Gladstone's "Homer and the Homeric Age," and that upon Dante-were written, the former before the publication of Mr. Bryant's translation of the "Iliad " and the "Odyssey," and the latter before the publication of Mr. Longfellow's translation of the "Divina Commedia." I can not refrain, however, from expressing my sense of the indebtedness of the world, for a better understanding of Homer and Dante, and therefore of Christian history and philosophy, to the labors of Mr. Bryant and Mr. Longfellow. There could scarcely be an old age more serene and beautiful than that which has been so far spent, by Mr. Bryant, chiefly in the translation of the "Iliad" and the “Odyssey." The aged translator and poet recalls to our minds the long evening of the life of Sophocles, and to him might be fittingly applied the words inscribed upon the tomb of Sophocles:

"In art, with highest glory crowned,

In outward form of all most venerable."

Although the lecture on Dante was originally published before Mr. Longfellow's translation appeared, I have, in this volume, availed myself of extracts from the work, and of suggestions in the admirable notes by which it is accompanied. The fame of Mr. Longfellow, as a poet, and the incomparable felicities of his translation, are in danger of withdrawing our attention from the wealth of learning and the profound

philosophy with which he has illustrated the "Divina Commedia." Though Mr. Longfellow, in the "Morituri Salutamus," has ranked himself with old men, it may well be hoped that there is a long period of honorable labor before one of whom it may be said, as it was of a Greek poet, that he is "loved every way by all men," or, in the words of an epigram of Theocritus,

πολλὰ γὰρ ποτ' τὰν ζόαν τοῖς παισὶν
εἶπε χρήσιμα.

Μεγάλα χάρις αὐτῷ.

"Full many a rule of life he drew,

Still pointing to the fair, the true,

The youthful mind. High favor crown the bard."

I am well aware that the subjects here considered have been treated with greater ability by many other writers. Nevertheless, these papers have been prepared and published under the conviction that it is the mission of the ministers of religion to give emphasis and force, within such spheres of influence as may be open to them, to the relations of Christianity to every department of life.

ASCENSION RECTORY,
NEW-YORK CITY, November, 1875.

J. C. S.

GLADSTONE'S

HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE.*

At a time when the importance of classical culture is so little appreciated, it is refreshing to meet with such noble contributions as these volumes afford toward the settlement of those great questions which relate to the Poems and the Age of Homer. We can not but feel a special pleasure, also, in the fact that these volumes are the production of one who labors under a constant pressure of the most important public duties; for it assures us that there are some who, in the midst of the cares and

* Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. By the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L., M.P. for the University of Oxford. 3 vols. Oxford. At the University Press. 1858.

perplexities of office, love to renew the generous studies of their youth, and to gather broad and comprehensive views and a calm and elevated wisdom, from a fresh perusal of those works which stirred the imagination and roused the enthusiasm of their early years. The world owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Gladstone for the new light which he has thrown upon the marvellous wealth and beauty of the poems of Homer. His abundant illustrations of every department of his subject, and his fine taste and discrimination in critical analysis, have added vastly to the interest and delight with which even the Iliad and the Odyssey are read. But we regard Mr. Gladstone as most of all entitled to our gratitude for the ability with which he has resisted some of the most dangerous historical errors of the age, and vindicated some of the most important principles of a Christian Philosophy of History.

One would hardly have expected to find, in a work upon the Poems and Age of Homer, a discussion of questions which affect the view

which we take of the whole history of the world; and by which the ground-plan, so to speak, of that History must be determined.

But these poems, it must be remembered, furnish us with peculiar advantages for such universal investigations. They stand at the fountain-head of secular literature. They furnish us with the earliest information which we possess of that wonderful civilization which they themselves did so much to mould, and which has come down from that age to us. They present to us the only picture which we have of that heroic race and age, in which the human side of our complex civilization had its rise. Now we are greatly mistaken if these facts do not furnish us with some most valuable results. We are fully aware of the great difficulty which attends these investigations; and that, in many respects, probability must be our only guide; but we are satisfied that a calm and dispassionate consideration of these facts will convince us that we stand on solid ground, and that our inquiries only confirm