Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/120

he ultimately studied divinity, and was licensed by the presbytery of Edinburgh in 1745. In the same year he joined as a volunteer against the Pretender, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Falkirk. Along with many others he was carried to the castle of Doune, from which, however, he soon effected his escape. In July 1746 Home was pre sented to the parish of Athelstaneford in Haddingtonshire, vacant by the death of Robert Blair, the author of The Grave. There he devoted himself to dramatic literature, and his first production, The Tragedy of Agis, was finished in 1749. He took it to London and submitted it to Garrick for representation at Drury Lane, but it was rejected as unsuitable for the stage. Being but little disappointed, he projected a new work, and having heard a lady sing the ballad of Gil Morice, he formed the idea of The Tragedy of Douglas, which after five years labour he completed, and took to London for Garrick s opinion. It also was rejected, but on his return to Edinburgh his friends resolved that it should be brought out in that city, where it met with over whelming success, in spite of the opposition of the clergy, who suspended one member of the presbytery for a month for having attended its representation. As the author of the tragedy might count on being dealt with yet more severely, Home resigned his charge in 1757, and shortly afterwards he was appointed lecturer in a Presbyterian chapel in Silver Street, London. In 1758 he became private secretary to Lord Bute, then secretary of state; and three years later his patron s influence procured him a pension of 300 per annum. A Letter from a Blacksmith to the Ministers and Elders of the Church of Scotland, in which the manner of public worship in that church is con sidered, published in 1759, has been attributed to his pen. In 1760 Home brought out another tragedy, The Siege of Aquileia, which was put on the stage, Garrick taking the part of ./Emilias. In 1763 he was appointed to the sinecure office of conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere. In 1769 Home s tragedy of The Fatal Discovery had a run of nine nights; Alonzo also (1773) had fair success in the representation ; but his last tragedy, Alfred (1778), was so coolly received that he gave up writing for the stage. From 1767 he resided either at Edinburgh or at a villa which he built at Killuff near his former parish. It was at this time that he wrote his History of the Rebellion of 1745, which appeared in 1802. Home died at Mer- chiston Bank, near Edinburgh, in 1 808, in his eighty-sixth year. Hs was a man of great amiability of character, and numbered among his friends most of the Scottish liter iti of the last century. His writings, while they dis play fervid feeling, and have less artificiality than the works of the poets of his time, are now, with the exception of Douglas, comparatively little known.

The works of Home were collected and published by Henry Mackenzie in 1822 (3 vols. 8vo), but several of his smaller poems seem to have escaped the editor s observation. These are "The Fate of Cresar," " Verses upon Inveraray," " Epistle to the Enrl of Eglintoun," "Prologue on the Birthday of the Prince of Wales, 1759," and several " Epigrams," which are printed in vol. ii. of Original Poems by Scottish Gentlemen, 1762.

HOMEL, or Gomel, a town of Russia in Europe, in the government of Mohiletf, 132 miles S. of Mohiletf , on the highway to Tchernigoff, and on the right bank of the Sosh, which joins the Dnieper about 45 miles further down. It is a place of considerable importance, possessing (according to the St Petersburg Calendar for 1878) a population of 13,030, the suburb of Bielitsa being included. Most of the houses are of wood, but there are a good number of churches, several hospitals, and public schools. Three of the Orthodox churches were built by Rumatitzeff, who lie.s buried in St Peter s. The sugar-refineries are the most im portant of the industrial establishments. A good trade is carried on in the agricultural produce of the surroundiiu dist.ict, partly with Warsaw and partly with Riga. In 1860, when the population amounted to 13,659, there were 3637 Raskolniks (separatists) and 6518 Jews.

Homel, which appears in the older documents as Gomie or Gomi and Gom, is mentioned tor the first time in 1142, when it belonged to the Tchernigoff principality. The first inhabitants were Rodimitchians. In the 12th century we find Izyaslaff Daviditch taking refuge at Homel on his expulsion from Kieff. Along with Tchernigoff the town passed under the power of Lithuania ; but in the 15th century Simeon, son of John of Mozhaisk, to whom it had been entrusted by King Alexander, entered the service of John III. of Moscow, and it was not till 1537 that it was recovered for Sigismund Augustus by Prince Radzivill and a body of dim Tatars. The bailiwick was granted to the Polish grandees ; and by the last of these Prince Tcharovizhski a strong oaken castle was erected. In 1648 the town suffered from the invasion of Bogudan Khmel- nitzki, Avho put to death 1500 Roman Catholics and Jews. In 1655 it passed voluntarily to the side of the insurgent Cossacks, but at the peace of Andrusoff it remained with Poland. It was not incor porated with AVhite Russia till the reign of Catherine II., who assigned it to Field-Marshal Rumantzeff Zadunaiski. In 1834 it was purchased by Prince Paskevitch, and in 1852 it was made the chief town of a district.

HOMER (O/x^pos) was by the general consent of antiquity the first and greatest of poets. Many of the works once attributed to him are lost ; those which remain are the two great epics, the Iliad and. the Odyssey, about thirty Hymns, a mock epic (the Battle of the Frogs and Mice), and some pieces of a few lines each (the so-called Epigrams}.

Ancient Accounts of Homer.—Of the date of Homer probably no record, real or pretended, ever existed. Herodotus (ii. 55) maintains that Hesiod and Homer lived not more than 400 years before his own time, consequently not much before 850 b.c. From the controversial tone in which he expresses himself it is evident that others had made Homer more ancient; and accordingly the dates given by later authorities, though very various, generally fall within the 10th and 11th centuries b.c. It is needless to go into the questions raised by these statements, none of which has any claim to the character of external evidence.^[1]

The extant lives of Homer (edited in Westermann s Vitamin Scriptorcs Greed minores) are eight in number, including the piece called the Contest of Hesiod and Homer. The longest is written in the Ionic dialect, and bears the name of Herodotus, but is certainly spurious. According to Joh. Schmidt (in the Dissertationes philologies Halenses, vol. ii. pp. 97-21 9), it belongs to the time which was fruit ful beyond all others in literary forgeries, viz., the 2d century of our era. The other lives are probably not more ancient. They contain a strange medley, ranging from the simplest outgrowth of popular fancy to the frigid inventions of the age which would not confess itself ignorant of the name of Hecub) s mother. Thus the story that Homer was the son of the Meles (the river on which Smyrna is situated) and the nymph Critheis is evidently a local legend. Another story of a primitive cast describes the manner of Homer s death in the island of los. Seeing some young fishermen on the beach with their nets, he asked them—

" Fishermen sprung of Arcadia, have we aught ?"

To which they answered in a riddle—

" What we caught we left behind, What we caught not we bear with us."

Homer could not explain this, and then he remembered an oracle which had told him to beware of the young men s riddle. He wrote an epitaph for himself, and died on the third day after. This story comes from a lost work of Aristotle. On the other hand, when we are told in the Herodotean life that Critheis was a daughter of Melanopus, one of the colonists who came to Cyme from Magnesia, that beinsr found to be with child she was sent with the fresh

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1. Sea Lauer, G csch. dcr limner. Pocsie, pp. 115-30; Sciigebusen, Homerica dissertatio posterior, p. 77.