Dawes. It is a book I have ever valued, and shall have more reason to do so now, from the learning and accuracy of your observations. I hear but I know not with what truth that Dr. Bentley's Homer is passed into the hands of Mr. Cumberland if so, it will be easy for you to obtain a sight of it, and I am well assured it will repay your curiosity. Should you come to London, I hope you will favour me with your company to eat a bit of mutton. Believe me to be, with great respect, Dean's Yard, June 18. 1781. W. VINCENT. TO T. TYRWHITT, ESQ. DEAR SIR, C. C. C. Nov. 15th, 1781. I HAVE examined the MS. Commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric, and. am inclined to think that it differs much from the printed copy. very [Then follow a long series of extracts in Greek from the MS., accompanied by remarks and criticisms.] I am employed in printing a second edition of my Essay on Antiquities, with additions. When it is completed, I shall cry a truce to publication for some time. As soon as I find myself at leisure, I mean to act upon a hint which you threw out the last time I had the pleasure of being with you, respecting Homer and Plato: I mean to read Homer with Herodotus. I shall then give Homer a second reading with the Greek tragedians, to whom I shall unite some of the most comprehensible parts of Plato. But, previously to this, I shall go through one of our own historians, with Barrington on the Statutes, and Blackstone's Commentaries: I shall then take up Montesquieu, as a prelude to a superficial course of the history of modern Europe. I think of choosing Hume, with proper cautions with regard to particular facts: which are, perhaps, sufficiently pointed out by Dr. Towers. I shall be glad if you approve of the preceding plan, and shall be obliged for any further hint on the subject. I am, dear Sir, &c., T. BURGESS. DEAR SIR, TO MR. BURGESS. As you mention a purpose a purpose of going into Hampshire for the first week in December, I am a little doubtful whether this will catch you at Oxford; however, I will risk it. I am persuaded you will find the plan of reading which you have laid down for yourself, answer very well; - Homer is the great source of prose, as well as verse. When you come down in your course to Euripides, it would be not unpleasant, I should think, or unuseful, to join to him Aristophanes, and the histories of Thucydides and Xenophon. Those four authors reflect much light one upon another. From them you may proceed to Plato and Demosthenes; and, afterwards, as your inclinations may lead you. As your plan is for an abridgment of English history, I should think that Hume, with the cautions of which you seem to be aware, would answer your purpose. The books which you propose to read with him are very informing; but I should doubt whether to go through them with proper attention would not require more time than you might, perhaps, find it expedient at present to give up to them. I do not remember to have read of any altars erected to a god of eating by the ancients. If our northern nations have addicted themselves to that worship, I fear we shall have no more metaphysics. Such poetry as Mr. M's, I think, might be composed after a good dinner. Yours very sincerely, Welbeck Street, Nov. 21. 1781. T. T. NOTE TO CHAP. VI. THE following letter from Dr. Vincent, upon the style of Homer, and on the nature and uses of the digamma, is introduced in the form of a note, because, though full of interest to scholars, it might, perhaps, be deemed out of place in the text by general readers. SIR, Dean's Yard, March 7. 1781. You are so much better informed upon the subject of the digamma, than myself, that it would little become me to offer any opinion upon your general system, which I think very complete ; some few particulars you may, perhaps, not think impertinent. And, first, in regard to Homer's dialects, I entirely agree with you in thinking it the poetic dialect of his age. What words occur that are not strictly conformable to this, is impossible for us now to determine; - but I conceive many of this sort to exist-introduced, 1. for their peculiar aptness; 2. their lofty sound; 3. their application; 4. their air of antiquity; instances of these occur in all our best English poets; and in none more than Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton. To imagine that Homer, according to the vulgar error of grammarians (vide tractatum per Plutarchum ap. Maittaire), used all dialects indiscriminately, or any dialect that assisted his measure, is imputing to him a poverty of expression, or want of versification, which every line gives the lie to; for if there ever was a poet whose words flowed into verse, or, if I may say so, jumped into their places of their own accord, such is the versification of Homer: here stands the great difference between him and all his translators; not that we can impute blame to them, for the nature of translation itself renders the attempt almost impossible,— but the existence of this difference is undeniable. Read the fine simile at the end of the eighth book, in Pope; beautifully paraphrased as it is, you discover a labour, a research, a curiosity of numbers and expression derived from consummate art, while the plain simplicity of beauty flows from Homer with as natural ease as if he had uttered every word with the rapidity of the Italian improvisatori. To impute to such a poet as this the want of licentious dialects, to eke out his versification, is grafting his condemnation upon our own ignorance; -I would as soon believe it, as believe Mr. Wood, when he asserts that letters were not in use when Homer wrote. A language abounding in compound harmony, elegance, and precision of the most exquisite kind, was never formed, or can be formed, by mere oral use;-images sublime and poetical in a great degree, may be the produce of great minds and strong conceptions in the most unlettered age; but to clothe these in harmonious numbers, dignified expression, and precise language, in such a period of arts and manners, is impossible. When people who assert this, produce Fingal for an instance, they assert without proof; - but (setting Fingal aside as dubious authority) if we examine the beautiful odes Mr. Gray has versified from the Latin translation of Olaus; would Mr. Gray, himself, assert the elegance of language in those Runic fragments? Poetical ideas they doubtless contain ; and so do the harshest numbers of Chaucer ; translate Chaucer into Latin, and let a Metastasio translate the Latin, would not the images flow in all the elegance of Italian harmony? But this is not the case with Homer; for, in the most refined ages of Greece, he was still looked upon as a model of language, harmony, and numbers: and with every disadvantage he must now labour under, from our ignorance of pronunciation, &c., no one can read his works over a second time, without feeling this, and acknowledging it in the fullest extent. In The conclusion from all this must be, that, as Homer stood in need of no paltry expedients, he certainly made use of none, but used that language which was the language of the age or country he lived in. The fashionable language varied with the age. Homer's days it was what he wrote; in Herodotus's it was Ionic; and therefore Herodotus, though a Dorian by birth (for Halicarnassus was a Dorian colony, Herod. lib. 2. p. 191. Ed. Wag.), compiled his history in it. In after times, when the writers of Athens were as pre-eminent as the power of her arms, all was Attic. The dialects of the Greek language are originally only two,—— the Doric and Ionic. How the difference of these arose, or what was the original distinction between Dorians and Ionians, does not appear with sufficient precision in history to determine upon; but they were so clearly and radically different, as to cause a degree of difficulty and obscurity respectively (vide Maittaire, page 6. Introd. duσvontos). The Attic is, in reality, not a distinct dialect from the Ionic, but a peculiar mode of speaking and writing in that one city, which was the head of the Ionians: but if we choose to call this mode of speaking a dialect, we ought to make a dialect for every separate state of Greece (vide Maittaire, page 3. Introd.), for there were different modes of speaking peculiar to every one, as will appear from consulting the decrees of the cities in Demosthenes's Oration on the Crown; the Ode of Sappho ; the Decree of |