These rectifications ought to have some effect in elevating-first, the rank of Herodotus; secondly, his present attractions. Most certain we are that few readers are aware of the various amusement conveyed from all sources then existing, by this most splendid of travellers. Dr Johnson has expressed in print, (and not merely in the strife of conversation,) the following extravagant idea-that to Homer, as its original author, may be traced back, at least in outline, every tale or complication of incidents now moving in modern poems, romances, or novels. Now, it is not necessary to denounce such an assertion as false, because, upon two separate reasons, it shows itself to be impossible. In the first place, the motive to such an assertion was-to emblazon the inventive faculty of Homer; but it happens that Homer could not invent any thing, small or great, under the very principles of Grecian art. To be a fiction, as to matters of action, (for in embellishments the rule might be otherwise,) was to be ridiculous and unmeaning in Grecian eyes. We may illustrate the Grecian feeling on this point (however little known to eritics) by our own dolorous disappointment when we opened the Alhambra of Mr Washington Irving. We had supposed it to be some real Spanish or Moorish legend connected with that romantic edifice; and, behold! it was a mere Sadler's Wells travesty, (we speak of its plan, not of its execution,) applied to some slender fragments from past days. Such, bat far stronger, would have been the disappointment to Grecian feelings, in finding any poetic (à fortiori, any prose) legend to be a fiction of the writer's-words cannot measure the reaction of disgust. And thence it was that no tragic poet of Athens ever took for his theme any tale or fable not already pre existing in some version, though now and then it might be the least popular version. It was capital as an offence of the intellect, it was lunatic to do otherwise. This is a most important characteristic of ancient taste; and most interesting in its philosophic value for any comparative estimate of modern art, as against ancient. In particular, no just commentary can ever be written on the poetics of Aristotle, which leaves it out of sight. Secondly, it

is evident that the whole character, the very principle of movement, in many modern stories, depends upon sentiments derived remotely from Christianity; and others upon usages or manners peculiar to modern civilization; so as in either case to involve a moral anachronism if viewed as Pagan. Not the colouring only of the fable, but the very incidents, one and all, and the situations, and the perplexities, are constantly the product of something characteristically modern in the circumstances, sometimes for instance in the climate; for the ancients had no experimental knowledge of severe climates. With these double impossibilities before us, of any absolute fictions in a Pagan author that could be generally fitted to anticipate modern tales, we shall not transfer to Herodotus the impracticable compliment paid by Dr Johnson to Homer. But it is certain that the very best co.lection of stories furnished by Pagan funds, lies dispersed through his great work. One of the best of the Arabian Nights, the very best as regards the structure of the plot-viz. the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves-is evidently derived from an incident in that remarkable Egyptian legend, connected with the treasure house of Rhampsinitus. This, except two of his Persian legends, (Cyrus and Darius,) is the longest tale in Herodotus; and by much the best in an artist's sense; indeed, its own remarkable merit, as a fable in which the incidents successively generate each other, caused it to be transplanted by the Greeks to their own country. Vossius, in his work on the Greek historians, and a hundred years later, Valckenaer, with many other scholars, had pointed out the singular conformity of this memorable Egyptian story with several that afterwards circulated in Greece. The eldest of these transfers was undoubtedly the Boeotian_tale (but in days before the name Boeotia existed) of Agamedes and Trophonius, architects, and sons to the King of Orchomenos, who built a treasure-house at Hyria, (noticed by Homer in his ship catalogue,) followed by tragical circumstances, the very same as those recorded by Herodotus. It is true that the latter incidents, according to the Egyptian version-the monstrous device of Rhampsinitus for discovering