wounded he leant on a soldier nigh,

And the victory just was won,—

For he heard aloud the cheering cry,

'They run! they run! they run!'—

There appear to have been initials affixed to these lines, but they are effaced, as well as many words and letters which I have rather guessed at than read. These paintings belonged to a great-uncle of mine, Malborough Parsons Stirling, Colonel of the 36th Foot, who died Governor of the Island of Pondicherry, and who, it is believed, received them from his friend, Sir Samuel Auchmuty; but nothing positive is known of their history, farther than that they are believed to have been the work of some personal friend or aide-de-camp of Wolfe's, present with him at the battle of Quebec. A portion of the sash said to have been worn by him at the time of his death, and saturated with his blood, also accompanied these paintings. This description may enable some of your readers to discover by whom these paintings were executed; to whom they originally belonged; and if there are duplicates of them in existence, where they may be seen.

EDW. AUCHMUTY GLOVER.

NOTES ON HOMER, NO. I.

Homeric Literature.

There has been a very great difficulty in the world of literature, which it were almost vain to think of removing. This difficulty is that usually known as "the Homeric question." After the folios and quartos of the grand old scholars of antiquity; after the octavos of Wolf, Heyne, and Knight; after the able chapters of Grote, and the eloquent volumes of Mure; after the Alexandrian Chorizontes; and after the incidental reflections on the subject scattered through thousands of volumes, it seems almost hazardous, and indeed useless, to offer any more conjectures on "the bard of ages," and (to use the phrase of the novelists) "his birth, education, and adventures." On a consideration of the question, however, it will be seen that (strange fact!) the subject is not yet exhausted; I shall therefore, with your kind assistance, submit a retrospective view of the matter to the readers of "N. & Q.," and afterwards attempt to show what results may be drawn from the united labour of so many minds. I shall then give a résumé, first, of the ancient history bearing on Homer, and, continuing the sketch to the late volumes of Mure, draw my own conclusions, which, after much patient consideration, I must say, appear to be nearer an approximation to the truth, than any theory which has yet been promulgated.

Let us cast our eyes on antiquity. This very much misunderstood period of the earth's progress offers to us the proofs of an appreciation of Homer to which literary history affords but one parallel. The magnificent flights of thought, which the Hellenes could so well accompany, the tone of colouring at once so subdued and so glorious, gained for the unknown poet a reputation everlasting and world and age-wide. But as time fled by, there arose a race of men who wrote poetry as schoolboys do Latin, by judiciously arranging (or vice versâ) appropriate lines from the earlier poets, called Cyclic poets, or cento-makers. The men who wrote thus were, probably, persons either engaged in itinerant vocal pursuits, or regular verse makers, who wrote "on a subject," as our own street writers on the present day. Indeed, I may say, that the state of the rhapsodists of Greece resembles much that of our own "itinerant violinists," as an eminent counsel once apostrophized the class which the excellent judge on the bench named, according to general custom, "blin' fiddlers." The probable reason for the introduction of passages into the original Homeric compositions was the necessity of a novelty. The Cyclic poems are to Homer what the letters of Poplicola, Anti-Sejanus, Correggio, Moderator, and the rest, were to Junius. However, they prove in a remarkable manner how great the excitement regarding "the poet," as Aristoteles calls him, ever continued to be in Hellas.

These gentlemen, whose object was not to disgrace Homer by their puling compositions, but only to practically observe the maxims subsequently instilled by Iago into Roderigo's mind (viz., to "put money in their purse"), were the precursors of another race of writers. In ancient times, we are informed by Tatian,[1] there were many writers on Homer, whose works, it is to be lamented, have perished with the nominal exception of a few fragments,—though, perhaps, scholars will once learn to use those as a clue, and find, as Burges did in the case of Thucydides,[2] that many valuable passages are lying hid in the pages of the lexicographers, who spared themselves the trouble of writing fresh matter, by merely slightly changing the expressions of their sources, and not "bothering" their lexicographical brains by attempting original composition. It is thus, that even the weaknesses of the human mind benefit after ages!

[1] Fabr. Bibl. Græc. II. 1. iii.

[2] Journ. of the Royal Soc. of Literature, vol, ii., New Series, and afterwards in a pamphlet in 1845.

The names furnished us by Tatian are these:—Theagenes of Rhegium (the earliest writer of whom we are cognizant, contemporary with Cambyses); Stesimbrotos of Thasos (contemporary with Pericles);[3] Antimachos of Claros; Herodotos, Dionysios of Olynthos, Ephoros of Cyme; Philochoros of Athens, Metacleides, Chamæleon of Heracleia;[4] Zenodotos of Ephesus, (B.C. 280); Aristophanes of Byzantium (B.C. 264); Callimachus, whose poetry, by the way, is dryer and more vapid than his prose, if the little we have left of him allows us to form an opinion; Crates of Malfus (B.C. 157); Eratosthenes of Cyrene; Aristarchos of Samothrace, and Apollodoros of Athens. The minds or pens of these men in Hellas alone, were occupied with this grand subject; and in Rome, that city of translations and "crib," we find the pens of the scribes were at work, and prolific in prolixity. Besides these authors, there are others whose attempts at illustrating the text of the writers of antiquity have been met in a most