graves, their roots penetrating the decayed wood of the coffins and drawing from the contents a concentrated form of nourishment. But it is obvious that this could only be practised to a very limited extent, and is only possible where there is ample space and where no necessity exists for placing more than one body in a grave, as, for instance, in country places; but these are, unfortunately, precisely the spots where the evil effects are almost inappreciable. Before commenting on the particular scheme of cremation recently propounded, we must notice one suggestion thrown out by the commissioners, which is so free from all objection, and appears so obviously excellent, that we are surprised it has not been carried out; we refer to the recommendation that in our cities public buildings should be erected where people might be permitted to place the remains of their relatives or friends until the time for interment. Such building or hall should be, of course, well ventilated and watched. The use of it might at first be voluntary, and not enforced until the custom became common. It is too true that in many a crowded alley or swarming lodginghouse a whole family has no choice but to eat and sleep in the same room as that in which a dead body lies, tainting, with its horrible faint scent of corruption, an atmosphere already vitiated. The following case occurred to our knowledge:-A little child was burnt-indeed, literally roasted to death-by accident. Five days elapsed before it could be buried; and for that space of time the poor little blackened, charred corpse stiffened and grew cold on the very table which served daily for dinner, during which meal it was placed, in a temporary way, on the floor. Now this was not choice, but sad necessity, for the poor, in their humble fashion, pay much reverence to their dead. Undertakers state (vide Report) that they are often applied to by those in humble circumstances for the use of a shed or outhouse in which the body may lie; and many witnesses assert that poor people would avail themselves thankfully of a public dead-house, provided that they were convinced that the remains would be treated with respect and integrity.' What has been already advanced goes far to prove that transmutation by fire is the most rapid, cleanly, and innoxious mode of resolving bodies into elementary matter. The scheme proposed by M. Bonneau, now under consideration of the French Government, is as follows:-All cemeteries to be replaced by a large sarcophagus, where the corpses of both rich and poor should be laid * Southey takes notice of this when he says 'Be not thou As is the black and melancholy yeugh That strikes into the graves its baleful roots out out on a metallic tablet, which, sliding by a rapid movement into a concealed furnace, would cause the bodies to be consumed in a few minutes; and with that taste for the bizarre, which is so truly French, he thinks that funeral urns would soon replace the China vases and bronze clocks now found on our mantel-pieces.' In the event of this mode becoming general, great caution would necessarily have to be exercised where the cause of death appeared to be involved in any mystery, as the action of fire would, of course, prevent any tell-tale evidence of poison or violence. The plan proposed by the Member of the College of Surgeons is a little different. 'On a gentle eminence, surrounded by pleasant grounds, stands,' as he supposes, 'a convenient, well-ventilated chapel.... In the centre of the chapel, embellished with appropriate emblems and devices, is erected a shrine of marble. Within this-a sufficient space intervening-is an inner shrine covered with bright, nonradiating metal, and within this, again, a covered sarcophagus of fire-tempered clay. . . . As soon as the body is deposited within, sheets of flame at an immensely high temperature rush through the long apertures from end to end, and acting as a combination of a modified oxy-hydrogen blowpipe with the reverberatory furnace, utterly consume and decompose the body in an incredibly short space of time. . . . The funeral service commences. At an appointed signal the end of the coffin, which is placed just within the opening in the shrine, is removed, and the body is drawn rapidly, but gently and without exposure into the sarcophagus. . . Meanwhile the body is committed to the flames to be consumed, and the words "ashes to ashes" may be appropriately used. The organ peals forth a solemn strain and a hymn or requiem for the dead is sung. In a few minutes, or even seconds, withont any perceptible noise or commotion, all is over, and nothing but a few pounds or ounces of light ash remain. This is carefully collected by the attendants, a door communicating with the chapel is thrown open, and the relic, enclosed in a vase of glass or other material, is brought in to the mourners to be finally enshrined in the funeral urn of marble, alabaster, stone, or metal.' 6 Such is the modus operandi proposed. It is, of course, open to objections, for the process as described would be both costly and difficult; but if scientific men once turned their attention to the subject, no doubt very perfect and more simple apparatus may be introduced. Whether such a mode of interment would ever become popular, even if it could be enforced, is very dubious. In England we are not fond of being dictated to, of having these things better managed, as they do in France.' There, in Munich, Frankfort, &c., from the moment you close your eyes in death, to the time when your relatives deposit you beneath the sod, you are washed, anointed, dressed, measured, screwed down, and finally lifted up and carried out under the surveillance of a paternal Government. In these places, burning of the dead might be successfully enforced; and provided a little dramatic effect be skilfully introduced, and the mourners and spectators sufficiently put en scène, we do not despair of its achieving popularity. But in England, if it ever were to be carried out, the movement would have to come from the educated classes. If the gentry gave their bodies to be burned, perhaps the poor would in time follow their example; and, after all, the burning of the dead could not be more more odious than the compulsory Vaccination Act, which had terrors inexpressible for the uneducated; the Anatomy Bill, which lent an additional horror to the hospital and workhouse; and the regulation against further intramural interments, which last severed, in imagination, many a holy tie, and took not a little consolation from the bed of the poor dying one, who-superstitiously perhaps, and foolishly, as we may in our hard wisdom think it, but at any rate earnestly and tenderly-yearned for the assurance that after death his bones should rest in the grave of those dear ones whom he had best loved on earth. The question, however, still remains for consideration-How shall we dispose of our dead? We cannot alter what has been done, and the vast mass of bodies beneath the sod must rot and decompose, as in the days gone by-Le vin est tiré, il faut le boire. Shall we continue the practice until our cemeteries rival our churchyards? * ART. IV.-1. Cowper's Homer (republished with his Works). 2. The Iliads of Homer. By George Chapman. (Republished by Charles Knight. 1843.) 3. The Iliad of Homer, faithfully translated into unrhymed metre. By F. W. Newman. Walton and Maberly. 1857. 4. Studies on Homer and on the Homeric Age. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. 3 vols. 8vo. At the University Press, Oxford. 1858. WHAT is Epic Poetry? This is a question very obvious to ask, not so obvious to answer. The word was applied by the Greeks to certain poems ascribed principally to Homer, and has been extended by us to Virgil's Æneid, to Tasso's Jerusalem, and even to poems of a very different aspect, such as those of Dante and Milton. An ordinary Englishman is apt to say, that any long narrative poem is Epic; and if he does not admit the Lady of the Lake into this class, perhaps his chief reason is, that it is not long enough. In discussing, what is the essential idea which lies at the bottom. of the word Epic, we are not dealing with a mere verbal quesThere are real qualities peculiar to Epic poetry, qualities tion. * At the convent of the Capuchins, in Rome, the monks as they die are interred about five feet deep, without any coffin, and a quantity of quick lime is thrown on the body. At the end of twelve months the flesh is totally destroyed, and in a year or two more the skeleton is taken up and placed in the vaults, where it stands exposed to view along with its ghastly companions, while the old grave is ready for the reception of the next brother who may be claimed by death. The use of quick lime is customary, also, in some of the largest cemeteries in the Roman district. Of course this, in effect, is burning of the dead, though by a slower and less direct process than the more elegant and classical operation of fire. strongly What is Epic Poetry? 137 strongly felt, even when dimly discerned. The Epos therefore denotes a real, not an arbitrary, division. Without farther argument, we shall give our own reply, that it is a narrative poem founded on great events and believed to be true. While the events are believed, they are real to the hearer, but no longer. Hence the poems of Dante and of Milton become tedious or even offensive, to those whose religious belief has deviated widely from the notions of hell, paradise, and predestination therein inculcated; and those parts of Tasso's great poem, which involve a belief in enchantments, great as is their beauty, provoke our impatience. Many say concerning them with Horace, Incredulus odi. It may seem impossible to doubt whether more interest accrues to a tale from its being believed true. Every day we see the disappointment and annoyance suffered by children, when they learn that a beautiful tale (as that of King Lear) is not true; we see also that grown persons are as unwilling to surrender a belief in the siege of Troy, as their belief in the early Roman history. Nor could it be otherwise. Indeed with mature and preoccupied minds nothing is harder than to spare sympathy on pure and notorious fictions: human life has so many real sorrows, that we may well decline to vex ourselves with unrealities. Moreover the coin cidences and groupings which may be selected from real history, are apt to be resented as incredible if proposed to us by a mere inventor. In true story we find substance, copiousness and life, compared with which every invented tale seems to be meagre and flimsy, nor indeed can it ever have that infinite background of perspective, which gives us such a sense of solidity. A pure fiction constructed by the rules of art' and in subservience to the laws of unity,' bears about the same relation to a genuine epic, as a small Greek temple to a vast Gothic cathedral; or as an elegant flower-garden to some magnificent mountain valley where beauty, grandeur and infinitude combine; so that the more intently you gaze, the more you see. In the historical plays of Shakespeare (though they are dramatic, not narrative) it is this background which chiefly gives their powerful illusion, rivets the interest, and leads to their being accepted as authentic even in the details. The interest to the Romans of the great historical epic of Ennius, as to the Persians of the great epic of Firdoosee, was from their earnest belief in its truth: and no doubt the same cause must have been at work with the Nibelungen and the Edda and the poems of the true Ossian. So too, the old Greek tragedians found it necessary to select subjects which were believed as true, generally selected out of the Epic cycle. The real reason against poems upon subjects of near history, lies in the extreme difficulty of satisfying criticism. Nearly all poets, when they adopt a historical subject, palpably distort the Vol. 1.-No. 2. L known known facts for what they account 'artistic necessity,' and hereby in a critical age cause indignation. If the historical sense is appealed to at all, it must not be outraged; or the very opposite of interest is induced. On the other hand, if the subject is of deep and thrilling interest, it easily becomes too painful, when it is real and near. The poet Phrynichus dramatized the capture of Miletus by the Persians; but the Athenian judges, though they awarded him the prize of poetry, fined him for harrowing the feelings of the audience. It therefore may appear that excess of interest is a chief danger to be feared from an otherwise well-chosen historical poem. Even in small pieces, we see how apt such poetry is to become too fierce. Walter Scott's lines on the Massacre of Glencoe might have been well called revolutionary, had they been written soon after the event. Hence the subject of an Epic must be sufficiently distant to give us that softened interest which distinguishes poetry and art from recent history and politics. Homer, equally with Tasso, wilfully mixes that which is historical (to his own belief and that of his hearers) with that which is conventional. That they all believed in the dynasty of Agamemnon and in the general events of the Trojan war, Bishop Thirlwall and Mr. Grote avow as strongly as Mr. Gladstone or Colonel Mure. That neither Homer nor his hearers believed Achilles to be son of a sea-goddess, we are sure will not be contested by Mure nor yet by Gladstone. There is no real difference of principle, as it appears to us, on this point between any of these critics: but their difference arises, as soon as we call ' on them to draw the line sharply between that which the poet meant for history and that which he meant for fiction. Mr. Grote maintains, not only that this cannot be certainly done, but that we lose our time in attempting to get any historical events at all out of such sources. Perhaps few will follow Mr. Grote to the full extent of this. Sometimes the poet seems to have no interests as a poet that can lead him aside, and to be aiming at truth, as he conceived of it. His attempts at political geography and ethnography are so elaborate and coherent, and his knowledge of Greece so extensive, that in such matters we receive his statements almost as unhesitatingly as those of Herodotus. But if Mr. Gladstone wish us farther to believe that the rape of Helen was the real moving cause of the Trojan war, we ask leave to enter protest, that we do not yet know Homer to have believed this himself. Between Greeks and Asiatics any excuse may have sufficed for a war, when ambition and hope prompted; and the abduction of a princess may have supplied the excuse desired. But the real motives must have lain deeper; nor would the invaders ever have been satisfied to withdraw, upon the mere restoration of the princess |