and Adah, regulate their estimate of a young gentleman's understanding by his bodily presence, and find wisdom and learning in a handsome figure, and dulness and ignorance in a dumpy one. Shallom we take to have been six feet two, with vast black mustaches, and a beard rolling down to his waistcoat. It is agreed, nem. con., that the handsome cavalier is to have an interview in the morning with the princess, and a long monologue follows by that discreet young lady, which we do not translate, as it contains very nearly the sentiments that must occur to every one in such a situation. Burnt with love, or burnt for love!-it seems a sad situation certainly; and if, as Lengerke says, there is any allegory in the play at all, this scene must be emblematic of the ancient adage, “Out of the frying pan into the fire." But gracious me, or gracious us rather!-as we are plural-we had forgotten to mention a dreadful misfortune that nearly befell the false confidant, Adah. The conjurer Eri tries his hand at an abduction, in imitation of Pluto; but his Proserpine is more than his match, and by some means or other gets him pushed into a river. We fear the old wizzard was somewhat rude in his endearments; for obscure intimations are given that he disapproved highly of the tedious processes of respectable courtship, and was a socialist in the noblest sense of that comprehensive word. Adah, however, escapes without much damage, except probably a little toozling, and the main thread of the story is resumed at the moment of the appointed interview. This we also omit, as our translation can give no idea of the versification; and we shall only give an analysis of the story, if we can trace it, for a more confused jumble it has seldom been our fortune to encounter. Adah of course goes and tells the old king what a naughty girl his daughter is, to go flirting with handsome young men when she is engaged to be married to our idiotical acquaintance young Siphah. The old fellow, who seems a prodigious stickler for law, determines to let it, in this instance, take its course; Shlomit is put in irons; Shallom, as was to be expected of so perfect a gentleman, offers to die for her; Adah finds she has gone

wrong in her reckoning, for even Siphah turns up his nose at her. And in the midst of all these wonderful incidents, Shallom lets fall some words about the Tower that attract the king's attention. He is confronted with Siphah, who seems rather a pusillanimous spoon for a pretender; and on certain threats being administered, and probably a promise of pardon held out if he confessed-the whole secret comes out. There is a great quantity of rigmarole about a poisoned packet sent to the Jewish edition of Lord Noodle, which we can hardly make out, but it all comes right at last, as was naturally to be expected; and we have every reason to suppose that the enactment about burning was immediately repealed, to the great delectation of all the young flirts in Kedem. And this is a drama held out to the German public as a translation from the Hebrew of Moses Chajim Ben Jacob Luzzato. Now, we have a word or two to say on that. The introduction by Lengerke certainly led us to expect some small twinkles of the original Hebraism in his translation, but we search in vain for the remotest inkling of Jewism of any kind. Sometimes we have felt inclined to suspect that the whole play was a hoax; but the versification is so incredibly bad, that we do not believe the respectable editor of the periodical it appeared in would have admitted it as only a Jew-d'esprit, or have admitted it at all unless on the strength of its being a translation. We conclude, therefore, that it has some slight foundation in a Hebrew original; but no power shall persuade us that it gives any thing like a true specimen of a real drama. Probably Cæsar von Lengerke has seen a notice of some poem of the kind in the writings of Delitsh, who is a well-known Hebraist; and has given the confused version of it we have exhibited in the foregoing pages, with such additions and improvements as his own fancy or taste could supply. But till he can produce some more favourable specimen than this, we must go back to our original belief, that the Jews have no turn for literature of any kind, or, at all events, not for the drama.

their capture of the beautiful horses brought by Rhesus, and of Dolon the Trojan spy, did not originally form a part of the Iliad. At present this adventure forms the tenth book, but previously it had been an independent epos, or epic narrative, perhaps locally circulated amongst the descendants of Diomed, and known by the title of the Doloneia. Now, if one such intercalation could pass, why not more? With respect to this particular nightepisode, it has been remarked, that its place in the series is not asserted by any internal indication. There is an allusion, indeed, to the wrath of Achilles; but probably introduced to harmonize it as a part of the Iliad, by the same authority which introduced the poem itself: else, the whole book may be dropped out without any hia tus. The battle, suggested by Diomed at the end of the 9th book, takes place in the 11th; and, as the critics remark, no allusion is made in that 11th book, by any of the Grecian chiefs, to the remarkable exploit of the intervening night.

But of all the incoherencies which have been detected in the Iliad, as arising out of arbitrary juxtapositions between parts not originally related, the most amusing is that brought to light by the late Wilhelm Mueller. "It is a fact," says he, "that (as the arrangement now stands) Ulysses is not ashamed to attend three dinnerparties on one evening." First, he had a dinner engagement with Agamemnon, which of course he keeps, (B. IX. 90;) so prudent a man could not pos sibly neglect an invitation from the commander of the forces. Even in free and independent England, the Sovereign does not ask you to dinner, but commands your attendance. Next he dines with Achilles, (B. IX. 221;) and finally with Diomed, (B. XI. 578.) Now, Diomed was a swell of the first magnitude, and a man of fashion, as

may be seen in the Troilus and Cressida of Shakspeare, (who took his character from tradition, and makes him the Greek rival of Troilus.) He therefore pushes his dinner as far towards "to-morrow," as was well possible; so that it is near morning before that dinner is over. And the sum of the Ithacan's enormities is thus truly stated by Mueller:-" Deny it who will, the son of Laertes accepts three distinct feeds, between the sunset suppose of Monday and the dawn of Tuesday!"

This is intolerable. Yet perhaps apologists will say, (for some people will varnish any thing,) "If the man had three dinners in one day, often, perhaps, in three days he had but one dinner!" For ourselves, we frankly confess, that if there is one man in the Grecian camp whom we should have believed capable of such a thing, it is precisely this cunning Ulysses. Mueller insists on calling him the "noble" Ulysses; but that is only to blacken his conduct about the dinners. To our thinking, his nearest representative in modern times is "Sixteen-string Jack," whose life may be read in the Newgate Calendar. What most amuses ourselves in the business, is Mueller's so stealthily pursuing Ulysses through two books of the Iliad, in order to watch how many dinner-parties he attended! And there is a good moral in the whole discovery; for it shows all knaves, that, though hidden for 3000 years, their tricks are sure to be found out at the last!

In general, it is undeniable that some of the German objections to the present arrangement, as a possible Homeric arrangement, are valid. For instance, the following, against the present position of the duel between Paris and Menelaus :-" This duel, together with the perfidious shot of Pandarus, and the general engagement which follows, all belonging to the same epos, wear the appearance of

being perfectly insulated where they now stand, and betray no sort of connexion with any of the succeeding cantos. In the 'Agisia Aiμndous, which forms the 5th canto, the whole incident is forgotten, and is never revived. The Grecians make no complaint of the treachery practised; nor do the gods (ex officio the avengers of perjury) take any steps to punish it. Not many hours after the duel, Hector comes to his brother's residence; but neither of them utters one word about the recent duel; and as little about what had happened since the duel, (though necessarily unknown to Paris.) Hector's reproaches, again, to Paris, for his lâcheté, are in manifest contradiction to the single combat which he had so recently faced. Yet Paris takes no notice whatever of the energy manifested by himself. And as to his final evasion, that was no matter of reproach to him, since it was the work of a goddess. Besides, when he announces his intention to Hector of going again to the field of battle, who would not anticipate from him a proposal for re establishing the interrupted duel? Yet not a syllable of all that. Now, with these broad indications to directour eyes upon the truth, can we doubt that the duel, in connexion with the breach of truce, and all that now fills the third and fourth books"-[in a foot-note Mueller adds-" and also the former half of the second book"]" originally composed an independent epos, which belonged, very probably, to an earlier stage of the Trojan war, and was first thrust, by the authorized arrangers of the Iliad, into the unhappy place it now occupies-namely, in the course of a day already far overcrowded with events?"

In the notes, where Mueller replies to some objections, he again insists upon the impossibility, under the supposition that Homer had authorized the present arrangement, of his never afterwards making the Greeks allude to the infraction of the treaty-especially when Hector proposes a second duel between himself and some one of the Grecian chiefs. Yet, perhaps, as regards this particular feature (namely, the treachery) of the duel, we would suggest, that, as the interposition of Venus is not to be interpreted in any foolish allegorical way, (for the battle interferences of the gods are visible

and undisguised,) doubtless the Greeks, not less than the Trojans, understood the interruption as in effect divine; after which, the act of Pandarus is covered by the general apology, no matter in what light Pandarus might have meant it. Even in the first Iliad, it is most childish to understand the whispering of Minerva to Achilles as an allegorical way of expressing, that his good sense or his prudence arrested his hand. Nonsense! that is not Homer's style of thinking, nor the style of Homeric ages. Where Mars, upon being wounded, howls, and (instead of licking the man who offered him this insult) shows the white feather and limps off in confusion, do these critics imagine an allegory? What is an allegoric howl?-or what does a cur sneaking from a fight indicate symbolically? The Homeric simplicity speaks plainly enough, Venus finds that her man is likely to be beaten-which, by the way, surprises us; for a stout young shepherd, like Paris, ought to have found no trouble in taking the conceit out of an elderly diner-out, such as Menelaus. And perhaps with his mauleys he would. Finding, however, how the affair was likely to go, Venus withdraws her man, Paris does not come to time; the umpires quarrel; the mob breaks the ring; and a battleroyal ensues. But the interference of Venus must have been palpable: and this is one of the circumstances in the Iliad which satisfies us that the age of Troy was removed by several generations from Homer. To elder days, and men fancied more heroic than those of his own day-(a fancy which Homer expressly acknowledges)—he might find himself inclined to ascribe a personal intercourse with the gods; and he would find every where an audience favouring this belief. A generation of men that often rose themselves to divine honours, might readily be conceived to mix personally with the gods. But no man could think thus of his own contemporaries, of whom he must know that the very best were liable to indigestion, and suspected often to have schirrous livers. Really no: a dyspeptic demigod it makes one dyspeptic to think of!

Meantime the duel of Paris is simply overlooked and neglected in the subsequent books of the Iliad: it is nowhere absolutely contradicted by im

plication but other cases have been noticed in the Iliad, which involve direct contradictions, and therefore argue either that Homer in those "naps" which Horace imputes to him, slumbered too profoundly, or that counterfeits got mixed up with the true bullion of the Iliad. Amongst other examples pointed out by Heyne or by Tranceson, the following deserve notice :

1. Pylæmenes the Paphlagonian, is 'killed by Menelaus, (II. v. 579-590:) but further on, (Il. xi. 643-658) we find the poor man pretty well in his health, and chief mourner at the funeral of his son Harpalion.

2. Sarpedon is wounded in the leg by Tiepolemus, (Il. v. 628, &c.) and an ugly wound it is, for the bone is touched, so that an operation might be looked for. Operation indeed! Two days after he is stumping about upon his pins, and "operating" upon other people, (II. XII. 290, &c.) The contradiction, if it really is one, was not found out until the improved chronology of the Iliad was settled. Our reason for doubting about the contradiction is simply this :-Sarpedon, if we remember, was a son of Jupiter; and Jupiter might have a particular salve for wounded legs.

3. Teucer, however, was an undeniable mortal. Yet he (Il. vIII. 324) is wounded desperately in the arm by Hector. His neuré is smashed, which generally is taken to mean his bowstring; but some surgical critics understand it as a sinew of his arm. At all events it was no trifle; his brother, Telamonian Ajax, and two other men, carry off the patient groaning heartily, probably upon a shutter, to the hospital. He at least is booked for the doctor, you think. Not at all. Next morning he is abroad on the field of battle, and at his old trade of thumping respectable men, (1. x11. 387.)

4. The history of Vulcan, and his long day's tumble from the sky, in Il. 1. 586, does not harmonize with the account of the same accident in II. XIX. 394.

5. As an inconsistency not in the Iliad internally, but between the Iliad and the Odyssey, it has often been noticed, that in the former this same Vulcan is married to Venus, whilst in the Odyssey his wife is one of the graces.

"As upon earth," says Mueller,

"so in Olympus, the fable of the Iliad is but loosely put together; and we are not to look for any very severe succession of motives and results, of promises and performances, even amongst the gods. In the first Iliad, Thetis receives a Jovian guarantee (viz., Jove's authentic nod) on behalf of her offended son Achilles, that he will glorify him in a particular way, and the way was by making the Trojans victorious, until the Grecians should see their error, and propitiate the irritated hero. Mindful of his promise, Jove disposes Agamemnon, by a delusive dream, to lead out the Grecian host to battle. At this point, however, Thetis, Achilles, and the ratifying nod, appear at once to be blown thereby out of the Jovian remembrance. The duel between Paris and Menelaus takes place, and the abrupt close of that duel by Venus, apparently with equal indifference on Jove's part to either incident. Even at the general meeting of the gods, in the fourth book, there is no renewal of the proposal for the glorifying of Achilles. It is true, that Jove, from old attachments, would willingly deliver the stronghold of Priam from ruin, and lead the whole feud to some peaceful issue. But the passionate female divinities, Juno and Minerva, triumph over his moderation, and the destruction of Troy is finally determined, Now, grant that Jove wanted firmness for meeting the furious demands of the goddesses, by a candid confession of his previous promise to Thetis, still we might have looked for some intimation that this degradation of himself in the eyes of a confiding suppliant had cost him a struggle. But no; nothing of the kind. In the next great battle the Trojans are severely pressed, and the Greeks are far enough from feeling any regret for the absence of Achilles. Nay, as if expressly to show that Achilles was not wanted, Diomed turns out a trump of the first magnitude; and a son of Priam describes him pointedly as more terrific than Pelides, the goddess-born! And, indeed, it was time to retreat before the man who had wounded Mars himself, making him yell with pain, and howl like "ten thousand mortals." This Mars, however-he at least must have given some check to the advancing Greeks? True, he had so; but not as fulfilling any Jovian counsels,