[ 39 ] 



the truth ; and furely, if that fhould be poffible, it is far better 

 to endeavour fuch reconcilement, than boldly to controvert, or 

 peremptorily to contradidl, the affertions of this mofl: refpedlable 

 and mofl ancient hiflorian, or to pretend more knowledge of 

 Grecian antiquity in the prefent age than was poflefTed by 

 a learned -wr-eck, who wrote four hundred years only after 

 Homer, and whofe antiquity is fo remote that he ventures 

 to account the asra of this bard but of yefterday — /^e%/" ou rrpufiv 

 re KM %5ef. 



And now having drawn to a conclufion the more imme- 

 diate fubjedl of this elTay, I Ihall take leave to advert to a 

 relative point, from the difcuflion of which I have hitherto 

 abftained, left the thread of my difcourfe Ihould have been 

 thereby interrupted and confufed. The opinion of Herodotus, 

 that all thofe poets who were faid to have exifted before 

 Hefiod and Homer, were in effeift pofterior to their time, has 

 brought down upon him a torrent of abufive contradidion. 

 Certain it is that there are great authorities againft him ; but 

 then it is as certain that, fince in a queftion of this fort 

 fuperior antiquity may be fuppofed to include fviperior know- 

 lenge, none of thofe authors, upon whofe authority he is con- 

 tradidted, can in this refpecfl: be put in competition with him. 

 Paufanias, in many parts of his work, mentions the names of 

 feveral poets who lived before Hefiod and Homer, one of 

 whom he fuppofes to have been prior even to Orpheus — 

 Cap. xvii. page 762, Aw.of li OAiji/, &c. — " The Lycian Olen, 

 " who compofed among the Greeks the mofl ancient hymns. — 



" But 



