Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

Where, then, is the Feigned History? Lord Bacon, Ottfried Müller, and Jacob Bryant, are here not in the main unagreed. "I nothing doubt," says Bacon, "but the Fables, which Homer having received, transmits, had originally a profound and excellent sense, although I greatly doubt if Homer any longer knew that sense."

BULLER

What right, may I ask, had Lord Bacon to doubt, and Ottfried Müller to suspect —

NORTH

Smoke your cigar. Ottfried Müller —

BULLER

Whew! – poo!

NORTH

Ottfried Müller imagines that there was in Greece a pre-Homeric Age, of which the principal intellectual employment was Myth-making. And Bryant, we know, shocked the opinion of his own day by referring the War of Troy to Mythology. Now, observe, Buller, how there is feigning and feigning – Poet after Poet – and the Poem that comes to us at last is the Poem of Homer; but in truth, of successive ages, ending in Homer —

SEWARD

Who was then a real living flesh and blood Individual of the human species.

NORTH

That he was —

SEWARD

And wrote the Iliad.

NORTH

That he did – but how I have hinted rather than told. In the Paradise Lost, the part of Milton is, then, infinitely bolder than Homer's in the Iliad. He is far more of a Creator.

SEWARD

Can an innermost bond of Unity, sir, be shown for the Iliad?

NORTH

Yes. The Iliad is a Tale of a Wrong Righted. Zeus, upon the secret top of Olympus, decrees this Righting with his omnipotent Nod. Upon the top of Ida he conducts it. But that is done, and the Fates resume their tenor. Hector falls, and Troy shall fall. That is again the Righting of a Wrong, done amongst men. This is the broadly-written admonition: "Discite Justitiam."

SEWARD

You are always great, sir, on Homer.

NORTH

Agamemnon, in insolence of self-will, offends Chryses and a God. He refused Chyseis – He robs Achilles. In Agamemnon the Insolence of Human Self-will is humbled, first under the hand of Apollo – then of Jupiter – say, altogether, of Heaven. He suffers and submits. And now Achilles, who has no less interest in the Courts of Heaven than Chryses – indeed higher – in overweening anger fashions out a redress for himself which the Father of Gods and Men grants. And what follows? Agamemnon again suffers and submits. For Achilles – Patroclus' bloody corse! Κειται Πατροκλος – that is the voice that rings! Now he accepts the proffered reconciliation of Agamemnon, before scornfully refused; and in the son of Thetis, too, the Insolence of Human Self-will is chastened under the hand of Heaven.

SEWARD

He suffers, but submits not till Hector lies transfixed – till Twelve noble youths of the Trojans and their Allies have bled on Patroclus' Pyre. And does he submit then? No. For twelve days ever and anon he drags the insensible corse at his horses' heels round that sepulchral earth.

BULLER

Mad, if ever a man was.

NORTH

The Gods murmur – and will that the unseemly Revenge cease. Jove sends Thetis to him – and what meeter messenger for minister of mercy than a mother to her son! God-bidden by that voice, he submits – he remits his Revenge. The Human Will, infuriated, bows under the Heavenly.

SEWARD

Touched by the prayers and the sight of that kneeling gray-haired Father, he has given him back his dead son – and from the ransom a costly pall of honour, to hide the dead son from the father's eyes – and of his own Will and Power Twelve Days' truce; and the days have expired, and the Funeral is performed – and the pyre is burned out – and the mound over the slayer of Patroclus is heaped – and the Iliad is done – and this Moral indelibly writes itself on the heart – the words of Apollo in that Council —

Τλητον γας Θυμον Μοισαι Θνητωσιε εδωχαν

The Fates have appointed to mortals a Spirit that shall submit and endure.

NORTH

Right and good. Τλητον is more than "shall suffer." It is, that shall accept suffering – that shall bear.

SEWARD

Compare this one Verse and the Twenty-four Books, and you have the poetical simplicity and the poetical multiplicity side by side.

BULLER

Right and good.

NORTH

Yes, my friends, the Teaching of the Iliad is Piety to the Gods —

SEWARD

Reverence for the Rights of Men —

NORTH

A Will humbled, conformed to the Will of Heaven —

BULLER

That the Earth is justly governed.

NORTH