blind, not he indeed-there came a bursting, or breaking, or expanding, or unfolding, a gradual clarification of the immeasurable firmament, and then, indeed, all the stars were seen not merely αστρα φαεινην αμφι σελη την αριπρεπέα, but παντα δε τ' ἐίδεται αστρα, or, in the more ornate, or rather gorgeous language of Milton,

"Then glowed the firmament with living sapphires."

Observe, Homer does not again mention the moon. She was still there -shield or arc-like; but even her orb ceased to be central to that vast starry host;" and though doubt less beheld by Homer and his shepherd, as their hearts gladdened, the gladness came from the universal face of the boundless heavens.

The picture, then, is, if such be the right interpretation of the words, of a glory that is progressive; and if so, intended Homer, think ye, or did he so unintentionally, to depict, by the gradual illumination of the heaven, the gradual illumination of the earth -fires rising after fires, like stars after stars, till the lower and the upper regions were, respectively, all in a blaze, only the lower lights more flashful, the higher subdued by distance into a soft-burning beauty?

Remember, both regions were not brilliant at one and the same timethat was impossible in nature. The stars, in that clime so lustrous, would have bedimmed the fires; the fires, fed each by fifty warriors, would have extinguished the stars. They would have neutralized each other, and the scene would have been "dark with excessive bright." But the earth-woke reality gave the heaven-born vision; and both to this day are glorious-and sufficient, even when separate, from dimness to redeem this article, and to shed a splendour over our third critique on Sotheby.

Let us say, that such is the double soul-the twofold life of Homer's Night-scene-and see if-bating all other objections-it has been transfused by Pope into his celebrated version. No. According to our interpretation,

"Around her throne the vivid planets roll,"

aggia, but "roll" is very bad for par. Roll perhaps they may; indeed otherwise they would not be planets; but certainly not round the moon. Homer was perhaps no great astronomer-though he knew well the Planetary Five. But Homer, who had the use of his eyes, never, drunk or sober, thought, when looking at around her the moon, that he saw throne the vivid planets roll." If by "her throne" Pope means the firmament, then he forgets the Greek words; but it is manifest he means the moon herself, absurdly confusing with her throne the queen who sits thereon, whom by the way, he had chosen, injuriously to Nature and to Homer, to call, a few lines before, "refulgent lamp of night." However, we have said the line is so far right; but that which follows, if our interpretation of Homer's heaven be true, is altogether wrong

"And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole ;"

for Homer yet has made no mention of stars unnumbered; if αστρα αριπρεπια mean "vivid planets," which it may, Pope had no right to surround them with "unnumbered stars," for it is afterwards, and when a great change has occurred to the immeasurable firmament, that Tara de sidstas Korea. Homer speaks not of clouds-though we have suggested the probability of clouds being there, the disparting of which, and their floating away into nothing, finally revealed this infinite starriness; but be that suggestion of ours right or wrong, Pope had no right to assure us of what Homer did not, "that not a cloud o'ercast the solemn scene." Homer says merely that "the eminences and pinnacles of the heights appear, and the groves." Pope makes but sorry work of that, by needless elaboration of its picturesque simplicity; we do not know that he makes it unnatural, though he does make it confused; though there is far more light, there is far more darkness; and the landscape is no longer in aught Homeric. That much admired line, "A flood of glory bursts from all the skies,"

arga-but then, unfortunately, Pope has given us before-" and stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole;" and really, after the refulgent lamp of night has been hung on high, and vivid planets roll round the throne of the moon, and stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, while not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene, how any farther flood of glory can burst from all the skies, we are not astronomer enough, either scientific or empirical, to comprehend or conjecture-nor do we believe that Pope himself had any theory on the subject, but wrote away by candle-light, perhaps in his grotto, from memory somewhat dim, while the shining moon, it may have been, was herself in heaven, and the boundless firmament thick-strewn with stars. The scriptural simplicity of," and the shepherd rejoices in his heart," how far more touching to every one who has walked over the hills by night, than Pope's philosophical paraphrase! As for the application of the sky-sight to the groundscene, we have no room to remark upon it, farther than that while it departs equally from the original, and is laboured overmuch,-it possesses a certain shadowy magnificence, for sake of which its faithlessness, or departure from the faith, may, in some moods of mind, be forgiven.

We find that the three questions we wished you to decide for us, are running, or have run, into one; but no great matter; so, what think you, on the whole, of this famous passage in Pope's Homer? Three of our best descriptive poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, have, as you probably know, declared it infamous; and Wordsworth, especially, has not hesitated to hint, in his unceremonious style, that the many millions of his fellow-Christians who have fallen into admiration of this moonlight scene, painted on transparent paper, have been little better than blindfolded fools. The entire description, he avers, in words we forget, but we quoted them in our Winter Rhapsody, is utter, contradictory, and unintelligible nonsense. It is no such thing. We have seen that it is not a translation of Homer's moonlight scene, scarcely even paraphrase. And we have seen, too, that in departing from Homer, Pope

a

In a

departed from nature; but still the picture is beautiful. Forget that there is any such passage in Homer as that of which it pretends to be a translation. Read it by itself-try it by itself-and we are willing to wager a crown with Wordsworth, that even he will read with a benign aspect this very page of Maga. What are its faults? Why, we have told them already. There is some vagueness where there should be none; some repetition, where Pope believed he was adding new touches; and perhaps objects are made to appear in light which must have been in shadow; but these defects, in no 'offensive degree, once admitted, there "Breathes not the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said," this is extremely beautiful. description of external nature, no doubt a poet is sworn at her shrine to speak the truth-that is to say, to tell all manner of lies-provided only they do so coalesce and hang together in their beauty, that the poet believes them, and eke the whole world. That in poetry is true which, on sufficient grounds, and she is often easily satisfied, Imagination conceives to be so; and Reason has no right to step insolently in upon Imagination in her dream, and to dissipate all her dear delusions. As long as Imagination tells only white lies, her tongue should be encouraged to wag night and day, that she may people the air with pleasant fancies. But what we were wishing to say is this, that in the description of a moonlight scene, for example, we must not exact from the poet, at every touch, the utmost precision; words, after all, do not paint to the eye, but to the conceptive faculty; and the conceptive faculty delights at times in half-formed and hazy visionariness, which it may be prompted to behold by the power resident in terms collocated in an order that could not resist the onset of the logician. We do not mean to say that poets are not expected, like other dishonest people, to speak sense; but there are various sorts of sense; some have very much the appearance of nonsense, and in that appearance lies their charm ;let us but see that the supposed strange sweet specimen of some unsubstantial seeming, is nothing but

absolute sense, and we commit suicide.

Chapman is good, for he adheres to Homer. He knew that Homer was not a man to bother people about the moon and stars, and that, except for illustration of life, he cared not a straw for such luminaries. Indeed what great poet does or ever did? The human soul is, under God, the centre of the solar system. The sun seems to support it-but that is a vulgar scientific error-were we all dead, it would fly into flinders. "Living in the spirit of this creed," Homer eyed the heavens as part of his own being; and so indeed did all those strong-souled mortals, who, age after age, kept continually constructing the Grecian Mythology. When constructed, what was it but an illuminated manuscript of biographies and autobiographies of men, women, and children, that had been conspicuous and famous on the terrene,

and were thus immortalized in the celestial? True that much of this spiritualization was breathed over the

skies, before the invention of letters; but that mattered little or nothing, for natural and revealed religion was older far than Cadmus. But not to indulge in that reverie, suffice it now to say, that the airos aing was too magnificent in Homer's imagination to be played and dallied with, as a baby does with a doll, lisping, " Oh! how pretty!" He looked up-saw -and sung; and his strong steady strain bespoke, in a few lines, the depth of his inspiration. The sky smote his soul with sudden perception and emotion of beauty and sublimity; and he said, or could say, little more than that the sky was their source. Just as when a lovely lady smiles upon us, we exclaim, "Thou art beautiful!" But to palaver away about the paleness or brightness of her countenance, belongs not to the poetry of beatified affection. "Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye"-he who said that of Eve said enough-volumes are in these words—and they unfold themselves into millions of unwritten dreams-as a few seeds become an umbrageous and goldenfruited grove, filled with the warbling of nightingales.

Thus, in these fine lines has Homer shewn a moonlight and starry

heaven, that continueth to shine over the whole world, and all the generations of its inhabitants. He did not set himself down to paint it, like an associate of the Royal Academy, as Pope did, bringing out the effect by long considered and ela borate processes of art, touching and retouching, occasionally biting his nails, and sucking his pen; but, as Shelley said, when

"Some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of thunder and eclipse;"

in moonlight, and, lo! his picture so we say did Homer dip his pencil swam in lustre unbedimmable by the mist of years.

They who never before read Homer's fine Greek lines, or our fine from Pope's glittering paraphrase, English ones, and turn to them now

may think them bald in their simplicity; but study them in silence with your eyes shut, and you have a pure vision of the nocturnal heavens. Chapman saw the very night Homer did; and all he wanted was adequate power of expression to make us see it too; but even in his lines it is serenely beautiful,— "And all the signs in heaven are seen

that glad the shepherd's heart." "Thrust up themselves for shews," are words hot in Homer, but the feeling is in Homer; for in his picture, the πασαι σκοπιαι, και πρωινές ακροί, και vara seem indeed alive and conscious in the calm, and to look at us in their exaltation. Chapman says, " and even the lowly vallies joy to glitter in their sight," that is, the sight of the stars-a fine line, but rather Wordsworthian than Homeric. Homer mentions not lowly val leys;" but Chapman seems so to have construed α, groves. For be omits groves; and it is not likely that the word va could have escaped his notice. It is not surprising that Pope, in this error, should have followed Chapman. He has "then shine the vales;" but it is surprising that such a scholar as Sotheby should-saying " then gleam the vales," a mere repetition of Pope's words, with " gleam" for "shine,' which is a change for the worse, for no man of woman born, we suspect, ever saw a vale-unless there was in it a river or lake-gleam by moonlight.

But that "the vales" should be seen gleaming by one and the same man -say Homer or Sotheby-at one and the same time-is manifestly impossible, according to the present laws of perspective, and in general of optics.

Cowper's translation is, as usual, admirable. Of him, as truly as of any man that ever breathed, may we say, in that fine line of Campbell, "He mused on nature with a poet's eye." He does not fear to say "the clear bright moon," despising the reading pau vy," and in love with "Qasivny." Nor does he fear to say, that around the "clear bright moon," ""the stars shine in full splendour." Now Coleridge asserted in one of his lectures in the Royal Institution, that in the immediate neighbourhood of a “refulgent" moon, the stars must look wan or dim, and so, we understand, saith Wordsworth. 'Tis but a mere matter of moonshine, it is true; yet worth settling; and we go along with Homer and Chapman and Cowper. There cannot be two stronger words than φαεινην and αριπρεπια ; moon and stars were alike lustrous. "About the silver moon stars shine clear," are Chapman's words, and they are in the same spirit. Cowper's you have before you, more radiant still. Do not abuse Pope, then, O ye lakers, while you let Homer, Chapman, and Cowper go Scot-free. Horace, too, speaks of a lady bright as the moon among the lesser fires, meaning that they too were bright. She shone with a larger and serener lustre, as if they from "her silver urn drew light." In one line Cowper transcends all his competitors, and equals his divine original

"And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene,"

of clouds, had Cowper. But seldom indeed it is that that most original writer owes even a word to any body; here Pope was natural, and Cowper, in unconsciously remembering him, forgot Homer. Neither does Homer speak of "blue" as Cowper does; yet blue, beyond doubt or praise, is the firmament, and there can be no harm in saying so. Cowper felt the meaning of that untranslatable word vijayn, and his

"Ether, open'd wide,

All glitters,"

is magnificent-perhaps even finer than Homer, for it gives the effect in fewer and simpler words-it is indeed poetry. And the shepherd's heart is cheer'd," is, like Homerbible-like and divine.

And now for Sotheby. He must have come to the passage prepared for a high achievement. Has he succeeded? Not entirely to our heart's desire. "At night's illumined noon," is a fine expression, had it stood by itself for it shews us at once the moon and stars in heaven. It proves Sotheby to be a poet. But it does not, like the town of Kilkenny, "shine well where it stands." That

nothing resembling it is in Homer, is one fatal objection to it, on the score of fidelity, the first of virtues in a translator-herself the Queen, all others being her subjects, and brightening and extending her sway. But there is another. Why is there nothing resembling it in Homer? Because Homer is going to shew us "night's illumined noon;" and in what lies the illumination. There

So

fore he does not lay down that thesis, as Sotheby does, and then illustrate it by divine discourse. pregnant is that thesis of Sotheby's, that it is in itself a shining sermon, and needed no preacher. Mr Sotheby will see at once that this

objection is, like every objection of ours, insuperable. He has had the misfortune to paint a fine picture at one sweep; and we are so perfectly satisfied with it, that we are dissatis

"Not a vapour streaks the boundless

blue;"

for Homer says nothing of vapours, nor, had not Pope negatived the idea

eager to snatch the pencil out of his hand. It may seem hard to punish a man for a flash of genius, but justice compels us to do so; and Sotheby stands reproved before us, exalted, however, rather than humbled by

by night." "Watchful" could never have entered into that verse. On so serene a night as that Homer describes, when all was peace, the shepherd could have had no fears about his fold. He was sitting or lying beside them-but not "watchful;" he merely felt that they were there; for their sakes too, as well as his own, his heart was cheered by the heavens he looked on; and happier even than he knew at that hour was the pastoral life.

This is but a slight matter; but slight

line,

That, unquestionably, is the vision seen by Homer. Would not " for," in place of "to," perhaps be better? The riving up from below of the boundless ether expands another heaven for (or with) other stars. In that expansion they have room for all their multitudes-then and there seems to be infinitude. With the concluding lines, fine as they are in themselves, we are not satisfied. Sotheby knows as well as any man wherein lies the power of Homer's immortal half-hexameter. Cowper caught it, and embodied it in equal bulk. Chapman likewise seized its spirit. Pope, unaffected apparently by that scripture, or betrayed into forgetfulness of its manifest character by the ruling passion in which he wrote, ambition to excel Homer, diluted the simple sentiment of the shepherd, which is indeed nothing else than natural religion, into feeble metaphysics and a cold philosophy. "Conscious swains," is silly; and "bless the useful light," is absolute ly the doctrine of the Utilitarians applied to the gratitude of the shepherd,

"Where he doth summer high in bliss

upon the hills of God!"

Our objections to Sotheby's lines, over and above the main one, amplification of simplicity, are different from those urged against Pope's, but nearly as strong. "Watchful of his fold," is an idea always interesting, but "watchful" is, to our ear, needlessly intense. In that beautiful chap ter of the New Testament, the shep

in poetry. Pope had said, "eyes the blue vault," and Sotheby, betrayed into imitation by admiration, says, "looks wondering up." That the shepherd looked up, there can be no doubt. Homer took it for granted that he did; for the shepherd was not asleep. The truth is, that he had been looking up for a long time-had seen the moon rise, and the stars-and perhaps had been composing a song on a white-footed girl filling her urn at the fountain. To suppose that he had been looking down, would be a libel, not only on that anonymous shepherd, but on all Arcadia, and the golden age. But we object more stoutly to the word, " wondering." May this be the last line we shall ever write, if he did "look wondering up." Shepherds from their infancy are star-gazers. They are familiar with the skies-for on the hilltops they live, and move, and have their being, in the immediate neighbourhood of heaven. At a comet they would wonder-for he is a wild stranger of a hundred years. But they do not wonder even at meteors, for the air is full of them, and they go skyring through the stars,and dropping down into disappearance, like the half assured sights seen in dreams. But the moon and the planets, and the fixed stars, are to the shepherd no more wonderful at one time than at another;-in one sense, indeed, they are to him always wonderfulfor he wonders, and of his wondering finds no end, how and by whom they were made; or he wonders at them in their own beautiful eternity. But Sotheby's words do not imply this; they merely imply that the shepherd wonders to behold such a night as that described by