6 Essay on the JVr'itings of Hesiod. 



subject, thus describes tliem : — '0/u»;pioai Vu-ktuv eTteuyv Aoicoi. — Nem. II. 1. 

 " The Homeridae, minstrels of strains compiled." Hipparchus, the son of 

 Pisistratus, is recorded (in a Socratic dialogue, inscribed with his name, and 

 attributed to Plato) to have caused the Rhapsodists of his time to recite these 

 Homeric fragments in their regular order, at the Pan-Athensea. Cicero, in- 

 deed, informs us that Pisistratus himself first caused them to be regularly 

 digested and reduced to writing ; but as this circumstance is unnoticed by 

 Aristotle and every earlier writer, it is not improbably conjectured to be 

 merely a mistaken version of the proceedings of Hipparchus. Hence it 

 has been argued, that it is absurd to believe that the present structure of 

 the Iliad and Odyssey, as two regular epics, bears any more resemblance to 

 their original form as loose and unconnected Rhapsodies, than would take 

 place, if Walter Scott in our day, supplying an Exordium and connecting 

 parts, had wrought up our own detached ballads of Robin Hood and Little 

 John into the unity of an epic system. Our present subject will not 

 require us to enter at length into this controversy ; we will therefore only 

 remark, that it seems scarcely possible to peruse the Odyssey without the 

 impression, that the whole was from its first conception and design, a 

 single and connected tissue of narrative j and as such indeed it seems 

 referred to by I'indar in the passage cited in the preceding note. In the 

 Iliad, indeed, this regularity of tissue is much more interrupted ; by far the 

 greater part of the poem seems undoubtedly Episodical, and whole Rhap- 

 sodies, (or books according to the present digest) are occupied with the 

 apLTEia, or prowess of particular heroes, as if Intended to procure the bard 

 himself and his reciters, hospitable lodging in their rambles through the 

 towns where these heroes happened to be the most popular themes of 

 local tradition ; yet undoubtedly, the wrath of Achilles, the woes and 

 defeats which ensued to the Greeks, the humble embassy of his distressed 

 brother chieftains, the sally of his friend Patroclus to the field, his fall, and 

 Achilles' own ultimate return to the war to avenge that fall by the death 

 of Hector, seem sufficiently marked as the prominent cardinal points of the 

 composition as we at present possess it; although indeed occasionally over- 

 laid by the introduction of much extraneous matter : and we may easily 

 conceive the original bard himself, little aiming at any nicety of artificial 

 composition in that simple age, to have introduced from time to time pas- 

 sages, suggested perhaps under the influences just alluded to, wherever he 

 could most conveniently bring them in. With such views we must sacrifice 

 indeed the injudicious and exaggerated praises of later critics, rittributing 

 to Homer an artificial excellence in the construction and management of 



and that Aristotle and the whole tribe of succeeding ci'itics of antiquity assume the 

 author and his works as alike undoubted, — we shall scarcely hesitate, I think, to 

 consider the scepticism, for the first time promulgated by their modern German 

 brethren, as rather more ingenious than reasonable. But on all these subjects, I 

 must refer to the Elaborate Excursus of Heyne, at the end of his edition of the Iliad. 



