contradictory, as to exclude the possibility of weaving them into one connected narrative. We are compelled to select one out of the number generally, without any solid ground of preference, and then to note the variations of the rest. No one who has not studied the original documents, can imagine the extent to which this discrepancy proceeds: it covers almost every portion and fragment of the tale. But though much may have been thus omitted, of what the reader might expect to find in an account of the Trojan war, its genuine character has been studiously preserved without either exaggeration or abatement. The real Trojan war is that which was recounted by Homer and the old epic poets, and continued by all the lyric and tragical composers; for the latter, though they took great liberties with the particular incidents, yet worked more or less faithfully on the Homeric scale. * * * And the incidents comprised in the Trojan cycle were familiarized, not only to the public mind, but also to the public eye, by innumerable representations both of the sculptor and the painter-those which were romantic and chivalrons, being better adapted for this purpose, and therefore more constantly employed, than any other. Of such events the genuine Trojan war of the old epic was for the most part composed. Though literally believed, reverentially cherished, and numbered among the gigantic phenomena of the past by the Grecian public, it is in the eyes of modern inquiry essentially a legend, and nothing more. If we are asked whether it bnat a legend imbodying portions of historical matter, and raised upon a basis of truth-whether there may not really have occurred at the foot of the hill of Ilium a war purely human and litical, without gods, without heroes, without en, without Amazons, without Ethiopians under the beautiful son of Eôs, without the wooden horse, without the characteristic and exwessive features of the old epical war-like the Butilated trunk of Deiphobus in the under-world -if we are asked whether there was not really kome such historical Trojan war as this, our answer sust be, that as the possibility of it cannot be desed, so neither can the reality of it be affirmed. Ve possess nothing but the ancient epic itself, rithout any independent evidence: had it been n age of records indeed, the Homeric epic, in s exquisite and unsuspecting simplicity, would robably never have come into existence. Whoever, therefore, ventures to dissect Homer, retinus and Leschês, and to pick out certain artions as matters of fact, while he sets aside e rest as fiction, must do so in full reliance 1 his own powers of historical divination, ithout any means either of proving or verifying s conclusions."-Vol. I., pp. 432-5. Is Mr. Grote then a mere destructive, ho applies the besom of skepticism to heroic age, and sweeps it remorselessly 66 away? No; he restores the old legends in all their integrity to their proper place and function. They have no "objective reality either historical or philosophical;" but their subjective value, looking at them purely as elements of Grecian thought and feeling," is very great. To the expansion of this principle, the remainder of the first volume is devoted. To understand the true theory of these narratives, we must first consider the intellectual position of the people among whom they sprung up. "These mythes or current stories, the spontaneous and earliest growth of the Grecian mind, constituted at the same time the entire intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged. They are the common root of all those different ramifications into which the mental activity of the Greeks subsequently diverged; they contain, as it were, the preface and germ of the positive history and philosophy, the dogmatic theology and the professed romance, which we shall hereafter trace, each in its separate development. They furnished aliment to the curiosity and solution to the vague doubts and aspirations of the age; they explained the origin of those customs and standing peculiarities with which men were familiar; they impressed moral lessons, awakened patriotic sympathies, and exhibited in detail the shadowy, but anxious, presentiments of the vulgar as to the agency of the gods; moreover, they satisfied that craving for adventure and appetite for the marvellous, which has, in modern times, become the province of fiction proper. "It is difficult, we may say impossible, for a man of matured age to carry back his mind to his conceptions, such as they stood when he was a child, growing naturally out of his imagination and feelings, working upon a scanty stock of materials, and borrowing from authorities whom he blindly followed, but imperfectly apprehended. A similar difficulty occurs when we attempt to place ourselves in the historical and quasi-philosophical point of view which the ancient mythes present to us. We can follow perfectly the imagination and feeling which dictated these tales; and we can admire and sympathize with them as animated, sublime and affecting poetry: but we are too much accustomed to matter of fact and philosophy of a positive kind, to be able to conceive a time when these beautiful fancies were construed literally, and accepted as serious reality. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Grecian mythes with reference to the system of conceptions cannot be understood or appreciated, except and belief of the ages in which they arose. We must suppose a public not reading and writing, but seeing, hearing and telling, destitute of all records, and careless, as well as ignorant of positive history with its indispensable tests, yet, at the same time, curious and full of eagerness for new or impressive incidents; strangers even to the rudiments of positive philosophy, and to the idea of invariable sequences of nature, either in the physical or moral world, yet requiring some connecting theory to interpret and regularize the phenomena before them. Such a theory was supplied by the spontaneous inspirations of an early fancy, which supposed the habitual agency of beings intelligent and voluntary like themselves, but superior in extent of power, and different in peculiarity of attributes." Pp. 460-462. cluded in the original purport of the story. N one can doubt that the tale of Atê and the L tæ, in the ninth book of the Iliad, carries withi an intentional moral; and others might b named conveying a similar certainty. But the semi-historical interpretation, while it frequent produces absurd transformations of the origina tale, is never, even in its most successful appli cations, accompanied with any certainty that w have reached the positive truth. After leaving out from the mythical narrative all that is mi raculous or high-colored or extravagant, we ar rive at a series of credible incidents-incidentwhich may, perhaps, have really occurred, and against which no intrinsic presumption can be raised. This is exactly the character of a wellwritten modern novel, the whole story of which is such as may well have occurred in real life In those days, then, imagination and it is plausible fiction, and nothing beyond. To sympathy supplied the place of geogra-nity of truth, some positive testimony or pos raise plausible fiction up to the superior dig phy and physical science. But many tive ground of inference must be shown; even causes, and first of all, "the expansive the highest measure of intrinsic probability is force of Grecian intellect itself," caused not alone sufficient. A man who tells us tha: different constructions to be put upon on the day of the battle of Plataa rain fell on these products of early fancy. Mr. Grote the spot of ground where the city of New-York goes through the treatment of the mythes now stands, will neither deserve nor obtain credit, because he can have had no means of by the earlier philosophers and the dramapositive knowledge; though the statement is tic poets, and the attempts of the historians to make history of them; Herodotus' other hand, statements in themselves very im not in the slightest degree improbable. On the adoption of the more plausible Egyptian probable may well deserve belief, provided the y version of the story of Helen; Thucydides' be supported by sufficient positive evidence: exposition of the Trojan war as a great thus the canal dug by the order of Xerxes political enterprise, an exposition which across the promontory of Athos, and the sailing "would, doubtless, have been historical of the Persian fleet through it, is a fact which believe, because it is well attested, notwithstand truth, if any independent evidence could ing its remarkable improbability, which so fa have been found to sustain it," but which, misled Juvenal as to induce him to single o in the absence of such evidence, must be the narrative as a glaring example of Grecia viewed as "a mere extract and distillation mendacity. Again, many critics have observe from the incredibilities of the poets;" and that the general tale of the Trojan war (apa so on down to Euemerus, that disenchanter from the superhuman agencies) is not more in of the ancient romance, whose name has probable than that of the Crusades, whi every one admits to be a historical fact. passed into a familiar word with scholars; (even if we grant this position, which is onl and Palæphatus, whose results "exhibit true to a small extent) it is not sufficient the maximum which the semi-historical show an analogy between the two cases theory can ever present: by aid of con- respect to negative presumptions alone; jecture, we get out of the impossible and analogy ought to be shown to hold betwe arrive at matters intrinsically plausible but them in respect to positive certificate al totally uncertified." The Crusades are a curious phenomenon He then sketches history, but we accept them nevertheless as unquestionable fact, because the antecedent) probability is surmounted by adequate conten rary testimony. In applying the sen historical theory to Grecian mythical narrati it has been often forgotten that a cert strength of testimony or positive grounds belief must first be tendered before we can called upon to discuss the antecedent probat ity or improbability of the incidents alle The belief of the Greeks themselves, with the smallest aid of special or contemporary the allegorical theory, and thus decides on the respective merits of the two:— "If we contrast these two schemes of interpretation, both of them gratuitous, we shall find that the semi-historical theory is, on the whole, the least fruitful and the most delusive of the two. For though allegorical interpretation occasionally lands us in great absurdities, there are certain cases in which it presents intrinsic evidence of being genuine and correct, i. e. in B ness, has been tacitly assumed as sufficient to (if a paradoxical phrase may be allowed) than "To assume a generic difference between the older and the newer strata of tradition-to treat the former as morsels of history and the latter as appendages of fiction-is an hypothesis gratuitous at the least, not to say inadmissible; for the further we travel back into the past, the more do we recede from the clear day of positive history, and the deeper do we plunge into the unsteady twilight and gorgeous clouds of fancy and feeling. It was one of the agreeable dreams of the Grecian epic, that the man who travelled far enough northward beyond the Rhipcan mountains, would in time reach the delicious country and genial climate of the virtuous Hyperboreans, the votaries and favorites of Apollo, who dwelt in the extreme north beyond the chilling blasts of Boreas: the hope that we may, by carrying our researches up the stream of time, exhaust the limits of fiction, and land ultimately upon some points of olid truth, appears to me no less illusory than this northward journey in quest of the Hyperborean elysium." Pp. 575-76. Some few of them are indeed allegorical, and some have doubtless a substratum or element of fact; but how much is fact and how much more "mythe" we cannot, in the absence of collateral evidence, determine. 2. The personages of the mythical world. are a series of gods and men mixed together, and no such series can serve as materials for chronological calculation. 3. The legends originated in an age which had no records, no science and no criticism, but great faith, great imagination, and great avidity for new narrative; penetrable by poets and prophets in the same proportion that it was indifferent to positive evidence." 4. The Greek mind having become historical, critical and philosophical, detected the inconsistencies and incongruities of the mythes, but was restrained from discarding them entirely by the national reverence for antiquity. So," whilst the literal mythe still continued to float among the poets and the people, critical men interpreted, altered, decomposed and added, until they found something which satisfied their minds as a supposed real basis. They manufactured some dogmas of supposed original philosophy, and a long series of fancied history and chronology, retaining the mythical names and generations even when they were obliged to discard or recast the mythical events. The interpreted. mythe was thus promoted into a reality, while the literal mythe was degraded into a fiction." Pp. 598-601. Our extracts have been carefully selected, of Mr. Grote's method of dealing with the with a view to give the reader a good idea heroic period of Greek history. And, we ask, is not his treatment of these mythical personages more conservative and respectful than Euemerizing or allegorizing them. away? According to his view, Hector, and Andromache, and Edipus and Antigone exist, as Othello, and Desdemona, and Jeannie Deans, and Lucy Ashton exist. Is Hyper-not such an existence good enough for them? In the concluding chapter of this volume, Mr. Grote felicitously illustrates his positions by comparing the mythes of ancient Greece with those of modern Europe. In the former country the mythopoeic vein continued in the same course, only with abated current and influence; in the latter "its ancient bed was blocked up, and it was turned into new and divided channels" by the introduction of Christianity. The old German and Scandinavian kings used to trace their pedigrees to Odin. After the worship attached to Odin had been extinguished, the genealogical line was lengthened up to Japhet or Noah; and Odin, no longer accounted worthy to stand at the top, was degraded into one of the simple human members of it. * This transposition of the genealogical root is the more worthy of notice, as it illustrates the general character of these genealogies, and shows that they sprung not from any erroneous historical data, but from the turn of the religious feeling; also that their true value is derived from their being taken entire, as connecting the existing race of men with a divine original." * * * We have ourselves seen the pedigree of an English country gentleman (one of the "protectionists" in parliament) which went, through a Saxon king, straight up to Thor and Odin. To be sure, the member of the family who showed it to us modestly admitted that the descent previous to the Heptarchy was not perfectly authenticated. We pass on to the voluminous and puerile legends of the saints, and the more poetical romances of chivalry. "What the legends of Troy, of Thebes, of the Calydonian boar, of Edipus, Theseus, &c., were to an early Greek, the tales of Arthur, of Charlemagne, of the Niebelungen, were to an Englishman, or Frenchman, or German of the twelfth or thirteenth century. They were neither recognized fiction nor authenticated history; they were history as it is felt and welcomed by minds unaccustomed to investigate evidence and unconscious of the necessity of doing so. That the Chronicle of Turpin, a mere compilation of poetical legends respecting Charlemagne, was accepted as genuine history, and even pronounced to be such by papal authority, is well known; and the authors of the romances announce themselves, not less than those of the old Grecian epic, as being about to recount real matter of fact. It is certain that Charlemagne is a great historical name, and it is possible, though not certain, that the name of Arthur may be historical also; but the Charlemagne of tory and the Charlemagne of romance have little except the name in common; nor could we ever determine, except by independent evidence, (which in this case we happen to possess,) whether Charlemagne was a real or fictitious person." Thus in the famous story of Roland and Roncesvalles, which Mr. Grote might have specified particularly, (and we are somewhat surprised he did not,) suppose we had nothing but the Turpin Chronicle to guide us, how likely should we be, by "making shots at the probabilities of the case, to eliminate the real facts of Charlemagne's invasion of Spain, and the surprise of his rear-guard by the Pyrenean mountaineers? But we may bring down these quasi-historical tales to a period much later than even Mr. Grote has attempted. The story of the French frigate Le Vengeur, which went down with her colors flying and her men shouting Vive la Republique! is well known; and it has also been proved in black and white that the story is a sheer fabrication-that the ship did go down indeed, but not before she had surrendered, and that her captain and many of her crew were saved by the victorious adversary. Now, had only the French-republican version of this affair remained, it might well have imposed on posterity. Here then are two popular stories, in which the main issue of the narrative is directly contrary to the known fact-bearing the strongest testimony to the correctness of Mr. Grote's principle. For it must be remembered that he denies, not the existence of a basis of fact to some of the Greek legends, but the possibility of our determining what that fact is. For all that we know to the contrary, Dio Chrysostom's version of the Trojan war may be the true one, and the Greeks may have been the beaten party. For all we know to the contrary, the real Thersites may have had as much resemblance to the Thersites of Homer, as the Fastolfe of history has to the Falstaff of Shakspeare. All our readers may not be aware that the English historians so late as the seventeenth century began the annals of their country with a mythical personage, Brute the Trojan, and carried it down to the Roman invasion through a long line of kings. "In a dispute which took place during the reign of Edward I., (A. D. 1301,) between England and Scotland, the descent of the kings of England from Brute the Trojan was solemnly embodied in a document put forth to sustain the crown of England, as an argument bearing on the case then in discussion; and it passed without attack from the opposing party." Milton's opinion, cited by Mr. Grote, is curious and apposite :-* "But now of Brutus and his line, with the whole progeny of kings to the entrance of Julius Cæsar, we cannot be so easily discharged; descents of ancestry long continued, laws and exploits not plainly seeming to be borrowed or devised, which on the common belief have wrought no small impression; defended by many, utterly denied by few. For what, though Brutus and the whole Trojan pretence were yielded up, seeing they who first devised to bring us some noble ancestor, were content with Brutus the Consul, the better invention, though not willing to forego the name, taught them to remove it higher into a more fabulous age, and by the same remove lighting on the Trojan tales, in affectation to make the Briton of one original with the Roman, pitched there: Yet those old and inborn kings, never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives, at least, some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict incredulity. For these, and those causes above mentioned, that which hath received approbation from so many, I have chosen not to omit. Certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those whom I must follow; so far as keeps aloof from impossible and absurd, attested by ancient writers from books more ancient, I refuse not, as the due and proper subject of story." History of England, apud Grote, pp. 641, 642. Yet the historians of this day begin the history of England with Julius Caesar, and on strictly analogous principles our Greek historian has concluded that We have now done with the first volume, but Mr. Grote has not yet finished clearing his ground. In the beginning of his second, he attacks the heroic chronology of Fynes Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, which he rejects in toto, on various accounts, but chiefly for a reason already alluded to, that the introduction of confessedly fabulous personages in a series utterly destroys its value as a basis for chronological computations. "In the estimate of the ancient chronologers, three succeeding persons of the same lineage-grandfather, father and son-counted for a century; and this may pass in a rough way, so long as you are thoroughly satisfied that they are all real persons; but if in the succession of persons A, B, C, you strike out B as a fiction, the necessary continuity of data disappears.' He then proceeds to treat of the state of society and manners exhibited in Grecian legend, by poets who, "while professedly describing an uncertified past, involuntarily borrow their combinations from the surrounding present." Here, too, we observe in him a marked difference from his predecessors. The monarchist historians Gillies and Mitford, were sedulous to eulogize the heroic age, at the expense of those succeeding, because it was the age of kingly government. It is hardly necessary to say that Thirlwall has not fallen into this error; but Grote has gone further, and prominently brought out various points of moral improvement in the historical age, as compared with the heroic. He particularly specifies three, the providence of the law with respect to the person and property of orphans, the treatmentof fallen enemies, and the legal punishment of homicide. In alluding to the fortification of towns, he observes: "Two courses, and two only, are open; either to pass over the mythes altogether, which is the way in which modern historians treat the old British fables, or else to give an "This decided superiority of the means of account of them as mythes; to recognize and defence over those of attack in rude ages, has been one of the grand promotive causes, both respect their specific nature, and to abstain of the growth of civic life and of the general from confounding them with ordinary and certifiable history. There are good reasons for march of human improvement. It has enabled pursuing this second method, in reference to the progressive portions of mankind first to the Grecian mythes; and when so considered, maintain their acquisitions against the predathey constitute an important chapter in the history instinct of the ruder and poorer, and to tory of the Grecian mind, and, indeed, in that of the human race generally." The italics here are Mr. Grote's. surmount the difficulties of incipient organization; and ultimately, when their organization Grote, vol. ii. p. 64. |