COLUTHOS LYCOPOLITUS was a very animated poet, and together with PINDAR, HESIOD, and PLUTARCH, forms an exception to the maxim that Boeotian air was breathed only by dunces. It is also not unworthy of notice, that while the rest of the Greeks were so ill-natured as to call Boeotia the land of stupidity, they were so singularly inconsistent as to make one of its mountains, Helicon, the abode of the Muses, and consecrated to these nine ladies many of its fountains and rivers!The COLUTHOS above mentioned, is the author of a beautiful little poem, entitled the "Rape of Helen"-on which title sir EDWARD SHERBURNE makes the following "not unpleasant" remark: "The word rape must not be taken in the common acceptation of the expression; for Paris was too courtly to offer, and Helen too kind-hearted to suffer such a violence." Now, the inference I would draw from this annotation of the learned sir Edward, is, that neither Coluthos nor HoMER would have immortalized this beauty and her gallant, if such personages had never existed. I grant, that if every jot of the ILIAD be fiction-the story as it is blazoned by the deathless bard, would nevertheless have secured its descent to the latest posterity; and if HOMER was convicted of taking his materials from the exhaustless stores of his own invention, rather than from historical fact, we could only class him with PROMETHEUS, who stole his fire from Heaven--and apply to him the epithet so beautifully applied to SPENCER-" that celestial thief!"

But, are we to believe the Iliad one entire fiction, because Mr. BRYANT says so? "Tis true, this gentleman possesses poculiar attainments, and his classical learning is almost without an equal;—he has written a book* for the express purpose of showing (not that the embellishments and machinery of the Iliad are merely poetical--which indeed we all know) but that "no such city of Phrygia, as Troy, ever existed; and (consequently) no such expedition was undertaken against it!"-What shall we say to this? Must we now be taught, that what we considered as built upon historical basis, and which was indebted to that belief for its principal charm, is nothing but a vision-the brilliant but lying invention of an ingenious Greek? Must the pleasures and impressions of our boyish days, which time and reflection have matured to conviction, be in a moment snatched away? Strange incredulity of

* Dissert. on the Trojan war, &c. &c.

AN ESSAY ON THE SKEPTICISM OF THE LEARNED.

For the Analetic Magazine.

INCREDULITY is the wit of fools."-So says sir WALTER RALEIGH; and, really, when we consider how easy it is to doubt, and how difficult it is to prove, incredulity becomes a species of wisdom which every body may acquire. True it is, that the skepticism of HUME went so far, as not only to doubt every thing, but actually to doubt whether he doubted; but it was not his incredulity alone that ranked him among the first of philosophers. If he had not possessed learning, and penetration; singular calmness of inquiry, and matchless felicity in that quality of the mind which is termed generalization-in fine, if he not been a first rate reasoner, he might have doubted till dooms-day, without gaining a single disciple. But the generality of men seem to think, there is a much cheaper road to the honours of philosophy-and that they have only to shake the head, and affect to disbelieve what in truth they have never taken the trouble to examine, in or der to obtain the appellation of learned incredulity.

DESCARTES, it is said, once took it into his head to doubt his own existence;-but at last very gravely resolved the difficulty by this syllogism: "I think, therefore I exist." A very satisfactory demonstration, no doubt! Another philosopher would have placed thought as the effect, rather than the cause of existence. But Descartes was very well satisfied with the contrary process of reasoning, as it led to the important convictions that he was a real and bona fide being. Every body, however, does not enter into inquiries of this or a similar nature with the same candour and earnestness as Descartes; and, indeed, there are many who never begin to listen to demonstration, without first stoutly deter mining, like MOLIERE's doctor, "not to be conving adventure, the reader of this essay, has not yet wise resolution-I shall respectfully submit to

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learning! The Greeks long before the time of Homer,* were in possession of the principal facts concerning the siege of Troy. They preserved these as matters relating to their own historyand from their traditions did Homer gather the materials he has wrought with such exquisite skill--making his subject not only a national story, but a picture of human nature. And now, only twenty-eight hundred years after the Iliad was written, comes forward Mr. BRYANT, that Colossus of erudition, and tells us-there is no such thing.

For myself, I have always believed the siege of Troy by the Greeks, to be as fundamentally true, as the siege of Rhodes by ALEXANDER. I have contemplated Hector and Achilles, and Eneas, and Diomed—not indeed as matches for the immortal gods, but to have been as real and legitimate' heroes, as Buonaparte and Wellington in Europe, or our M'Comb and Carolinian Jackson, in America.

But the incredibility of the learned stops not here. Were the question only made with respect to the Trojan war, the evil would have some limits. This is an isolated fact, of high antiquity, and not necessarily involving in its authenticity, the authenticity of any other historical event. It may indeed, as a precedent, give room and authority for further innovations. But it could not with its fate drag down the immortality of the Greek name, nor obliterate those splendid achievements which have emblazoned the roll of fame.

An American writert has very boldly started a new theory about the original peopling of the earth; but candidly says his demonstration of the subject is "by a process of reasoning not hitherto advanced." This confession might reasonably preclude any remark, were it not a notorious fact, that although our cosmographers have disagreed upon every thing else, all of them (who have any pretensions to philosophy) have agreed that the old world was never peopled by the new. Dr. Mitchell, however, has his "learned skepticism" upon the subject; and ingeniously leaving out of consideration the moral as well as natural phenomena that start up on all sides against his theory, determines the fact, that our enlightened Indians were the ancestors of the Asiatics! * G. Wakefield-preface and annot. on Homer. t Professor Mitchell, in a letter to De Witt Clinton.

Now, had the professor calmly considered the following facts, the chances are that the world would not have been amused with his hypothesis. 1st. Several physical evidences are still in existence, and were more completely so when America was first discovered, that the northern continent was, not many centuries ago, almost entirely covered with water--not exactly the natural element of mankind. 2d. If the learned world were again to bring into fashion the exploded notions of lord BACON's "Prime" and "physical retrogradation"—it would still be rather absurd to suppose, that while the children of the Americans, wandering from their native homes, had reached the summit of perfection in science and civilization, the fathers were, with their paint, their nakedness, their bows and arrows, standing still, as nature first formed them, in savage aboriginality. This indeed would not have been a moral retrogradation; it would have been something stranger. It has been generally agreed that the oldest nations have been the first civilized; and we are led rather to believe that a few tribes of wandering Tartars had peopled North America, than that a few tribes of wandering and ignorant Americans had laid the settlements of the great Asiatic states. 3d. It is the opinion of certain learned rabbins, that when the Deity first created man, he formed an Adam and Eve for every climate under the sun; and, when we consider how difficult it must have been for the descendants of a single human pair to have settled in the most inhospitable climes-to have seated themselves upon solitary rocks, in the midst of ruthless seas, which navigation, even in this era of science, dare not approach-we must candidly allow, that the hypothesis of the rabbins would solve all difficulties upon the subject. Dr. Mitchell, however, has venturously thrown himself into the crowd of theorists, and trusts, apparently, more to ingenuity than to judgment.

*

How many travellers have been charged with falsehood until successive writers have confirmed their narratives. Wallace and Byron were considered as extravagant fabulists, when they told the world of the enormous size and prodigious strength of the Paagonians. Philosophers began to talk about the mountains these people stood upon; of the reflection and refraction of light;-of the laws of optics and perspectives; and speculations to that purpose. But when Cooket confirmed the relation, the public were * Voyage Round the World. + First voyage.