ecuted, a plan for turning a large moss, consisting of at least 1500 acres into arable land. In 1773 lord Kames published Sketches of the History of Man, in 2 vols. 4to. His last work, entitled Loose Hints upon Education, chiefly concerning the Culture of the Heart, was published in 1781, in 1 vol. 8vo, when its venerable author was in his eighty-fifth year. Lord Kames published many temporary and fugitive pieces. He for a a great length of time had the principal management of all the societies and boards for promoting the trade, fisheries, and manufactures, in Scotland. He took likewise a chief lead in the distribution and application of the funds arising from the estates in Scotland, which had unfortunately been annexed to the crown. Nor was he less zealous in supporting, both with his writings and personal influence, various literary associations. Lord Kames died on the 27th day of December, 1782. As he had no disease but the debility necessarily resulting from extreme old age, a few days before his death he went to the court of session, addressed all the judges separately, told them he was speedily to depart, and took a solemn and an affectionate farewel. A life of lord Kames, with a view of his writings, was published by lord Woodhouselee. HOME (John), an eminent dramatic poet, born in the vicinity of Ancrum, in Roxburghshire, in 1724. It being the desire of his parents that he should enter the church, he attended the philosophical and theological classes of the university of Edinburgh for several years. But his studies were for a while suspended by the public commotions of the year 1745. Mr. Home was one of about twenty students of the university who offered their services as volunteers, to act against the common enemy. But intimidated by the number of their opponents, or adverse to the hardships of a military life, the college company soon disbanded. Mr. Home, however, retained his arms, and marched with a detachment of the royal army to Falkirk; where, in the bat tle fought in its neighbourhood, in which the rebels vanquished the king's troops, he was taken prisoner, and confined for some time in the castle of Doun. From this place of captivity he effected his escape; and, the battle of Culloden having blasted all the hopes of the pretender's adherents, tranquillity and order were soon restored. Mr. Home resumed his studies, and was licensed to preach in 1747. Not long after he visited England; for it appears that he was introduced to Collins the poet, at Winchester, by a Mr. Barrow, who had been his fellow-student at the university. Collins addressed to him his Ode on the Superstition of the Highlanders, considered as the subject of poetry, composed in 1749, but not published till many years after his death. In 1750 he was settled minister of Athelstaneford, in East Lothian; but having been accustomed to the bustle of a city, and the society of men of letters, Mr. Home found himself rather disagreeably situated, in an obscure village, where he had no opportunity of distinguishing himself. It was about this period that, in his retirement, he began seriously to court the dramatic muse. The first tragedy he wrote was Agis, founded on a portion of the Lacedæmonian history. This being rejected by the London theatres, he next composed his celebrated Dog las. In presenting this to the London manager, he had the mortification of a second refusal; and Garrick said afterwards that no cines stance, in the course of his management, gave him so much concern as the rejection of us play. But the ardor of Home was not to be thus suppressed. Being acquainted with de leading characters in Scotland, a ready recepia of his play at Edinburgh was secured, and a the first representation of it in the theatre Canongate, on the 14th of December, 175 Mr. Home and several of his clerical brethre were present. The hue and cry was immediately raised; that a clergyman should write a play, and that ministers of the gospel should witness its performance, were crimes unheard of in the annals of the church. The author was sunmoned to appear before the bar of the presby tery; his friends were peremptorily dragged before the same tribunal, some of them dismisse with censure, and others suspended from their office. While such was the state of affairs in Scotland, Douglas having been performed crowded houses during the greater part of the season, and fully gratifying the most sangune hopes of the author, it was, through the interest of David Hume, brought forward on the London stage. Here it soon became a standard tragedy, and maintains its ground to the present day. The clamors of his enemies having not yet subsided in Scotland, Mr. Home preached his farewell sermon to his congregation on the 5th of June, 1757; and, to prevent further proceedings in the church courts against him, gave in the resignation of his charge to the presbytery ot Haddington two days after. With his livia, Mr. Home appears for a while to have abadoned his native land, for he now repaired to London, where he produced several other trage dies, under the patronage of Garrick. They are all, however, greatly inferior to his Douglas. Agis, the first of his dramatic pieces, was finely acted, and assisted by spectacle; otherwise, it is probable that it would not have been performed a second night. His third tragedy was founded on the cruel treatment which the two Setons, sons of the governor of Berwick, had experienced from the English. At Garrick's suggestion, the title was altered, from the siege of Berwick to the siege of Aquileia, and it was acted in 1759 Some of the passages are very fine, but upon the whole it is a tame performance. Mr. Home's last production, Alfred, lived only three nights. In the year 1760 Mr. Home published a volume of plays, containing Agis, Douglas, and the Siege of Aquileia, which he dedicated to his present majesty, then prince of Wales. Three other tragedies appeared some time after. The whole were collected and edited in two volumes at Edinburgh, in 1798, under the inspection of the late Mr. Woods. Mr. Home, at the advanced age of seventy-eight, published his longmeditated work, entitled The History of the Rebellion in Scotland, in 1745-6, in which he recorded the exploits and remarks of his youth, but the public were disappointed in it. For a considerable time prior to his death, Mr. Home's With homeborn lyes, or tales from foreign lands. HOME BRED, adj. Home and bred. God hath taken care to anticipate every man, to draw him early into his church, before other competitors, homebred lusts, or vicious customs of the world, should be able to pretend to him. Hammond. No homebred jars her quiet state controul, Only to me two homebred youths belong. Domestic; not foreign. But if of danger, which hereby doth dwell, And homehred evil, ye desire to hear, I can you tydings tell. Spenser. Faerie Queene. This once happy land, By homebred fury rent, long groaned. Phillips. HOMEFELT, adj. Home and felt. Inward; private. Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense, And in sweet madness robbed it of itself; But such a sacred and homefelt delight, Such sober certainty of waking bliss, I never heard till now. Milton. under the name of Herodotus, and is usually printed with his history: and though it is supposed to be spurious, yet, as it is ancient, was made use of by Strabo, and exhibits the idea which the later Greeks, and the Romans in the age of Augustus, entertained of Homer, we must content ourselves with it. Menalippus, a native of Magnesia, is said to have settled at Cumæ, where he married the daughter of a citizen called Homyres, and had by her a daughter, Critheis. The father and mother dying, the young woman was left under the tuition of Cleonax, her father's friend, by whom she was seduced, and who, on her proving with child, sent her to Smyrna, which was then building, to conceal the misfortune. This was eighteen years after the founding of Cuma, and about 168 after the destruction of Troy. Critheis was here delivered of Homer, whom she called Melesigenes, because he was born on the banks of that river. Her good conduct afterwards induced Phemius, a schoolmaster, to marry her, and adopt her son After the death of Phemius and Critheis, Homer succeeded to his father-in-law's school; until a shipmaster named Mentes, who was a man of learning, persuaded him to travel with him. This brought him to Egypt; whence he brought into Greece the names of their gods, the chief ceremonies of their worship, and a more improved knowledge of the arts. He also visited other parts of Africa and Spain; in his return whence he touched at Ithaca, where he was first troubled with a disease of his eyes. Being recommended to Mentor, one of the chief men of Ithaca, he was here informed of many things relating to Ulysses, which he afterwards inserted in his Odyssey; and, after much time spent in visiting the coasts of Peloponnesus and the islands, arrived at Colophon, where he lost his sight. He now returned to Smyrna, and finished his Iliad. Some time after, the low state of his finances obliged him to go to Cuma, where his poems were highly applauded; but when he proposed to immortalise their town, if they would allow him a salary, he was answered, that there would be no end of maintaining all the 'Ounpot, or blind men: hence he is said to have obtained the name of Homer. He afterwards wandered through several places to Chios, where he married, and composed his Odyssey. Some time after, having produced various verses in praise of the cities of Greece, especially of Athens and Argos, he went to Samos, where he spent the winter reciting them. In the spring he proceeded to Io, one of the Sporades, intending to continue his voyage to Athens. Landing, however, at Chios by the way, he fell sick and died, and was buried on the sea shore. The principal works ascribed to Homer are the Iliad and Odyssey. The Batrachomyomachia, or battle of the frogs and mice, rody incompatible with the simplicity of the is rejected by almost all modern critics, as a paHomeric age. Of his Hymns some are acknowledged by Lucian and Pausanias; others are undoubtedly spurious. Of the Iliad and Odyssey, the editions are very numerous. best are those of Barnes, Clarke, and Heyne. The two leading English translations are those of Pope and Cowper, in rhyme and blank verse The It has, however, been much controverted whether the Iliad and Odyssey were originally epic poems of the kind they now appear to be; and particularly, whether they were the production of any one individual, or only a happy assemblage of detached rhapsodies. This question has been ably discussed by Heyne and Wolf, the modern critics upon Homer; and the arguments of these great scholars, cannot be dismissed as rash conjectures. We shall avail ourselves, therefore, of Mr. Talfourd's able abstract of them in Mr. Rutt's Appendix to Dr. Priestley's Lectures on Oratory and Criticism. nomination. The other external evidence either side is but trivial. The works must b for the most part, their own witnesses. "The chief arguments by which the hypothes adopted by Wolf and Heyne is supported a 1. It is exceedingly improbable that, in any to which Homer's personal existence ca referred, one man should have been capable si composing works of the extent, consistency, and poetical elevation of the Iliad and Odyssey. 11 seems impossible that poems of so great a leag as the Iliad and the Odyssey should have be composed and preserved entire, without beg committed to writing; and it is certain that ther is not the least trace, even in tradition, of a complete written or engraved copy of the work of Homer till the exertions of his Athei editor, or at least till those of Lycurgus. 3. The profession of the rhapsodists, as is evident from many Greek writers, flourished from the earlies periods. Their name, compounded from parrev wony, to join together or compose venes, signified their occupation and character. Th answered, in many respects, to the Celtic bards They chaunted, sung, or recited poems, chiefy, at least in the earliest times, of their own composition, at the tables of princes, and in public assemblies, as well as in the houses of the grea They were held in high esteem and even venere tion, more especially in the earliest periods; and they were the sole depositaries of the religion, the moral precepts, and the old and frie legends of the people among whom they lived. "The first object, in a case of this kind,' observes this ingenious gentleman, should be to ascertain those facts in which all parties agree. The light which external history affords us is rather feeble and dubious. It must be admitted, that there is no fact well authenticated respecting the existence of the poems in a connected form, until we are told that they were brought into Greece by Lycurgus. Plutarch, in his Life of that legislator, informs us that, in his journey in Asia, he probably had sight of Homer's poems, which were first preserved by the posterity of Creophylus; and, having observed that the delightful fictions thrown over them did not prevent the author from abounding in maxims of state policy and rules of moral action, transcribed them, and carried with him into Greece that entire collection which we have now among us. For at that time there was only an obscure rumor in Greece of the fame of these poems, and only a few scattered fragments in circulation, It is further alleged that there are parts of the until Lycurgus published them entire.' Hence Cleomenes called Homer the poet of the Spartans. Besides Plutarch, Dio Chrysostom, Heraclides Pontus, and Ælian, bear testimony to the fact of the poems having, in some state or other, been introduced into Greece by Lycurgus. Heyne, indeed, contends that nothing more is to be gathered from these authorities, than that the poems were preserved among the Chians by means of the recitations of the rhapsodists; and that the knowledge of their merit was brought to Sparta by her lawgiver, on his return from his travels. Whatever was done by Lycurgus fell very short of exhibiting the poems in that state in which even the Greeks afterwards possessed them. For a number of writers agree in declaring that the honor of this noble work belongs to Pisistratus, or to some of his family. Solen now made a law for the recital of the poems; and is even said to have directed that this office should be performed, not by repeating them in fragments, without regard to the progress of the story, but in some order of regular succession. 'It must be allowed that the expression of Cicero, that Pisistratus primus Homeri libros confusos antea, disposuisse dicitur,' will not prove much, even respecting the opinion of the orator, as to their original condition. For it does not follow, because the books of Homer were confused or disarranged in the time of their first editor, that they were not composed in a regular series. Indeed the expression, works of Homer then in confusion,' seems to imply that Pisistratus did not divide the poems into books for the first time, or first apply to them that de Iliad and Odyssey, even as they now exist, which are either entirely spurious, or very much corrupted from the original. Of the former of these descriptions seems to be the passage in the eighteenth book of the Iliad, from v. 356 to v. 368, in which, from the mourning of the Greeks over the body of Patroclus, we are suddenly presented with a taunting speech of Jupiter to Juno, and her angry reply, neither of which bears the least relation to the immediate subject; and, at the close, we as suddenly return to Thetis, in her ascent to the palace of Vulcan. In the fourth book of the Odyssey a passage occurs, at the 620th line, where a conversation with Menelaus is abruptly broken off, and four lines follow of which all explanation seems hopeless. Eustathius has recourse to the violent measure of changing the whole scene from the palace of Menelaus at Sparta to that of Ulysses at Ithaca. But the passage is now universally agreed to be either misplaced or spurious. Other and yet more important instances are brought forward by Heyne, in the notes to the different books of his edition of Homer. 'On the other side, the following arguments are adduced, to establish the individuality of the author of the Iliad:-1. The genius which the Iliad exhibits is no proof that it is not the production of a single mind in a barbarous age. Those who speak of poetry as a progressive art, and liken it to the improvements of social life, and things which depend for their excellence or experience, seem to know little of its essence. I has no connexion with the progressions of time it depends not on external circumstance; it follows not in the train of knowledge, nor improves as mathematical science is unfolded; its origin is in the heart, and its objects are to be found in every part of the creation. Indeed, the age of Homer was far more favorable to its perfection than later times. The truth is, that no one ever supposes Homer to have written with a standard of epic poetry before him, like that which Aristotle has drawn from his works. He composed from the impulses of an harmonious mind; and his compositions were, therefore, harmonious. There is nothing wonderful, or even paradoxical, in this. Genius is the soul of art. The unities admired by the critics must originally take their rise from the heart, from the natural perception of loveliness, from the innate admiration of order, or they are worthless. Genius broods over the events it celebrates, and brings them into keeping and harmony. There is nothing really so methodical as the most daring invention, in so far as method is more than an empty form. If Homer conceived the plan of an epic in his mind, and strove to write up to the height of his great argument,' it was because he felt that within such a compass his mind would discover a fit and noble range. 2. The objection which arises from the ignorance of letters, or the want of the materials for writing, is certainly of a more formidable kind. But it is to be remembered, that the very uncertainty attending the introduction of letters into Greece proves that they must have been of high antiquity, and certainly before the first Olympiad, when a regular computation of time began. The testimony of Josephus, who speaks merely in a sceptical tone, and not at all in that of decided negative, is rendered of less importance by the circumstance that he was at tempting to depreciate, as far as possible, the antiquities of Greece, and to throw discredit on its early history. But, even supposing the works of Homer not to have been originally transcribed, the very opponents of his personality have furnished us with the means by which they were probably transmitted. The rhapsodists, whom they suppose, and probably with justice, to have recited his poems, were no unworthy depositaries of so great a treasure, especially if we hold them in the veneration with which they would desire us to regard them. 3. Setting aside, for the sake of argument, all the technical rules of epic poetry, which have been sometimes said to have been observed in the works imputed to Homer, there is very strong internal evidence that they are, or, at least, that one of them is, the production of an individual genius. In the whole texture one pervading mind is clearly to be seen. roets even of the same age, and when treating of nearly the same subject, can scarcely be supposed to have attained so complete a uniformity of style. If two leaves of the forest are never found exactly to correspond, how shall we be lieve that a number of minds, and these of the first and most original class, should so exactly agree? The same epithets recur, the same kind of similes prevail, the same mode of expression is used in the last as in the first book of the Iliad. And, lastly, that there are interpolations in the Iliad and Odyssey may be readily ad mitted, without affecting the authenticity of the whole. And it is to be observed, that some corruptions have been noticed as such by the most ancient critics-a circumstance which proves, that, though their attention was directed to the question, they never doubted, as they have never expressed any doubt, of the genuineness of the great mass of the poems. The evidence in favor of the common hypothesis, from the testimony of every age, is exceedingly strong. Pindar, who lived 485 years before Christ, repeatedly mentions Homer as he would any other person, and not as a collection of verses. He speaks of the Iliad as having rendered Ajax immortal, and he alludes to the perils of Ulysses as having been celebrated, adored, and rendered greater, by the delightful poetry of Homer. In the fragments collected by Brunck, Mimerinus and Simonides both allude to Homer. The latter speaks of him as the man of Chios, and quotes the beautiful comparison made by Glaucus, of human life to the fall of leaves and their springing forth again into verdure. Herodotus repeatedly refers to our bard. He quotes the Iliad and the Odyssey, and distinguishes between them. He even, which is stronger than all, denies the Cypriacs to be genuine productions of Homer, because they contradict the Iliad. Thucydides also frequently alludes to him, and always without any intimation that he is speaking of a number of songs by various authors. Aristotle flourished but a short interval from the time when the family of Pisistratus were in power, and yet nothing can be more clear than that he had no idea that they had, for the first time, collected together and arranged the poems which they edited; for he criticises at large that very arrangement; he gives it the highest praise; he makes it the basis of a system of epic poetry; and yet he never attributes this to any other than to the original author. He bestows no praise on Pisistratus, who, in this respect, deserved it all.' HOMER (Henry), Rev., the son of a clergyman, the rector of Birdingbury, Warwickshire, was born there in 1752. He received the rudiments of his education at Rugby school, and afterwards took the degree of bachelor in divinity at Emanuel College, Cambridge, in 1783. Mr. Homer, in conjunction with Dr. Coombe and others, assisted in bringing out a variorum edition of Horace, and ably edited the works of Cæsar, Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, and the epistles of Ovid. His death took place in 1791. HOME'SPUN, adj. Home and spun. Spun or wrought at home; not made by regular manufacturers. Instead of homespun coifs were seen Good pinners, edged with colberteen. Swift. Not made in foreign countries. He appeared in a suit of English broad-cloth, very plain, but rich: every thing he wore was substantial, Addison. honest, homespun ware. Plain; coarse; rude; homely; inelegant. sleeveless coats of homespun cotton. They sometimes put on, when they go ashore, long Sandy's Tr. two birds with one stone. We say, in our homespun English proverb, He killed Dryden. Our homespun authors must forsake the field, And Shakspeare to the soft Scarlatti yield. Addison. HOMESPUN, n. s. A coarse, inelegant, rude, the law of nature that man is capable of comuntaught, rustic man. Not in use. mitting.-Blackstone. What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here, So near the cradle of the fairy queen? Shakspeare. Sax. pam and prede. The place of the house. HOME'STALL, n. s. 7 residence. HOMICIDE, EXCUSABLE, is of two sorts, according to this learned commentator, per infortunium, by misadventure; or se defendendo, upon a principle of self-preservation. We will first see wherein these two species of homicide are distinct, and then wherein they agree. 1. Homicide per infortunium, or by misadventure, is where a man, doing a lawful act, without any intention of hurt, unfortunately kills another: as where a man is at work with a hatchet, and the head thereof flies off and kills a stander-by; or where a person, qualified to keep a gun, is shooting at a mark, and undesignedly kills a man; for the act is lawful, and the effect is merely accidental. So where a parent is moderately correcting his child, a master his apprentice or scholar, or an officer punishing a criminal, and happens to occasion his death, it is only misadventure, for the act of correction was lawful: but if he exceeds the bounds of moderation, either in the manner, the instrument, or the quantity of punishment, and death ensues, it is manslaughter at least, and in some case (according to the circumstances) murder; for the act of immoderate correction is unlawful. Thus, by an edict of the emperor Constantine, when the rigor of the Roman law with regard to slaves began to relax and soften, a master was allowed to chastise his slave with rods and imprisonment, and if death accidentally ensued he was guilty of no crime: but if he struck him with a club or a stone, and thereby occasioned his death, or if in any other yet grosser manner immoderatè suo jure utatur, tunc reus homicidii fit.' But to proceed. A tilt or tournament, the martial diversion of our ancestors, was however an unlawful act; and so are boxing and sword-playing, the succeeding amusements of their posterity: and, therefore, if a knight in the former case, or a gladiator in the latter, be killed, such killing is felony of manslaughter. But, if the king command or permit such diversion, it is said to be in like manner as, by the laws both of Athens only misadventure; for then the act is lawful; and Rome, he who killed another in the pancratum, or public games, authorised or permitted by the state, was not held to be guilty of homicide. Likewise to whip another's horse, whereby he runs over a child and kills him, is held to be accidental in the rider, for he has done nothing unlawful; but manslaughter in the person who whipped him, for the act was a tresspass, and at best a piece of idleness, of inevitably dangerous consequence. And in general, if death ensues in consequence of an idle, dangerous, and unlawful sport, as shooting or casting stones in a town, or the barbarous diversion of cockthrowing; in these and similar cases the slaver is guilty of manslaughter, and not misadventure only; for these are unlawful acts. 2. Homicide se defendendo, or in self-defence, upon a sudden affray, is also excusable, rather than justifiable, by the English law. This species of self-defence must be distinguished from that just now mentioned, as being calculated to hinder the perpetration of a capital crime; which is not only a matter of excuse, but of justification. But |