cared little about the heroism of his country, or even its struggles for independence: Wallace, Bruce, and the Black Douglas, were, in his eyes, less interesting than Ulysses or Æneas,
——carent quia vate sacro.
But in that arena which he thought the greatest, in the theatre where intellect exhibits her might, he panted to see his country first and greatest. No Scotsman
could write a book of respectable talent without calling forth his loud and warm eulogiums. Wilkie was to be the Homer, Blacklock the Pindar, and Home the Shakspere, or something still greater, of his country. On those who were even his rivals in his own peculiar walks—Adam Smith, Robertson, Ferguson, and Henry, he heaped the same honest, hearty commendation. He urged them to write; he raised the spirit of literary ambition in their breasts; he found publishers for their works; and, when these were completed, he trumpeted the praises of the authors through society.