Was Helen the cause of the Trojan War?

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princess with all her shawls and brocade. What Homer says on such topics was specious enough to go down with the uncritical warriors to whom he sang; but, as it appears to us, Mr. Gladstone argues too earnestly and closely concerning it. Whether Helen ever existed, he does not positively assert. He finds no difficulties about her but chronological ones, and these he tries to explain away. We may add, that his refined skill becomes superfluous, if we believe the Odyssey not to be from the same poet as the Iliad; for the Iliad by itself has no chronological difficulties about Helen.

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But Mr. Gladstone's chief desire is to vindicate Homer's moral delicacy. He complains, that we do injustice to the poet, by imputing to him the view of Helen given by later writers of much coarser mind. Homer does not represent Helen (says he) as a faithless wife, but as one who has suffered a cruel violence. She was carried off by Paris against her will, and her whole offence consisted in finally acquiescing in her hard case, when she was wholly defenceless and in a strange man's power. consequence, she was respected and pitied by Priam and Hector, and never felt anything but aversion and contempt for the husband to whom she submitted. Her extravagant self-stabbing accusations (for her favourite title for herself seems to be she-dog), have in them something almost Christian;' and she is always introduced by Homer as an interesting object and clothed with respectful epithets.-This Gladstonian view is undoubtedly a great improvement; we shall be glad to find it meet acceptance, though we certainly have misgivings. If Homer had felt the vast difference which Mr. Gladstone does between a Helen who eloped voluntarily and a Helen who submitted when constrained, we have difficulty in thinking that he would have left the circumstances so obscure, that until now they have been uniformly misconceived. Of course all the Greeks in Homer lay the whole blame on Paris, and decorously represent Helen to have suffered his violence: but a lady who easily reconciles herself to her ravisher, is always suspected by human nature (and not only by the depraved Greeks of the historic age) to have previously encouraged him to believe that violence will not be wholly unacceptable. Nor is it possible to forget, that a poet who can attribute to his chief gods loose amours which he would condemn in mortals, and this, without ceasing to reverence the gods, may pardon in Helen born of Jupiter' offences very like to those of her father, without relaxing morality in his own conception. Homer goes too far in the direction of Isocrates, to allow of our interpreting the two views as in proper contrast. One may point out many of the immortal goddesses,' says Isocrates, in his Encomium on Helen, 'who have proved frail against a mortal's beauty; not one of whom ever concealed the fact as disgraceful, but wished rather to

be celebrated for it. And here is the proof; for more persons have been made immortal for their beauty, than for all other virtues together.'

We confess, we do not find, and we do not demand, prosaic self-consistency in Homer as to his representation of these circumstances, which are the mere fantastic machinery of his great epic, and (as we think) were not intended to be dwelt upon and sharply brought out in Mr. Gladstone's fashion. We cannot receive either as fact or as consistent fiction, that the Trojans detested Paris. as black Fate,' that Helen despised him, Hector condemned him, Priam grieved over him, and yet that the whole nation and all the far-called allies' allowed this effeminate young man to have his way and involve them all in a wholly needless and fatal war. Where there are so many illogical representations, we deprecate argument so subtle and close.

Be this as it may; no higher tribute to Homer's undying greatness is possible, than the learning and interest, which at this distant time, in this remote island, are spent upon his works. On the studies of the Germans we will not speak, though K, O. Müller's work on Greek literature was written for us, and in English. Thirlwall, Grote and Mure were all retired students; but these three very ample volumes from Gladstone, a practical statesman, are indeed a phenomenon, and may well make common Englishmen open their ears to learn what is that Homer, who is able to inspire such enthusiasm. To one only of the countless millions of human beings,' says Mr. Gladstone, has it been given to draw characters by the strength of his own individual hand in lines of such force and vigour, that they have become from his day to our own the common inheritance of civilized man. That one

is HOMER. Nor is it only in drawing character, that he so excels Virgil, Milton, and perhaps all poets known to us except Shakespeare; but in nearly every peculiarity which gives interest to a poem, a novel, a book of travels, a simple narrative, a debate,he is supreme. The table of contents exhibited by Mr. Gladstone is a little book in itself. His first volume (576 pages) after six preliminary sections, chiefly on the composition and authority of the poems, is devoted to the early Greek Races, as discoverable in Homer and elucidated from other sources. The second volume (533 pages) is on the Religion and Morality of Homer. The third (616 pages) discusses the Homeric Polities, contrasts those of the Trojans and the Trojan character, besides dwelling on the Homeric Geography, and numerous peculiarities in the poem. It also contains an essay which had appeared in a separate form, contrasting Homer with other poets. This very ample work is addressed solely to Greek scholars, and is in fact hardly intelligible to others. Many of the pages bristle with Greek typography;

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Mr. Gladstone's work-its excellences and defects.

141 and whether the writer do or do not convince such scholars as Grote, he at any rate must win respect for his vast erudition,* which appears to join an intimate knowledge of the greatest Italian and Latin poets with an exhaustive diligence and activity of thought concerning Homer himself. It is hard for us to conceive that any one capable of understanding Mr. Gladstone will read him without instruction, and we have no doubt that his great work will lead to a more eager study of Homer at both of the old Universities, where (we believe) the Iliad has been generally looked down on as a mere schoolbook, and the Odyssey has been almost ignored. For ourselves, we almost dread to make detailed remarks on Mr. Gladstone; because, while we feel his volumes to be quickening and suggestive, we find very much to differ from; and it is disrespectful to express dissent without giving reasons to the reader; in doing which it is hard to avoid being too scholastic or too ample.

Summarily we will say, the excellences of the book are, its earnest effort for truth, its hightoned morality, its contempt for everything mean and sensual, its spiritual breath, which every Christian will appreciate, its vehement desire to extend a love for that rectitude which it discerns in Homer, its sympathy with freedom and popular government, its delicate perceptions of meaning and of beauty, its thoroughgoing and laborious scholarship, and the example which it sets, how to win instruction from worthy study. On the other hand, in its mode of arguing we find certain pervading weaknesses. The Ethnology of the first volume is apt to refute itself by proving too much. According to Mr. Gladstone the Greeks or Hellenes are not much different from Helli, nor from Pelasgi; the Italians also are Pelasgi, and none of these differ gravely from the Persians. The Hellenes are akin to the royal Scythians of Herodotus, the Pelasgi to the common Scythians (ii. 403, &c.); and these common Scythians were of the same race as the Medes, and the royal Scythians came from Herat, or ancient Aria. Persia he calls the cradle of Achilles' family. In fact, we seem to be on the verge of justifying Herodotus's reasonings, who derives the hero Perseus from Persia, and Medea from the Medes. But as it is certain that in the time of Homer the Italians, the Greeks, the Scythians and the Persians

*Of Mr. Gladstone's learning and conscientious accuracy, we believe no competent judge will doubt. If now and then he falls into small error, we believe it generally arises from overdriving a theory, and adventuring unsound generalisations. He says (vol. iii. p. 536) that Homer never calls Achilles μiyas: but see Il. 18, 26.-He overstrains, when he says that Homer is unwilling to compare Greek beauties to Venus.-We think he wrongly (vol. iii. p. 128) interprets Il. 18, 508. The two gold talents are the deposit to be paid to the suitor who wins the cause. He strangely supposes that the crowd re-judge and reward the judge with two talents of gold.

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were mutually quite unintelligible, he gains nothing to the purpose by these identifications. The Helli' and the Pelasgi are but brute words to us; no useful deductions nor applications of them can be made. When Mr. Gladstone further recognises in Minos Phænician extraction, and adds that the extent of his sway is supported by the tradition of Pelasgus,' he involves us in hopeless confusion. That those words which the Greek and Latin languages have in common may be regarded as Pelasgian,' is an assumption which others have made before Mr. Gladstone, but is not the less arbitrary and unproveable. In the details of linguistic argument we find frequent error; such as, identifying Latin bellum with Greek ósos, when it is notorious that duellum is the older form of bellum. But we must not venture on to such ground.

The second volume, full as it is of fertile and interesting combinations, has the defect not only of oversubtlety, but of seeming to be written for the sake of a theological hypothesis. Mr. Gladstone believes that the Greek religion from Homer downward got worse and worse, and that all its good points may justly be referred to a patriarchal tradition. He would use Homer and the Greek history to prove that in Religion man (unassisted by miracle) never learns truth, and does nothing but corrupt the truth: while simultaneously our author upholds with great energy that in Morals no miraculous revelation is needed to teach men the truth.-Vol. ii. p. 420:

Mr. Grote says, that the "primitive import" of the words ayutos, othès, and naxos, relates "to power and not to worth;" and that the ethical meaning of them is a later growth, which "hardly appears until the discussions raised by Socrates and prosecuted by his disciples." I ask permission to protest against whatever savours of the idea that any Socrates whatever was the patentee of that sentiment of right and wrong, which is the most precious part of the patrimony of mankind. The movement of Greek morality with the lapse of time was chiefly downward and not upward.'

There seems to be a confusion here, which deserves to be more closely analysed. There is often a vast gap between the morality of a nation and the morality of its religion, and also between its moral theory and its practice. So too, in the same nation during its more civilised times we find the extremes of virtue and of vice, of high knowledge and of brutal ignorance coexisting side by side. Barbarians have for the most part one prevailing type of morality and of religious ideas: but under civilisation individualism develops itself powerfully in the few, and (through disorganisations, pampered wealth or tyranny) whole classes are often sunk into far deeper vice than anything known to the same nation in its barbarism. Thus while in one sense the Greek religion and Greek practical morality was always on the decline, in another sense (that is, as to the theory in the noblest minds)

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both religion and morals were constantly on the rise, from Homer to the contemporaries of Cicero.

We entirely admit to Mr. Gladstone, that the Greeks of Plato or even of Æschylus had worse vices by far than those of Homer's day but we do not hence infer, that there were not individuals of the later times (say, Aristides, Socrates, Aristotle,) more virtuous than any of the contemporaries of Homer. Much less can it be allowed that Moral duty was not far better understood in the latter period. Undoubtedly, as a general rule, crimes of violence are looked on too leniently during a barbarous age, and licentiousness in the more civilised. Mr. Gladstone admits the former of these statements, and presses hard on the latter, doing the Homeric Greeks, as it seems to us, more than justice in comparison with their posterity. The tone of Homer in all that concerns the sexes, he justly says, is far purer, not only than that of later Greece, but than that of the polished Latins, and of many modern Christian poets. He might have added, that where Homer is pure, Pope makes him voluptuous, sometimes absurdly as well as offensively. Many of the Homeric legends have been depraved by the afteradditions: nor can it be denied, that the peculiar course taken by every form of Greek art and accomplishment engendered licentiousness and impurities of the most detestable kind. Even Socrates's purity is not at all of a tone that can satisfy Christian feeling. If we could for a moment believe him capable of uttering such things as Plato calmly puts into his mouth, we must use far stronger language against him: still, even in Xenophon the discourses attributed to him on these subjects are utterly unworthy of such a mind and heart. But when Mr. Gladstone would persuade us that the Homeric Greeks practised strict monogamy, and that their ignorance of Divorce is a valid reason (if we understand him) why the English Parliament shall not allow the remarriage of persons who have been legally divorced, he lays himself open in many ways. Who would care for divorce, in such a state of public feeling as Homer describes? Achilles, while raging against Agamemnon for snatching from him the beautiful captive widow Briseis, comforts himself by taking Diomede to his bed. Agamemnon, in restoring the woman whom he has carried off, offers one of his own three daughters in marriage to Achilles. The latter refuses the offer, saying that he will go home, and his father Peleus will give him a wife. Yet in this very speech (to sting Agamemnon) he calls Briseis his beloved wife.' Mr. Gladstone takes on himself a needless and too difficult a task in vindicating the purity of Achilles. 'Wife' in this bitter and impassioned speech is not interpreted by him literally, for that would be suicidal to his argument; nor will he admit that it is a decorous word for concubine; although he cannot deny that

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