Greek people when we first
become historically acquainted with them, is one conspicuous above all
others, and to which most men still cling tenaciously, finding it
impossible to resign _all_ of it to the region of fable--we mean "the
divine tale of Troy." Many who relinquish without effort the Argonautic
expedition, and as an historical problem are glad to be rid of it,--who
resign all attempt to extract a prosaic truth out of the exploits of
Theseus or the labours of Hercules, and who smile at mention of the race
of Amazons--a race so well accredited in ancient times that neither the
sceptical Arrian nor Julius Caesar himself ventured to doubt of their
existence--would yet shrink from surrendering the tale of Troy, with all
its military details, and all its hosts, and all its kings and
chieftains, entirely to the domain of fiction. What! No part of it
true?--no Agamemnon?--no Ulysses?--no Troy taken?--no battles on that
plain where the traveller still traces the position of the hostile
forces? "Those old kings," they might exclaim in the language of Milton,
when writing in his history of that fabulous line of English monarchs
which sprang from Brute the Trojan--in his time still lingering in men's
faith, now suffered to sleep unvexed by the keenest historical
research,--"Those old and inborn kings, never any to have been real
persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath
been remembered--_it cannot be thought_, without too strict
incredulity."[3]

Nevertheless the whole narrative, were it not for the familiarity we
early acquire with the persons and exploits of this famous legend, would
be seen at once to have all the characteristics of poetic fiction. And
it is curious to trace, with our author, how, after having long stood
its ground as veritable history amongst the people of Greece, it
sustained attack after attack, first from ancient then from modern
criticism, and has been gradually denuded of all its glorious
circumstance, till now, even for those who are most willing to believe,
there remains the driest, scantiest residue imaginable of what may be
pronounced to be probable fact. Herodotus, with all his veneration for
Homer, could not assent to attribute the Trojan war to the cause
popularly assigned: he seems to have been of the opinion of our Payne
Knight, that the Greeks and Trojans could not have been so mad as to
incur so dire calamities "for one little woman." We confess that, for