torian, however exact, who can compare in this respect with. Homer,' (p.78.) he offers the present vindication to the public.

We shall waive a positive decision on the merits of this grand literary question; giving only a short analysis of Mr. Morritt's treatise, and some specimens of the scholar-like manner in which he has proposed and conducted his argument.

He first contends that chronological accuracy is not essential to the establishment of facts; and that the chronology of Homer is consistent with itself, as far as it goes; as well as his whole story, though corrupted by others. The proof of the probable cause of the Trojan war is furnished in the very analogous story of Dermot of Leinster and O'Rourk, in Mitford's History of Greece, Vol. I. ch. 1. sect. 4- The bond of connection of the Grecian army must be sought in the preponderance of the House of Atreus. Thucydides, so far from doubting, affirms the fact; he was aware of all the obnoxious circumstances relative to the manners of the heroic ages; and yet he never considered them as objections to the truth of Homer's story. Mr. M. does not allow that Homer's silence was a proof that no correspondence existed between Greece and the army. As to the age of Helen, no inferences can be drawn from a chronology so imperfect. The general consistency of Homer evinces rather his truth than his ingenuity; and the names of his heroes were not applied merely to creatures of his imagination. Mr. Bryant's conjectures on the country of Homer are said to be unsupported and inadmissible.

These are the heads of argument, which are discussed with erudition and ability. The recapitulation of the whole is subjoined:

From the thorough destruction of his supposed series of evidence, I come to a conclusion diametrically opposite to Mr. Bryant's. If Homer bears such a semblance of truth; if Varro and Justin do not refute his veracity; if the grounds of the war were probable and natural, the men engaged in it, and the conduct of it such as might be expected; if Thucydides, Diodorus, and Herodotus, both confirm and account for it; if the accounts given of the numbers and ships of the Greeks are credible, and if their proceedings in Troas, as far as are recorded, are consonant to nature; if their correspondence with Greece and the age of Helen, and of the Lovers and Suitors, all prove nothing against the fact; if the objection about the Arcadian mariners is without any foundation; if the foss and rampart were such as might easily be destroyed, and the topographical objections every where founded on mistaken notions, as I shall now endeavour to prove; it follows that all conclusions drawn from such premises are annihilated, and therefore that Troy may have existed notwithstanding the objections of Mr. Bryant. There seems besides to be still Les reason for supposing it to have existed in Egypt. Conjectures

upon

upon Homer's life and writings may be answered by other conjectures, but in reality as they prove nothing, they need not be answered at all; Homer's acquaintance with Egypt is slight ground for such an inference; of the writers who treated the subject, only one (Phantasia) is said to be an Egyptian, and her name confutes the story. Not one is mentioned as placing Troy out of Phrygia either before or since, so that if it belonged to Egypt, such a concurrence in favour of one particular spot is wholly incredible. Therefore we must either suppose Phantasia wrote on a Greek story, or that Homer, Syagrius, Dictys, Dares, and other Greeks, wrote on an Egyptian one, and both ideas are equally absurd. The ancient traditions for ever are in contradiction with respect to the particulars, many different accounts are transmitted, but most of them are subsequent to Homer, whose consistency bears great internal marks of truth, and not one tradition or story, either antient or modern, ever removed Homer's Ilium to Egypt, till the attempt of Mr. Bryant. If I have accounted for the difficulties which he finds in respect to the Greek names and Grecian worship introduced by Homer into Phrygia; if the names said to be borrowed by Homer from the deities, were, in his time, probably the common names of his country; if the Egyptian derivation of Agamemnon is without proof; and if his own authorities, so far from assisting him when they are fairly quoted, really disprove his arguments; if the memorials found in the different parts of the world, and the deification of Homer's heroes are really confirmations of the received opinion, the consequence follows that we have no sort of ground, from any argument Mr. Bryant has used, to suppose that the scenes of the Iliad were originally foreign to Phrygia, but we have many unanswerable reasons to believe the reverse. Having shewn therefore, as I trust, that Ilium did not exist in Egypt; having before shewn that there is no reason to doubt the ancient story concerning the war in Phrygia, it shall be my effort to convince the reader that it did exist, and in the very situation where Homer has placed it.'

In the second Part, Mr. Morritt enters into the investigation of the real Site of Troy and the Trojan war; following, in a great degree, the light held out by M. Chevalier, who had been his predecessor in the same pursuit, having been employed for that purpose by M. de Choiseul-Gouffier, the French Ambassador to the Porte. It does not appear that any conference had taken place between Mr. M. and M. Chevaliers nor that they were personally known to each other. The latter's description and map of the Troad were of course consulted by Mr. M. on the spot :-but Homer was his guide.

After some remarks on the nature of the plain, and the rivers Simois and Scamander; having arrived at Bounar-bachi, the Turkish village, near to the supposed site of Troy, the travellers visited the sources of the last mentioned iver. Mr. M. (referring to an accurate engraving) observes:

1

The morning after this, our first object was to examine the na ture of the fountains below the village, from which we took the adjoined view. The cold spring gushes out from four or five crevices at the foot of the rock, which forms the foreground of this picture. At the small distance here delineated, another spring arises, which, at the time I was there, was of considerable warmth. Its waters are even now received into a marble bason, like those of Homer's Scamander, and in that part of the bason where the water enters, the temperature is scarcely of less heat than that of the warm spring at Bristol. The Turks who had attended us from Bounarbachi, confirmed the assertion of Chevalier, that the water was considerably warmer during frost, and steamed very visibly. If this was the Scamander, then the Scaan gate was near the springs, but I shall say more of this, when I come to consider the situation of the city. After examining what related to the city, we followed the course of this stream, riding along the foot of the hills which bound the plain to the south and west. The warm and cold springs very soon unite their waters, and roll along in the plain with a beautifully clear current. At the foot of the hills below Erkissiqui, the plain becomes marshy, and is over'grown with sedges and rushes; descending thence into the plain we crossed the Scamander over a bridge, which we had before passed in coming from Alexandria. The river here after winding through the marsh changes its course, and runs down a valley on the left in a perfectly straight canal. The ground on each side of this canal is thrown up, and affords the clearest conviction of its having been the work of art. From hence, therefore, guided by Chevalier, we attempted to trace the ancient channel: A winding bed, in which some water still trickles when the Scamander is full, immediately caught our eye; it is of the same size with the adjoining part of the stream where it branches off, and by following the windings of its banks we arrived soon after at those of the larger river, into which it has formerly fallen. At and below the conflux, marsh, myrtles, osiers, and aquatic plants, grow in abundance: I have already noticed the high banks of sand through which the larger river flows: I will add that in summer this last is often dry, except where the sea which inundates the marshes flows in at the mouth of it. It is always muddy, and rolls down stones and fragments from the mountains. But the other, notwithstanding severe rains, was still, when I saw it, "like crystal clear," and in summer its channel is never dry; a property which, in this climate, might well justify the epithets of ayna vowe, &c. I own, throughout every part of this description, I cannot recollect any one local expression of Homer, which is not accurate at this day, if applied to the spot I have described.'

We have then the following very interesting piece of topography, in confirmation of the locality of Troy and the Homeric description:

Returning then to the sources of the spring at Bounatbachi, let us consider the nature of the ground that rises above them: A short slope rises on the east, and Bounarbachi stands on the flat table land above it; this plain farther east terminates at a deep dell, where

the

the larger river (the Simois) enters the lower plain; on the south east a pointed and high hill rises terminated on three sides by high rocks, and the Simois rolls at the foot of these under a row of equally stupendous precipices on the opposite side. Now, assuming the proposition that this place was Troy, let us draw the wall that defended it from precipice to precipice; we here then have the Acropolis surrounded by the rocks, down which one part of the council would have precipitated the wooden horse; below, on the plain round Bounarbachi we shall have the city, which from its elevation above the lower plain would be a windy; the wall would on three sides be defended by the precipices, and would then run along the brow of the slope below Bounarbachi; in the part immediately above the springs would be the Scaan gate, and the platform on which Bounarbachi stands extending thence towards the west, the wall would pass from the top of the lower slope to the foot of the higher one that rises towards the citadel, across the ridge of a low hill, in that place level with the foot of the wall; this therefore being close to the Scæan gate, in our supposed situation, answers in every respect to the place of wild fig trees, go, and as it runs out towards the plain, the Trojans would pass it in running thence to the Scean gate *. From this site being allotted to Troy, the reader looking at the map, will observe, that in viewing the shore from the platform of Bounarbachi, and even from the citadel, the eastern part of the plain is hid by the hills about Tchiblak and those on the opposite side of the vale of Thimbreck; and this Homer tells us, by inference at least, was the case with Troy. Now against so strange and very extraordinary a coincidence of circumstances, can we suppose that Homer had not this situation in his mind when he described Troy?

But a still farther proof strengthens our conviction; in Strabo's time, besides the tombs of Ajax, Achilles, and most of the other warriors, the tomb of syetes, a monument of the highest antiquity, being mentioned by Homer as existing before the Trojan war, was shewn. Fortunately Strabo + informs us where to look for this tomb. It was seen in his time on the road leading to Alexandria from modern Ilium. This was the road by which we entered the plain first, and a high conical barrow is erected upon a hill, immediately commanding, in the most advantageous point of view, the situation of Bounarbachi on the right, and the low part of the plain, the Hellespont, and the naval station, on the left. It is at a considerable distance from Bounarbachi, but not cut off from it by the plain between the rivers where the army was drawn up. This situation bears every mark of Æsyetes's tomb; it was called such in the time of Demetrius of Scepsis, it also is a oharr‡ a pointed. hill, a sort of tomb usual in that age, and exists still to confirm Strabo and illustrate Homer. Of that of Myrinna there remain no traces, and the tomb of Ilus, which Chevalier marks in his map

* IIze EgIVERY EDσEVON. Hom. Il. passim.'

+ Strabo, 1. xiii. p. 599.'

Chevalier on the Plain of Troy, page 24.'

O 3

near

near the conflux of the rivers, was in that state that it required, he says, as accurate an observation as he took of it to ascertain its ori ginal form. In this there is, I think, a little imagination; for, though I am convinced that the tomb of Ilus was very near the place he allots it, yet I could not ascertain its precise situation; there are unequal mounds in this part near the rivers, some of which may be the remains of such a monument, but their appearance is, to me, by no means conclusive. The fact is that from their situations the tombs of Ilus and Myrinna have been much less likely to last than that of Æsyetes, since the ground near the monument of Ilus is marshy and wet, and the sepulchre of Myrinna✶ is described as standing before the city, in the plain where the armies are drawn up. Local reasons may therefore be assigned for their disappearance, and indeed after the days of their celebrity, in the constant cultivation of a fertile plain, the labours of the plough would greatly contribute to deform and efface them. This we know happens for ever to monuments of this sort, whilst we see others as durable as the ground they stand on. At the distance of time in which Homer places the foundation of these, and the situation he allots them, these circumstances need no apology; the wonder is that any thing remains.’

Mr. M.'s concluding observations are equally comprehensive and forcible:

Let us next recollect the succession of events which took place before, during, and after the war of Troy; and we shall find that together with Homer, Mr. Bryant's hypothesis annihilates the whole of the early history of Greece. Before the war we are acquainted with most of the heroes, their birth, descent, and intermarriages; Thus Agamemnon and Menelaus marry two sisters, the daughters of Tyndarus, and rule over Mycena and Sparta. Ulysses marries Penelope the daughter of Icarius; and traditions, and monuments relative to these facts, and a hundred similar to them, were found in the country of Sparta, Ithaca, and Argolis. We know independent of the siege the private history of all the great families of Greece during this time; many of these are slightly alluded to by Homer, and are preserved by other Authors. Thus, Clytemnestra and Egiale plotted against their husbands during their absence; Penelope and Telemachus were oppressed by enemies till the return of Ulysses; Pyrrhus was educated at Scyros by his mother's father, till he succeeded to the command and honours of Achilles; and different stories of this sort all connected with the Iliad, and preserved by other means, shew that it contains only a few links of the great chain of events, which Homer's hands have preserved from the rust that covers the rest. After the Iliad, we know the lot of the heroest, we know

The tomb of Myrinna was in the plain, περίδρομος ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθας “accessible with ease on all sides," therefore more likely to be effaced by the causes assigned. Hom. Il. ii. ver. 812.'

For instance; the particulars of the murder of Pyrrhus by Orestes, that of Clytemnestra, the sufferings of Electra and Iphigenia, &c, all which are the frequent theme of the Greek tragedians.'

the