Their prerogatives did not ftop here. They had another refource in the method of spelling their words. For instance, if they divided their genitive cafes in this manner, Arge-wos, then the fecond fyllable is fhort, and the patronymic must be formed in ons but, if the digamma were added to the former fyllable, that fyllable became a quafi-diphthong; and, being long, required the patronymic to be formed in ads. It appears, therefore, that the fame word in Homer's verfe has four feveral metres: 1. ār | pĚ | wĭ | dãw | č. 2. át | fě | wì | dia. 3. āτ | pēw | i | a | daw | č. 4. aτ | piw | i | ade. Such are the liberties which poets enjoy; Sed Graci, quibus eft nibil negatum, et quos Ages Ages decet fonare. α Mr. K. however, has fome fcruples concerning the latter termination, and thinks it not improbable that the genitive awo might, by apocope, be reduced to aw. Mr. K. ought to prove that the Greeks ever ended a word with the digamma. Till this be done, his Areεwidaw, autow, &c. make rather an uncouth figure. In antient declination, the digamma, according to Mr. K. appears to have been the characteristic letter of the oblique cases in the mafculine and neuter words terminating in os and , and in the feminine in w, ws, us, a orn, though it is only wanting to fuftain the metrical quantity in the Æolic genitives plural, fuch as, wupa Fav, &c. The genitive of mafculines in os was at first oro, (in lonic, 010,) then oo, o, and or, which afterward became ou, On the ftrength of this hypothefis, Mr.K. infead of Ιλίου προπάροιθεν and ανεψιου κταμένοιο, writes Ειλίου ο προπάροιθεν and ανεψιστο κλαμένοιο. (Ought it not to be, *TαμáоFO?) If Mr. K. had recollected two paffages in the Odyffey, we suppose, he would have applied the fame fpecific: Δώρα παρ' Αιόλογο μμεγαλήτερος. Βῆν εἰς Αἰόλο το κλυτα δώματα, Od. K. 36. 60. In a fimilar manner, he reduces the instances, in which occurs, to the regular inflection, OFO. From the equivocal power which the digamma poffeffes of lengthening either of the fyllables to which it is joined, pro ceeds that inverfion of profody which is obfervable in fome words, as in veFos*, Kęoví Fovos, which, in modern orthography, may indifferently be refolved into nes, ves, and Kpoviovos, Κρονίωνος. Mr. K. examines the declinations of many other words, with a view to his fyftem of Homeric profody. it would be * This cannot be denied to be a moit convenient privilege for a poet, who, by the aid of fuch a licence, could of the fame word make a pyrrichius, an iambus, and a trochee. By a fimilar process, Mr.K. iolves the phaenomena of μιμάντος and μεμαώτες. 15 too too tedious to give all his inftances in detail. The participles he fuppofes to have originally ended in avs, us and ovs. He diffents therefore from Dawes, (and, as it should seem, from Markland,) who believed that all these words once had in the nominative. Sect. III. The author endeavours to rectify the orthography of Homer's words, by reftoring the afpirates according to the directions of the metre. Mr. K. would replace the paffage in the ninth Iliad which Ariftarchus expunged, thinking, perhaps, that Phoenix's intention of murdering his father was too horrid an idea to be prefented to the reader's mind. To introduce this difcarded paffage, however, Mr. Knight would himfelf expunge the 457th verfe, and, in its place, immediately infert the four banifhed verfes. In this fection, alfo, Mr. K. tries his hand on many Homeric words, which have been reckoned the cruces Grammaticorum. *Ατη, ασάμην, ἄσαιο. ἀματος, καᾶτος. ἀνήνοθεν, ἐπενήνοθε. δίω, δίος. ζεύς. δείδω, δειδίσσω, δεινος, are a few words, out of a much greater number, which Mr. K. attempts to analyfe, to reduce to their antient etymology, and to restore to their primitive orthography. We shall infert one fpecimen of his skill in this way: EwEFOΣ: wherefore the first syllable is frequently long and the fecond fhort. Barnes, indeed, fuppofed that siya, at the beginning of a line, was an amphibrachys, equal to a dactyle; and Clarke, fill more abfurdly, that it ought to be pronounced as a fpondee, by a fort of metathefis, dy. The learned author of the book on Rhythm would, in one place, divide the intermediate long fyllable in a manner which I avow myself incapable of exactly comprehending t; and, in another, elide the first fyllablet, as the Dorians frequently did; but, nevertheless, without extending the third in confequence of it, as he must do to fill the metre. All these refined conjectures are, however, fuperfluous, if we read the word in its original form and antient letters. In fome paffages, indeed, we find it in one fyllable, as, Τώ δ' ἕως μὲν ρ' ἐπέτον.--- § Εἶχε βίη ὁ δὲ τέως μὲν ἐνὶ μεγάροις Φυλάκιο 11. Εως μὲν γαρ τε θέουσι But in each of these there is fomething redundant. In the two first the particle encumbers the fenfe as well as the metre; and in the third, the pronoun fhould be changed from to the old regular form — +EFOΣ +'EN OPTYTIHI (a). The fourth has been corrupted Lib. Sing. de Rythm. Græcor. p. 37-' Odyff. A. 120.' Ibid. p. 142.' § Odyff. B. 148.' Odyff. E. 123.' Iliad. P. 727.' (a) Did Mr. K. ever meet with the pronoun thus cut off, and nothing left of it but the afpirate? (Rev.) by by two different readings, μiv and yag being (as has frequently hap pened) joined in the text, the first of which is, in this inftance, the beft ΓΕΡΟΣ ΜΕΝ ΤΕ ΘΕΡΟΥΣΙ • In another paffage of the Odysseys or is written for EFOE. Ἧσθιε δ ̓ ὡς ὅτ ̓ ἀοιδὸς ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν άειδεν, * inftead of ΗΣΘΙΕ Δ' ΕΡΟΣ AFOIAO and though [Thomas] Bentley found we in a MS. Clarke did not chufe to adopt it, because Euftathius and the Scholiaft have ὡς ὅτε. In the fourth fection, the author farther purfues his employment of examining the derivations and declenfions of Homer's words, and of rectifying, here and there, fome flight corruptions which he apprehends to have crept into the text of his favourite poet. He properly enough obferves that the writers, who fucceeded the Macedonian conqueft, and confidered the later Attic as the univerfal dialect, and ftandard for purity, were not likely to form very accurate notions of the ftyle of Homer; for instead of confidering their own grammatical flections as corruptions of his, they confidered his as licentious or poetical deviations from their own; wherefore they began their researches at the wrong end, and confequently, the farther they purfued them, the farther they were from the truth." Mr.K. then produces a paffage, of which he pronounces the general fenfe injured: This is in the 22d Iliad, where Hector, certain of his death, on finding himself oppofed, unaffifted and alone, to Achilles, fays, (v.300.) Νῦν δὲ δὴ ἐγγύθι μοι θάνατος κακὸς, οὐδέ τ' ἄνευθεν • Which in its prefent form literally fignifies-Evil death is near me-not even feparate-nor refuge-for it was indeed formerly agreeable to Jupiter and Apollo, who before cordially defended me- but now Fate overtakes me. Instead of which, by only dropping the conjunction from the negative, and tranfpofing a particle, we have Νῦν δὲ δὴ ἐγδύθι μοι θάνατος καπός, οὐ δέ τ ̓ ἄνευθεν Οὐκ ἀλέη γάρ και η ρα πάλαι τόγε φίλερον ἦεν, &c. Evil death is near me--not even feparate; for no refuge.—It was, indeed, formerly agreeable to Jupiter and Apollo, &c. &c. We here take the liberty of ftating a trifling difficulty that occurs to us. Is the particle afpirated? Or ought it to have the digamma prefixed? Or is the delay, which may be supposed to take place in confequence of the paufe, fufficient to make the fhort fyllable yap long? For unless one of these three fuppofitions be allowed, we frankly confefs that, to our eyes and ears, the fecond foot of the verfe feems very like a trochee. Now that his hand is engaged in this business, Mr. K. very liberally dispenses the digamma to all the words which want it; infomuch that he prefixes it even to apirov, and will not fuffer the first fyllable to be long, becaufe all the MSS. and editions read iluvolo pisau without elifion! It is impoffible to follow the learned author through this fection, unless we nearly transcribe the whole. It confifts of twenty-four examples, each of which contains two or more words, alike in their modern appearance: but, by the help of declenfions, conjugations, and (above all,) the infertion of afpirates and digammas, Mr. K. difcriminates their meaning and pronunciation. We cannot fay, for our part, that we feel any lively approbation of Mr. K.'s exertions on this fubject; we fhall therefore copy two of his examples without any animadverfions of our own: < The forms and flexions of thefe verbs are obviously pointed out by the fenfe and metre. From the firft came AHMOƐ, or AEFMOY, a people; and from the fourth, probably, duos or AETMOE, fat, which fome antient grammarians, however, derived from daíw or AAFN, to burn *; in which case it must have been written AEFMOE; and this may poffibly be right. XIX. 1. Aç, gen. 10s leo ΛΙΕΣ, gen. ΛΙΓΟΣ. 2. λις, gen. λίτος Ιαυίς ΛΙΝΣ, gen. ΛΙΝΤΟΣ. The first occurs only in the nominative and accufative fingular in Homer; the latter of which is a † in our prefent copies whereas it ought to be AIFA according to the rule of flexion here stated. In a paffage of Callimachus, however, cited in the Venetian fcholia, we have the dative plural, that is, AIFEEI, which proves that the N, in the accufative, is a corruption, introduced to sustain the fyllable rendered defective by the lofs of the F. I have ventured to fuppofe that the N ought to be added in the fecond, not only because it is a word of the fame fignification and etymology as AINON, but because this letter has been dropped, as before obferved, out of many words, which in antient infcriptions are formed with it.' He In Example XXII. Mr. Knight quarrels with the word pupa, (which occurs in the editions of Homer ‡ for defence,) because igua does not fignify to defend, but to draw. therefore would fubftitute puua; or, as he would write it, PTFMA. To this emendation we beg leave to make two . . Schol. Ven. in Il. ☺. 140.' ‡ II. A. 137. + II. A. 480.' objections: objections-firft, Mr. K. cannot prove that púw and pow have not originally the fame meaning:-secondly, he is bound to produce an inftance of the word puua in Homer himself:But what need of alteration? Mr. K. confeffes that the word qua is used by later writers to fignify defence; and is not Sophocles one of these later writers? Yes: but luckily the verse from Ajax, Πρὸς ἔρυμα Τρώων, will equally admit ρύμα. Les Mr. K., then, amend the following passages : Æfchyl. Eumenid. 204. Ερυμα τι χώρας καὶ πόλεως σωτήριον. Euripid. Med. 602. Φῦναι τυράννους παῖδας, ἔρυμα δώμασι. Α'λλ', ὦ λιπούσα, Τμώλον, ἔρυμα Λυδίας. From guua is formed the adjective iguuvos, which occurs in Euripides Helen. 68, and three times in Lycophron. Homer alfo employs the epithet iguainlons, but that Mr. K. alters to weinions for it is probable, he thinks, that fome copiers or ftonecutters first changed PTFMA to PYEMA, and that the next transcribers, or readers, not knowing what to make of ΡΥΕΜΑ, changed it to ἔρυμα. Thus the Greeks corrupted their language by the addition of a word of nought. In the last example, Mr. K. commits two imall mistakes. He makes σῶσιν in Herodotus to be a contraâtion of ΣΟΡΟΥΣΙΝ, and accufes Valckenær of making it an abbreviation of aboua:but Valckenær fays nothing of this fort; he only observes that it is put for above. The truth is, aw is the primitive of anew, as daw of aλnow, xvw of now, vw of view: but the Ionians could never contradt πόνουσιν into σῶσιν. If fuch a contraction exifted in any dialect, it would be in the Doric. σήθουσιν. Sect. V. contains Mr. K.'s fyftem of the flexions of the verbs, with fome remarks on Dr. Clarke and Lord Monboddo. Thofe who wish to know the progrefs and detail of these great difcoveries, will confult the printed works of these learned perfons, (Hemfterhuis, Valckenær, Damm, &c.) particularly the Analogia Græca of Lennep. I fhall here only give the refult of them, in a fhort table, fhowing how the middle voice and the fecond futures and Abrifts have been formed out of different themes of the fame verbs, only fragments of which have continued in ufe. These fragments I piace under their proper heads, and with the proper explanations, leaving the fpaces of all the obfolete forms, which is the theme itself, void.' Mr. K. then gives us a paradigm of the indicative and infinitive modes in the active and paffive voice. We fhall be contented with reprefenting the indicative mode; at the fame time begging pardon of Mr. K. for spoiling the look of his scheme, and affuring him that we shall faithfully adhere to his fyftem. |