incidentally, of former agreeable scenes in the tent of Agamemnon; then of his slaughtered countrymen; then of the danger that threatens the whole army of the Greeks; then of the advice of his father Peleus; then 'of the regret of Agamemnon for having offended him, and of his wish to make all reparation in his power, &c. After the ambassadors have partaken of the hospitalities of the hero, Ulysses addresses him as follows:

"To thee I drink,
Achilles! nobly is thy table spread,
As heretofore in Agamemnon's tent,
So now in thine; abundant is the feast:
But not the pleasures of the banquet now
We have in hand: impending o'er our arms
Grave cause of fear, illustrious chief, we see;
Grave doubts, to save, or see destroy'd our ships,
If thon, great warrior, put not forth thy might.
For close beside the ships and wall are camp'd
The haughty Trojans and renown'd allies:

Their watch-fires frequent burn throughout the camp;
And loud their boast that naught shall stay their hands
Until our dark-ribb'd ships be made their prey.
Jove too for them, with fav'ring augury

Sends forth his lightning; boastful of his strength,
And firmly trusting in the aid of Jove,
Hector, resistless, rages; naught he fears
Or God or man, with martial fury fir'd.

He prays, impatient, for th' approach of morn;
Then, breaking through the lofty sterns, resolv'd
To the devouring flames to give the ships,
And slay the crews, bewilder'd in the smoke.
And much my mind misgives me, lest the gods
His threats fulfil, and we be fated here

To perish, far from Argos' grassy plains.

Up, then if in their last extremity

Thy spirit inclines, though late, to save the Greeks
Sore press'd by Trojan arms: lest thou thyself
Hereafter feel remorse; the evil done

Is past all cure; then thou reflect betimes
How from the Greeks to ward the day of doom.
Dear friend, remember now thy father's words,
The aged Peleus, when to Atreus' so

He sent thee forth from Phthia, how he said,
'My son, the boon of strength, if so they will,
Juno or Pallas have the power to give;
But thou thyself thy haughty spirit must curb,
For better far is gentle courtesy:

And cease from angry strife, that so the Greeks
The more may honor thee, both young and old.'
Such were the words thine aged father spoke,
Which thou hast now forgotten; yet, ev'n now,
Pause for awhile, and let thine anger cool;
And noble gifts, so thou thy wrath remit,
From Agamemnon shalt thou bear away.
Listen to me, while I recount the gifts

Which in his tent he pledg'd him to bestow."-ix., 267-314.

This, as we have said, is a very good speech in Lord Derby's version, although his lordship has allowed the poetry to evaporate. The address of Ulysses does not end here; he now proceeds to describe the splendid gifts which Agamemnon is anxious to bestow on Achilles, and his lordship has no faculty for poetical description. Even the beautiful Lesbians make but a sorry figure at his hands, thus:

"Sev'n women too, well skill'd in household cares,
Lesbians, whom he selected for himself,

That day thou captur'dst Lesbos' goodly isle,

In beauty far surpassing all their sex.

There is no poetry in this; let us compare with it the four lines of Pope :

"Seven lovely captives of the Lesbian line,

Skilled in each art, unmatch'd in form divine,
The same he chose for more than vulgar charms
When Lesbos sank beneath thy conquering arms."

But it is in the pathetic his lordship fails most. In proof of this we refer any intelligent reader to his attempts in this department; no matter what form they assume, whether that of a speech or discussion. Compare his rendering of the celebrated appeal of Andromache to Hector, the speech of Patroclus to Achilles, or that of Priam to the same hero, with the versions of Pope of the same. We transcribe as a specimen the lamentation of Briseis for Patroclus, subjoining Pope's rendering of the same:

"Patroclus, dearly lov'd of this sad heart!
When last I left this tent, I left thee full
Of lusty life; returning now, I find
Only thy lifeless corpse, thou Prince of men'!.
So sorrow still, on sorrow heap'd I bear.
The husband of my youth, to whom my sire
And honor'd mother gave me, I beheld
Slain with the sword before the city walls :
Three brothers, whom with me one mother bore,
My dearly lov'd ones, ail were doom'd to death:
Nor wouldst thou, when Achilles, swift of foot,
My husbånd slew, and royal Mynes' town
In ruin laid, allow my tears to flow;

But thou wouldst make me (such was still thy speech)
The wedded wife of Peleus' godlike son:

Thou wouldst to Phthia bear me in thy ship,

And there, thyself, amid the Myrmidons,

Wouldst give my marriage feast; then unconsol'd,

I weep thy death, my ever-gentle friend!"

In this there is little pathos-scarcely any of the tenderness of the original. It is otherwise with Pope's version.

Perhaps no other passage we could have selected would give a more correct idea of the difference between a true poet and one who is no poet, as a translator of Homer, although almost any of the other pathetic speeches to which we have alluded lay a deeper and more enduring hold on our sympa

thies.

"Ah youth for ever dear, for ever kind,

Oace tender friend of my distracted mind!
I left thee fresh in life, in beauty gay;
Now find thee cold, inanimated clay!
What woes ny wretched race of life attend?
Sorrows on sorrows, never doom'd to end!
The first lov'd comfort of my virgin bed
Before these eyes in fata! battle bled:
My three brave brothers in one mournful day,
All trod the dark, irremeable way:

Thy friendly hand uprear'd me from the plain;
And dry'd my sorrows for a husband slain;
Achilles' care you promis'd I should prove,
The first, the dearest partner of his love;
That rites divine should ratify the band,
And make me empress in his native land.

Accept these grateful tears! for thee they flow,

For thee, that ever felt another's woe!"-Il., xix., 303-320.

But we find that our space is exhausted, and can give no more specimens. We would, however, advise the reader to extend his examination; for, if he would not profit much by reading his lordship's version, but rather run the risk of being led by it to form a false estimate of Homer's style, he would lose nothing in this way for which he would not be fully indemnified in comparing the different versions with each other. He would, at least, be able to form an idea of the structure of the Iliad, and the marvellous variety of its materials. At first sight this might seem an easy task, but there are few more difficult; although the most thoughtless cannot read Homer without finding beauties in every page, no poet is understood by so small a number. Thus, for example, the wrath of Achilles seems an absurd thing to the casual observer as the subject of a poem; but there is a deep moral in it, namely, that concord among governors is the preservation of states, and that discord is the ruin of them. Even the episodes contribute to develop this idea; and how full of beauty the most incredible of them are at the same time! still more forcibly does that remark apply to the allegorical fables; such, for example, as Discord cast out of heaven to earth; (*) Love alluring and extinguishing Honor;† Prudence restraining Pas

sion, represented in the machine of Minerva descending to calm Achilles. Nor is there a speech or expression in the whole poem whose tendency was in any manner objectionable when it was written which is not censured as such, directly or indirectly, by the poet. Thus we have often heard it objected to the Iliad that it is all in glorification of war and bloodshed; but in no other work, sacred or profane, is war more strongly condemned. Perhaps we cannot more appropriately conclude this article than by quoting the words of the sage Nestor, as translated by Pope, in proof of this:

"Curs'd is the man and void of law and right,
Unworthy property, unworthy light,
Unfit for public rule or private care,

That wretch, that monster, who delights in war:
Whose lust is murder, and whose horrid joy,

To tear his country, and his kind destroy.”—II., xx., 87-92.

ART. II. 1. Erinnerungen an Wilhelm von Humboldt. Von GUSTAV SCHLESIER. 2 Theile. Stuttgart, 1843-1845.

2. Wilhelm von Humboldt: Lebensbild und Charakteristik. Von R. HAYM. Berlin, 1856.

3. Wilhelm von Humboldt's gesammelte Werke. Herausg. von CARL BRANDES. Vols. i-vii, 8vo. Berlin, 1841-1852.

4. Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java. Von WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT. Herausg. von CARL BUSCHMANN. 3 vols., 4to. Berlin, 1836-1839.

AMONG those who have labored in the department of general linguistics and comparative philology, Wilhelm von Humboldt is one of the earliest and most successful. Commencing with the dawn of the century, his studies run parallel with those of William Schlegel, Raynouard, Grimm, Bopp; and if, on the one hand, he has accomplished less of specialty than most of his contemporaries, he has, on the other, extended his horizon far beyond them, and is, in fact, the first who ventured to elevate the science into a universal one. Inspired by this idea, he not only made his investiga tions, both geographically and historically, co-extensive with

▸ xi.,
261.

the globe, but he also did not shun the labor of entering, with the spirit of true science, into the abstruser questions concerning the nature and origin of language, its relation to the human intelligence, to history, philosophy, civilization, and humanity, and has left us the outlines of a system which has made his name illustrious. It is true that more than one of his positions have been controverted, that he has been accused of inconsistency, of vagueness, and of mysticism, and that few of the more recent investigators are willing to accept him without qualification; but this does not destroy the intrinsic value of his contributions, and we apprehend but little contradiction in asserting that no works in this department can be produced that are more suggestive, and more worthy of attentive study. It is on this account, and for the benefit of the student, that we now propose, in the first place, to give a rapid sketch of the history and chronological order of、 his researches, and then to add as complete and clear an exposition of his system as our proposed limit will admit.

After having for many years indulged in the somewhat desultory, but none the less earnest and assiduous study of classical literature and antiquities, of theoretical as well as political philosophy and æsthetics, Humboldt at length began to feel the want of some central object for his intellectual activity, and one into which he might infuse the whole of its individuality and native force. Such an object presented itself to him in the science of linguistics, the outlines of which he happened to conceive towards the close of the last century. Near the end of the year 1799 we find him writing to the philologian Wolf, that it was then his plan to illustrate the theory of æsthetics with practical examples, and that for that purpose he had already studied the old French literature, and was then engaged in examining the Spanish. "But even more than by the study of literature," he says, "I am attracted by the study of language. I am inclined to think that hereafter I shall occupy myself with it much more exclusively, and that a thorough and philosophically conducted comparison of several languages is a task for which, after a few years of earnest application, my shoulders might perhaps grow equal."*

The commencement of these new researches links itself to the accident of Humboldt's residence in Paris. It was there that, in the year 1800, his attention was attracted to the lan

*Werke, vol. 5, p. 214.