INDIA IN INTRODUCTION. WERE an Englishman to sit down, purposing to write the history of his native country previous to the Norman conquest to sketch the outlines of the Anglo-Saxon constitution, laws, and customs; were he to speak confidently of the old Saxon kings; their attendants, military and civil; to unfold the origin of their people, the structure of their language, and their primitive settlements; it would not be too much to expect that he should have some knowledge of the Saxon tongue. And yet, what must be said of the confidence of the antiquarians of Greece, who, though themselves Hellenes, have, with a profound ignorance of the early language of Pelasgian Hellas, turned twilight into darkness, by absurd attempts to derive the words and customs of remote antiquity from the Greek language—a language at that period not in existence? But this vain-glorious confidence is not the only thing for which they are answerable. They have thereby unwittingly originated a gigantic system of absurdities and a tissue of tales, the opprobrium of history, and the torment of the inquiring mind. We feel that all this mass of error has a foundation in positive fact; we feel that agency, the most vital, the most energetic, the most constant, is at work; mighty actors come and go upon the scene, and mighty changes take place. And B yet we are called upon by Theorisers to renounce the instincts of our nature; to class the siege of Troy, the Argonautic expedition, the history of Heracles, the history of Theseus-nay, the whole busy, crowded scene of early Hellas, with the product of mythopoeic propensities, and secretions from the fancy. Alas! for this dream! I shall prove incontrovertibly, not only that such things were distorted facts, but I shall demonstrate that the Centaurs were not mythical'-that the Athenian claim to the symbol of the Grasshopper was not mythical—that the Autochthons were not mythical-that the serpent Pytho was not mythical-that Cadmus and the dragon's teeth were not mythical-that Zeus was not mythical-that Apollo was not mythical-that the Pierian Muses were not mythical-that Cecrops was neither legendary nor mythical; but as historical as King Harold. And this I purpose to effect, not by any rationalising process, but by the very unpoetical evidences of latitude and longitude, which will certainly not be deemed of a legendary nature. I would here repeat a remark made on another occasion on the historical basis of mythology. Perhaps within the whole compass of mythology there is no system altogether more plausible than the Grecian. Its coherence betrays art in arrangement, but weakness in the main incidents. A basis, however, it undoubtedly possessed, which was neither of an inventive nor fictitious character. What that basis was, is certainly not to be eliminated from either poet or logographer, or historian, independent of extraneous aids. Such aids are presented to the inquiring mind in those two most durable records of a nation,-its language and its monuments. These adjuncts, though of foreign origin, are, 1 I use this term here, as synonymous with "invention, having no historical basis." 2 See my "Greek Mythology," in vol. i. of the "History of Greece," in the "Encyclopædia Metropolitana," 1851. 2 INTRODUCTION. fortunately, available for the elucidation of Greek mythology. There is nothing more calculated to blunt the keenness of investigation than any theoretic maxim which lays down some general position to meet general difficulties. Here, acquiescence must be the rule, and research the exception. Nothing can be more tempting to indolence. To assume individual or national feeling as the exponent of fact, and fact too possibly foreign to that individual or nation, must be a perilous mode of rescuing from error or re-establishing truth. The theory of "The Myth," as laid down by some distinguished German writers, and adopted by certain authors in this country, is, at best, only capable of sound application where a people has had no connection with another nation, either by commerce, war, religion, or other inter-communication,-a category, in fact, which history scarcely supposes. There is, says this theory, a tendency in the human mind, when excited by any particular feeling, to body forth that feeling in some imaginary fact, scene, or circumstance, in the contemplation of which it may find relief. And we are gravely told that whatever thought arose in a man's mind, whatever sensation varied his consciousness, could be expressed by him only in one way, namely, by dragging forth the concrete images, fictions, or inventions that he felt arise contemporaneously with it. But this is a complete Petitio Principii. The great mythi of antiquity are not feelings bodied forth to relieve the mind; still less are they concrete images, fictions, and inventions. Whenever an important mythus has existed, an important fact has been its basis. Great principles do not arise from idealities; a national myth cannot be generated without a national cause, and a national cause implies agency, not invention; but a theory based upon the evidences of feeling, is as mythological as a myth itself. In this investigation, the corruptions of language to be encountered (and they must be honestly encountered and fairly vanquished) include positively nothing less than the whole circle of early Greek history. When I use the term "early," I allude to all the genealogies, local histories, and heroic agencies of what is called "Mythical and Legendary Greece "-a phraseology, however, most unfortunate, and totally wide of the fact; for to him who reads these chronicles in their plain, original sense, no nation will appear less connected with mythology than the Pelasgic or Hellenic. The wrecks of noble institutions-of a mighty people, far advanced in civilisation, highly religious, skilful in the arts, skilful in political science-everywhere strike the gaze and excite the pity of him who truly reads the old annals of Greece; annals, not such, indeed, as are left us by Homer; for in his time the glory had well nigh passed away, and the Avatar of a new incarnation, which was scarcely more godlike than the last, was again about to descend upon Hellas. History, then, the most interesting -the most eventful—the most indubitable, is hers. But it is not the history of the gods of Homer-the gods of Hesiod; nor is it history drawn from the etymologies of Plato, the etymologies of the logographers, or the antiquarians of Greece; men who knew nothing of the ancient language of their own country. It is not such a system that can become a correct guide to the student of history. He will, in all cases where it is possible, go to the fountain head; he will throw from him the corrupt text and the corrupt commentaries of centuries-his inheritance of ignorance; and, calling in the testimony of a dialect coeval with the first Pelasgian and the first Hellenic settlements, will appeal to truth, and the decisions of judgment unclouded by prejudice. He who would master the Protean struggles of language, as it roams from east to west, assuming every variety of |