decease more than twenty years have been suffered to elapse before its publication. It appears, however, in a favorable season though after long delay; the literature of the coun try is daily acquiring strength, grace and vigor, and we trust that in future times this translation of the Iliad by a son of the old dominion may be quoted as one of the early classics of America.

A new version of the Iliad naturally tempts us to cast our thoughts back to that antique age and peculiar people which witnessed the production of the original. This retrospect is in some measure requisite to show the reason and the nature of those peculiarities, which ought to be sedulously preserved by an accurate translator, and the presence or want of which will stamp his work with the impress of fidelity or negligence. Before engaging, therefore, in our contemplated examination of Mr. Munford's translation, we will not forego so favorable an opportunity of making a few remarks upon the circumstances under which was composed a poem, whose fame is universal, and upon some of its most characteristic excellences.

Long ages before Athens had attained to that eminenc € of glory which has rendered her own name and the name of Greece imperishable, the highest honors of genius and cultivation were claimed by the Ionian Colonies, which had been planted beneath a still more bright and genial clime, beyond the blue Egean. Four centuries at least before the glorious days of Marathon and Salamis, which were the birth throes of Athenian greatness, Achæan or Ionian emigrants from Peloponnesus and from Attica-the purest blood of Greece,-driven from their native seats by the incursions of the Doric tribes, had founded many fair cities along the winding shores and enchanting bays of Asia Minor. There, beneath a sky brighter and still more gorgeous than even the rich purple heavens of their mother country, they built themselves new homes in a strange land; there, they were ever encircled with a soft balmy atmosphere, sweetly tempered with cooling sea breezes; blessed with a fertile, varied and beautiful landscape, and having in sight the ever dimpling, ever laughing waters of the blue and sparkling sea;*

* Ποντίων τε κυμάτων ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα. Æsch. Prom. Vinct. v. 912., and such phrases as οίνοπα πόντον, αίθοπα ποντον, ιοειδέα ποντον, ποντου κυανέοιο, continually in Homer.

having their landscape further adorned by all the beauty that could be derived from the glassy sheen of broad and sinuous rivers, from the dark mountains, and from the shifting hues of the forest. Thus favored in. their new abode, the young colonies enjoyed at the bountiful hand of nature every thing that was necessary to a happy and prosperous existence, or could lead them to the blandishments of polished life, or tempt them to the cultivation of the graces of intellect.

Theirs was the land of the cedar and vine,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine;
Where the light wings of zephyr oppressed with perfume,
Wax feint o'er the gardens of Gull in her bloom:
Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky,
In color though varied, in beauty may vie,

And the purple of Ocean is deepest in dye.

In crossing the sea, the Ionians had forgotten neither the genius of their mother-country, nor the amusements of home; but their capacity for the one and their taste for the other were sensibly heightened and refined by the change. They still retained their national attachment to poetry, together with the kindred accompaniments of music and the dance. Thus at their feasts and their solemn festivals, in private and in public, they cultivated the same graceful arts with their forefathers, and derived their principal enjoyment from the practice and presence of those accomplishments which were to confer immortality upon them and a higher immortality upon Athens. How deeply the Greeks were imbued with the choicest spirit of poesy may be gathered from their language, their legends, their mythology, and all their most ancient monuments as well as from their literature. Poetry had imprinted itself upon the heart of the nation at its birth; the muses were native to the soil; and the feelings of the people gushed forth spontaneously in a sweet lyric flow, even in the ordinary affairs of life. Theirs was the genius of song. With the favoring influence of a pure descent from the purest of Grecian blood, a rich and abundant country, a glorious climate, a growing and lucrative. commerce, and a highly poetic genius, there was no degree of attainment or renown which those Ionian cities might not reasonably expect to reach. As yet they were too young in their newly-adopted land to have become enervated by the blessings they enjoyed and the luxuries it was in their

power to acquire. Their longing aspirations after the beautiful were only heightened, and their sensibilities trained and cultivated by the numberless advantages of their position. Hence they, far outstripped Athens in early times, in the race of glory. It was a later age and the ascendancy of the Persian power and the more pernicious Persian gold, which witnessed their rapid corruption and their melancholy decline.

The active life of a new country tends to give vigor and elasticity to the mind, and to excite every faculty to its most energetic exercise. And the constant familiarity with nature enjoyed by an infant people, who, by their habits, their amusements, and their wants are continually brought face to face with her in all her changing moods and phases, is alone sufficient to awaken and develope the poetic feeling among any race in whom the germs of it exist. Hence the ballad poetry of a nation, which is the common property of the whole people, and not the literary triumph of individuals, ever belongs to the earlier periods of its history. The ready wonder then prevalent, the amazement at all things strange, (and every thing is then strange,)-feeds the imagination with constant fancies, and renders the conversation of every day life itself poetic.* At such a time, the heart is as tenderly susceptible as that of a little child, to all impressions, although the intellectual vigor of manhood itself be present. By the union of these two qualities strength. and nerve are acquired without any diminution of youthful freshness and raciness of thought and expression: and these are accompanied with a graceful simplicity and transparency of language, which are soon lost amid the fixed modes and systematized restraints of a later and more artificial age. As yet the language, which is to be the vehicle of their feelings, is not adequate to their wants; they must coin new phrases themselves for the communication of new ideas. Imagination, the faculty then most stimulated, is called to their aid in preference to any analytical reasoning; and

* The same thing, in a less degree, may be noticed even in our day in the new States of the West. There may be more wild fancy than true poetry displayed there. But this is owing to peculiar circumstances. The Western men are a young people in a young country surrounded by all that belongs to complete civilization. Their occupations are those of fixed society. They have however reproduced many genuine Homeric phrases, Borv dyadis, for example is 'a raal screamer,' a ring-tailed roarer.'

instead of inventing fresh words and new grammatical inflections, they seek utterance in tropes and figures, and striking metaphors.* But the poet does not altogether refuse to exercise authority over his native tongue; it is yet incomplete, and waits to receive its symmetrical form from his magic touch; and in its turn the flexibility of a language which has not yet arrived at its finished state lends itself readily to his requirements. Hence the bard at such a period, has language for his willing minister, and an atmosphere of poetic images as the familiar air that he breathes. He has only, therefore, to arrange his thoughts in some sort of order, and to subject his words to some species of rhythm, in order to become a poet, almost without effort, and certainly without a full consciousness of the enduring importance of his vocation. The thoughts, the feelings, the expressions, which are the common property of the whole people, are themselves poetic; he takes what he will from the public store; he separates the pure gold from the dross; he vivities what he has taken with the inspiration of his own genius; and that which before had been unnoticed on account of its familiarity, becomes poetry, by an almost insensible transmutation, in his hands.

This was the condition of the early Ionians; and to a people possessed of such native genius as they, cradled in such a beautiful land as theirs, and nursed by such favoring circumstances of their age, ample materials for poetic embellishment were afforded in the varied legends of their mythology, and in the romantic traditions connected with the fair regions they had left, and the fairer regions to which they had come. These were offered as a subjecta materies to be worked up into beautiful shapes by the susceptible genius of a sensitive people. Mingled too, as they were, with their religion and history, they would appeal to the noblest feelings of their nature, would give a passionate ardor to their admiration, and their language, flowing almost spontaneously in hexameters, would stimulate them to the lyrical expression of their feelings.

The worship of the gods of Olympus, but recently introduced into the Greek mythology, had been the first step towards that lovely but anthropomorphical creed, which adds such a charm to the religious fancies of the Greeks,

* See Vico. Phil. de l'Hist. B. i. c. ii. Trad. de Michelet.

and ministered so energetically to the requirements of art, whether manifested in poetry or in sculpture. Enough, however, of the imaginations of previous systems had been wafted to the ears of the people,* and entered into the popular knowledge of the day, to prevent any rigid creed, and to render their faith still a plastic subject for the decorations of the poet. But the deities of the old Pelasgians had been brought down from their gloomy abode in the invisible; they were no longer regarded as the vague powers of the elements, and conceived to dwell beyond the regions of the thunder and the storm; they had been clothed with personal existence; they had been made denizens of earth and dwellers in Olympus ;t and the bards of that day might have said, as a later poet has done, that the race of man and of gods was the same. The new deities of their passionate idolatry were conceived to be all around their path, and were ever present to their thoughts. Every place was robed in divinity in the belief of the Greeks of those times : the mountain and the valley, the river and the fountain, the forest and the sea had their legion of fair nymphs and their presiding deities: and thus the language of poetry became in all instances a religious hymn. This gave enthusiasm to the bard, and ensured faith and honor from his admiring hearers.

In addition to all this, the circumstances of their departure from Greece, rendered the Ionians an independent and free people and had given them that glowing zeal and daring intellectual energy, which liberty alone can give. Long before the mother country had attained to the untrammelled freedom of speech (aggia,) or the perfect equality of rights and privileges (idovouía,) these favored colonies enjoyed both in a very large degree. All noble thoughts and lofty aspirations were familiar to them: their language,

The story of Briareus was of this kind. Hom. Il. i. 403, as we remarked on another occasion. S. Q. R. No. iv. Art. x. p. 486. See Heyne's Homer, Vol. iv, p. 106. R. Payne Knight, Symb. Lang. Auc. Art. and Myth. §. 192. These legends extended to later times, as is seen from the legend of Prometheus, Esch. P. V. and the singular remark of Proclus in his Comm. on the Timæus. Knight refers also to Typhoeus. Pind. Pyth. i, 31, viii, 20, and mentions also the Ephesian Diana.

† Ολυμῆπια δώματ' ἔχοντες ̓Αθάνατοι. Il. ii. 13, and i. 18.

Pind. Nem. I. i. cf. Hesiod. Op. et Dier. i. v. 108. Orphic. ap. Clem. Alexandr. Cohort. ad Gent. c. viii. Schol. ad I. i. 222. Yet Homer himself says the opposite. Il. V. 441.