AMONG THE GREAT MASTERS OF LITERATURE. HOMER. "PERADVENTURE it is not to be marvelled at," says Plutarch, "if in long process of time (fortune altering her effects daily) these worldly events often fall out one like another. . . . Thus, of the two famous Scipios, the Carthaginians were first overcome by the one, and afterwards utterly destroyed by the other. Thus the city of Troy was first taken by Hercules, for the horses that Laomedon had promised him; the second time by Agamemnon, by means of the great wooden horse; and the third time by I Charidemus, by means of a horse that fell within the gate and kept the Trojans from shutting it in time. And thus, after two sweet-smelling plants, two cities, Ios and Smyrna, were named, the one signifying the Violet, and the other Myrrh. It is supposed that the poet Homer was born in the one and died in the other." Smyrna has perhaps the better claim to the honour of being the birthplace of Homer, but Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, and Athens dispute the palm with her. "Seven cities now contend for Homer dead Through which the living Homer begged his bread." The Homeric hymn to the Delian Apollo, once ascribed to Homer himself, says, in the fine translation by Henry Nelson Coleridge, the nephew and literary executor of the poet Coleridge: "Virgins! farewell — and oh! remember me, Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea, A helpless wanderer, may your isle explore, And ask you, maids, of all the bards you boast, 6 Antipater of Sidon wittily solved the problem, doubtless to his own satisfaction at least, thus: "From Colophon some deem thee sprung, From Smyrna some, and some from Chios; While those proclaim thee born in Ios; The mother of the Lapitha. "Thus each to Homer has assigned The birthplace which just suits his mind. "But, if I read the volume right, By Phoebus to his followers given, Concerning the old singer's blindness, Sir John Denham wrote: "I can no more believe old Homer blind The age wherein he lived was dark; but he Could not want sight who taught the world to see." And as to his grave, one ancient poet asseverates : "Blest Isle of Ios! On thy rocky steeps The Star of Song, the Grace of Graces sleeps." It would scarcely be expected that this little book should set forth, much less attempt to decide, the still unsolved problems of Homer's career, - questions which once engaged the intellect of a Gladstone, among others. However, if ever, these questions may be settled, they probably did not much concern those artists who have vied with the writers in their lavish tributes to Homer, - pen and pencil alike seeking to do their utmost in honour of the "Father of Poetry." Raphael, in his fresco of "Parnassus," in the Vatican, wherein Apollo, seated under laurels and surrounded by the Muses, plays upon a violin, has portrayed Homer as singing, with hand outstretched and face uplifted, inspired by the music of the God. The eminent French painter, Baron Gerard, executed a picture of the blind old poet standing, a majestic figure, on the rocky shore of Chios, listening, as if entranced, to the rythmic roar of the waves. One hand is raised to heaven, and the other rests on the shoulder of his guide, a girl of tender years, who seems about to lead him away in search of shelter. It is a repetition in paint of Coleridge's pen-picture of "that blind bard, who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, |