9

H O M

11 O M

connected with that science, by Mr. Wingate, n man of consider-able : ' m ' learning, who spent many years as private tutor toMr. Home. He applied with great diligence to the study of thea od municipal law of his gonntvy, and early acquainted him-self with the forms and practical business of the courts. Whoeverperuses the law-papers composed by Mr. Home when a youngpian, will perceive an uncommon elegance of style, besides greatingenuity of reasoning, and a thorough knowledge of the law andconstitution of his country. These qualifications, together withtne strength and vivacity of his natural abilities, soon raised himorn anient to the Scottish bar ; and, on the 2d of Febru-y 1 /d 2, he was advanced to the bench as one of the judges ofie court of session, under the title of Lord Karnes. His princi-pa works are, Essays upon several Subjects concerning British An-nuities, 1764; Essays on the Principles of Morality and NaturalReligion, 8vo. ; Historical Law, 8vo. ; The Principles of Equity’Elements of Criticism, 3 vols. 8vo,; The Gentleman Farb !°- * ^°°se Hints upon Education, 8vo. ; The Flistory of

Hotr T rn 8v .°- died in 1785?.

‘ | ’ , tlle father of Greek poetry, \va« born on thesicrenpa tt " Ver ^ eles> whence his mother called him Mele-riprl i>i was a Natural child, but his mother afterwards mar-his son . . ien j u, i a citizen of Smyrna, who adopted the child as<i v ., th, however, is involved in so much obscurity

neriod in be fable, f° r the ancients are not agreed as to the

of having UC1 ,' e dourisbed; and seven cities disputed the honourdistich-^ ® 1VeU 111,1 which are enumerated in the following

Sn (Jrbis’/b. h nal eS ’ C °! 0|,h S 11 ' Sa,aMlis > Chios , Argos, Athena:;Urlm, de patna certat, Homere , tua.

Sfr/b t0 i’ ave itept a school at Smyrna, and that he after-, , compamed Mentes, a master of a ship, in several voyages,u y urn was lelt at Ithaca, where he gathered many particularsrespecting Ulysses, which laid tire foundation of the Odyssey. Ateng h Mentes returned and took him on board again, but at Co-lophon he had the misfortune of losing his sight. lie then be-cam . < l a strolling bard, and obtained the name of Homer , whichsignifies a blind man. It is further added, that being at Phocaea,a school-master, named Thestorides , offered to maintain him,provided he would suffer him to transcribe his verses, which heagreed to from necessity. The school-master then went to Chios ,where he acquired great wealth by Homer ’s poems, while thepoet himself could scarcely get bread by reciting them. Homeron t ns proceeded to Chios, and Thestorides, hearing of his arrival,fled before hnn. Here the poet opened a school of poetry, mar-ried, and had two daughters. Il e died about 907 years B. C.,p U> ?, n - S enu, ne works of his extant, are the Iliad and Odyssey.The Batrachomvomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice, hasbeen disputed, but many good critics deem it to be his. Theriymns which go under his name are questionable. Many otherpiei.es are ascribed to him ; viz. epigrams, the Eartiges, the Ce-cropes, and the Destruction of Oechalia, of which only the namesare remaining. Nothing can excel the clearness and' majesty oftlomei s style; the sublimity of his thoughts; the strength andsweetness of his verses. All his images are striking ; his descrip-tions just and exact; (he passions so well expressed, and nature sojustly and finely painted, that he gives to every thing motion, life,ami action. But he more particularly excels In invention, and inthe different characters of his heroes, which are so varied, thatthey affect us in an inexpressible manner. In a word, the morehe is read by a person of good taste, the more be is admired,d" e lls works to be esteemed merely as entertaining poems.

as ie monuments of a sublime and varied genius. lie was in?v!', ei a l S ° lale with respect to costume, that lie seldom menLioueci persons or thinos that we miv not enm-liule lr

.«v«, w .iiuio|in.i lo eosuiiiie, uun. ne seuiom men

tioned persons or things that we may not conclude to have i>eeknown during the time of which be writes; and it was Mr. 1 °P ttopinion, that his account of people, princes, and countries, vspurely historical, founded on the veal transactions of those tunes,and-by far the most valuable piece of history and geography leuus concerning the state of Greece in that early period. Ills geo-graphical divisions of that country were thought so exact, that weare told of many controversies concerning the boundaries ot Gre-cian cities, which have been decided upon the authority of hi:poems. The best editions of Homer are that of Barnes. I, am

, .. kruvttl UtUKICU t ... _ ..J _

The best editions of Homer are, that of Barnes, Cam-VOL. II.-no. 105 .

bridge, 2 vols. 4to. 1711; Clarke’s, 4 vols. ; that of Glasgow , 2vols. folio, 1758; that of Oxford, 5 vols. 8vo. 1780; and what iscalled the Grenville edition, 'ecenlly published from the samepress. It is needless to enter into his character as a poet, as hewas beyond a doubt the most exalted and universal genius theworld has seen.

Homer , Omrr, Chomer, or Corus. See Measure andOmer.

HOMICIDE, in law, signifies in general the taking away ofany person’s life by another person. It is of three kinds; justifia-ble, excusable, and felonious.

I. Homicide, Excusable, is of two sorts; cither per infortu-nium, by misadventure ; or se defendendo, upon a principle ofself-preservation.

i. Homicide ter Infortunium, or by Misadventure, iswhere a man, doing a lawful act, without any intention of hurt,unfortunately kills another: as where a man is at work with a hat-chet, 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, andundesignedly kills a man : for the act is lawful, and the effect ismerely accidental. So where a parent is moderately correctinghis child, a master his apprentice or scholar, or an officer punish-ing a criminal, and happens to occasion his death, it is only misad-venture ; for the act of correction was lawful : but if he exceedsthe bounds of moderation, either in the maimer, the instrument,or the quantity of punishment, and death ensues, it is manslaughterat least, and in some cases (according to the circumstances) mur-der ; for the act of immoderate correction is unlawful. To whipanother’s horse, whereby be runs over a child and kills him, isheld to be accidental in the rider, for he has done nothing unlaw-ful; but manslaughter in the person who whipped him, for tireact was a trespass, and at best a piece of idleness, of inevitablydangerous consequence. And in general, if death ensues in con-sequence of an idle, dangerous, and unlawful sport, as shooting orcasting stones in a town, or the barbarous diversion of cock-throw-ing ; in these and similar cases, the slayer is guilty of man-slaughter, and not misadventure only ; for these are unlawful acts.

ii. Homicide se Defendendo, or in Self-defence, upona sudden affray, is also excusable rather than justifiable, by theEnglish law. This species of self-defence must be distinguishedfrom that just now mentioned, as calculated to binder the perpe-tration of a Capital crime ; which is not only a matter of excuse,but of justification. But the self-defence which we are now speak-ing of, is that whereby a man may protect himself from an assaiilt,or the like, in the course of a sudden brawl or quarrel, by killinghim who assaults him. And this is what the law expresses by theword chance-medley, or (as some rather choose to write it) chain!-medley ; the former of which in its etymology signifies a casualaffray, the latter an affray in the heat of blood or passion,: both ofthem of pretty much the same import; but the former is iri com-mon speech too often erroneously applied to any manner of homi-cide by misadventure; whereas it appears by stat. 24 Heri. VIII.c. 5, and our ancient books, that it is properlv applied to suchkilling as happens in self-defence upon a sudden rencontre. Theright of natural defence does not imply a right of attacking: for,instead of altar-king one another for injuries past or impending,men need only have recourse to the proper tribunals of justice.They cannot therefore legally exercise this right of preventative ■defence, but in sudden and violent cases ; w hen certain and 'im-mediate suffering would be the consequence of waiting for the as-sistance of the law. Wherefore, to excuse homicide by the pleaof self-defence, it must appear that the slayer had no other possi-ble means of escaping from his assailant. In some cases this spe-cies of homicide (upon chance-medley in self-defence) differs butlittle from manslaughter, which also happens frequently uponchance-medley in the proper legal sense of the word. But thetrue criterion between tbdm seems to he this: when both partiesare actually combating at the time when the mortal stroke isgiven, the slayer is then guilty of manslaughter; but if the slayerhath not begun to fight, or (having begun) endeavours to decline,any farther struggle, and afterwards being closely pressed bv Ins.antagonist, kills him to avoid his own destruction, this is homicideexcusable by self-defence. For which reason the law requires,that the person, who kills another in his own defence,’should haveretreated as lav as he conveniently or safely can, to avoid the vio-" lence