222 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 123. 



wavering in respect to these supposed primary atoms. 

 . . . I will add in res. lect to his [Lachmann's] disserta- 

 tions, so instructive as a microscopic examination of the 

 poem, 1. Tliat I find myself constantly dissenting from 

 that critical feeling on tlie strength of which he cuts 

 out parts as interpolations, and discovers traces of the 

 hands of distinct poets : 2. That his objections against 

 the continuity of the narrative are often founded upon 

 lines which the ancient scholiasts and Mr. Payne 

 Knight had already pronounced to be interpolations : 

 3. That such of his objections as are founded upon 

 lines undisputed admit, in many cases, of a complete 

 and satisfactory reply." * 



Grote's own opinions on the subject are difficult 

 to arrive at, but what he has said is mostly true. 

 These three different views of the Homeric con- 

 troversy have, as I have said, occupied the world 

 since thinking on the subject began ; each hypo- 

 thesis has found most able, critical, and quibbling 

 adherents and opponents, each affirming and prov- 

 ing, after his own way, what the others denied and 

 scouted. 



There is another author who has likewise dis- 

 cussed the subject of Homer, and in a way more 

 attractive to the general reader; and that is the 

 finely-feeling and learned Walter Savage Landoi-, 

 in his Pericles and Aspasia. Speaking in the per- 

 son of Pericles, he says f : — 



" I have no paradox to maintain, no partiality to de- 

 fend. Some tell us there were twenty Homers ; some 

 deny that there was ever one. It were idle and foolish 

 to shake the contents of a vase in order to let them settle at 

 lust. We are perpetually labouring to destroy our 

 deliglits, our composure, our devotion to superior 

 power. Of all the animals on earth we least know 

 what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best 

 for us is our admiration of good. No man living 

 venerates Homer more than I do. He was the only 

 author I read when I was a boy ; for our teachers are 

 usually of opinion that wisdom and poetry are, like 

 fruits for children, unwholesome, if too fresh. Simo- 

 nides had indeed grown somewhat sound ; Pindar was 

 heating ; iEschylus . . . ay, but ^schyhis was almost 

 at the next door. Homer then nourished my fancy, 

 animated my dreams, awoke me in the morning, 

 marched with me, sailed with me, taught me morals, 

 taught me language, taught me music, and philosophy, 

 and war." 



Agreeing with my honoured friend in what I 

 have italicised above, I think it is time that the 

 Homeric question were set at rest, and, to atone for 

 our error in shaking the vase, let it remain at peace 

 for ever. I offer my reflections on the subject with 

 extreme diffidence, yet, though I confess myself 

 open to correction, and desirous of it, as a friend to 

 literature, I cannot say that I think my views will 

 be found far from an approximation to the truth, 



* Hist, of Greece, vol. ii. p. 232. n. 1. 

 f Pericles and Aspasia, Letter lxxxiv. — Works, i 

 Tol. ii. p. 387. 



which, at this remote age, is all we can possibly 

 arrive at. As Plinius Secundus held that there 

 was no book so bad but that something might be 

 learned from it, so I hold that there is no theory so 

 bad (always excepting that one put forth by some 

 escaped Bedlamite, of Shakspeare's non-being, 

 and that his works were the composition of the 

 monks), but that there lies some truth at the 

 bottom of it. On that principle I have endea- 

 voured " to lay the keel " (as Southey used to say 

 of his planned poems) of a reconciliation between 

 all the beliefs of all the theorists. 



I will state my theory, as I have done the others, 

 in the plainest possible terms ; and, to begin at the 

 beginning, I must go back to the origin of song. 

 Is it possible that an army like that of the Hellenes 

 when at Troy, had no idea of passing the weary 

 evenings except in drinking and talking ? No : 

 surely not. We find Phemios singing, in the 

 Odt/ssea, lays of much the same kidney as those in 

 Athenajos, and in Xenophon's Symposion. These 

 were short recitals of some particular circumstance 

 of antiquity, half religious and half eartiily. No 

 doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like 

 the common sailors of some fifty years ago, some 

 one qualified to "discourse in excellent music" 

 among them. Many of these, like those of the 

 negroes in the United States, were extempora- 

 neous, and allusive to events passing around them. 

 But what was passing around them ? The grand 

 events of a spirit-stirring war ; occurrences likely 

 to impress themselves, as the mystical legends of 

 former times had done, upon their memory ; be- 

 sides which, a retentive memory was deemed a 

 virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accord- 

 ingly, in those ancient times. Ballads at first, 

 and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, 

 were mere recitations with an intonation. Then 

 followed a species of recitative, probably with an 

 intoned burden. Tune next followed, as it aided 

 the memory considerably. 



It was at this period, about four hundred years 

 after the war, that a poet flourished of the name 

 of Melesigenes, or Meonides, but most probably 

 the former. He saw that these ballads miglit be 

 made of great utility to his purpose of writing a 

 poem on the social position of Hellas, and as a 

 collection he published these lays, connecting them 

 by a tale of his own. This poem now exists under 

 the title of the Odyssea. The author, however, 

 did not affix his own name to the poem, which, in 

 fact, was great part of it remodelled from the ar- 

 chaic dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads 

 were found by him. He therefore called ir the poem 

 oi Homer OS, or the Collector.* But this is rather a 



* Welcker, Der Epische Ci/elus, p. 1 27. . Professor 

 Wilson, in his System of Hindu Mythology (Introduct. 

 p. Ixii.), has the following passage, quoted by Grote: 

 " The sage Vyasa is represented not as the author, but 



