Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 28:112 (Oct 1871)
Article: Prehistoric Literature
Author: William Arnold Stevens

BSac 28:112 (Oct 1871) p. 609

Prehistoric Literature

Prop. W. A. Stevens

Late years have done much in the way of research and criticism to throw light on the literary beginnings of nations. Despite the demands of modern literature and science our age is busy as never before with the products of primitive thought. There is a vast reading public with the Iliad in its hands in the noble English of Bryant and of Derby; there are repeated versions of the Scandinavian Sagas, of the German Lay of the Nibelungs; Müller is toiling to render accessible to us the songs of the remote Hindu Rig-vêda; Tennyson interprets anew the Celtic legends of Arthur; the Occident and Orient, the steppes of Russia and the wilds of Tartary are explored for such poetic relics as they may have preserved. We design in the following pages to bring together, and appropriate to use, some results of comparatively recent criticism in the field of prehistoric literature. The discussion may prove of incidental value to the student of early English poetry; it will deal directly and especially with the question concerning the literary character of the Homeric poems; it will assist to apprehend more clearly the real nature of a favorite rationalistic theory of biblical interpretation.

BSac 28:112 (Oct 1871) p. 610

Such a discussion can hardly avoid reference to the poems of Homer at the outset. For it is to Homeric studies that we are chiefly indebted for the most influential movement in literary and historical criticism of the present century. That the result and positive value of this movement are still sufficiently far from being recognized, we need not look far for proof. Mr. Gladstone’s Juventus Mundi is a confirmatory instance. Commend itself as it may to our acceptance as Homeric fruit from modern soil with modern methods, it is yet in its spirit an exponent of an old school of thought, and in so far, is a century behind its time. It shows in this respect little improvement on the earlier and larger work of which it is an abridged revision. There are some considerations on the date and origin of the Homeric poems, which, although not demonstrated facts, have a generally admitted value, that Mr. Gladstone has omitted to recognize. Several of the more important conclusions at which he arrives are seriously vitiated by this defect of view. It must be admitted, however, he has re-wrought old mines to good purpose, striking new veins, and smelting over ancient slag-heaps, with a considerable product of solid ingots. The Juventus Mundi rightly treats of Homer as “historic song.” Homer “has probably told us more about the world and its inhabitants at his own epoch than any historian that ever lived.” Gladstone’s work accordingly becomes a valuable common-place book of fact and inference bearing on the worship, social life,...