154 Remarks on the Site of Troy 
Existence of Troy and of Homer. 
To those who doubt the truth of the re- 
ceived account of Homer and his writings, 
and who imagine that the [liad and Odyssey 
are mere compilations of different poems on 
the same subject, written by many poets, or 
the disjointed rhapsodies of an individual, 
collected and arranged in after times, we can 
oppose, besides the total want of evidence 
for their supposition, the perfect uniformity 
of plan and style in the story and writing, 
and the matchless consistency preserved 
throughout in the characters of all his heroes. 
Every argument which can be brought 
against the Trojan war and the existence of 
Troy, has been adduced by Mr. Bryant 
in his ingenious “ Dissertation on the Trojan 
War.” These would, perbaps, have had 
more weight with his readers, had he not 
conducted them to the strange conclusion, 
that a small place of the name of Troy ex- 
isted in Egypt, and that some verses, found 
by Homer in an Egyptian temple, relative 
to a war which took place there, furnished 
him with the basis of the Iliad. But here 
we must again object the want of evidence 
to warrant so unexpected a conclusion. His 
