chieftains on the shores of the Aegean, were vast unknown deserts, unpeopled, or wandered over by a few rude hunters; which, to the Greeks, were regions of more than Cimmerian darkness, beyond the boundaries of the living world—­men of the loftiest and most powerful understanding are examining, and discussing, and disputing the most minute points which may illustrate the poetry of the blind bard; scholars are elucidating, antiquaries illustrating, philosophers reasoning upon, men of genius transfusing into their native tongues, poets honouring with despairing emulation, the whole mind of educated man feeling the transcendent power of the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey.  Surely, the boasted triumph of poetry over space and time is no daring hyperbole—­surely, it is little more than the boasted reality of truth.

Power of Memory.

It is indeed not easy to calculate the height to which the memory may be cultivated.  To take an ordinary case, we might refer to that of any first-rate actor, who must be prepared, at a very short warning, to “rhapsodize” night after night, parts which, when laid together, would amount to an immense number of lines.  But all this is nothing to two instances of our own day.  Visiting at Naples a gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he informed us that the day before he had passed much time in examining a man, not highly educated, who had learned to repeat the whole Gierusalemme Liberata of Tasso; not only to recite it consecutively, but to repeat any given stanza of any given book; to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance of the sense, either forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first, alternately the odd and even lines—­in short, whatever the passage required, the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could produce it under any form.  Our informant went on to state, that this singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the same manner.  But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland.  No such person can have forgotten that poor, uneducated man, Blind Jamie, who could actually repeat, after a few minutes’ consideration, any verse required from any part of the Bible—­even the obscurest and least important enumeration of mere proper names not excepted.

Origin of the Homeric Poems.