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Hector (who is tUio by Achilla* in retaliation for Hectors having 

 killed Patrodos), uid the solemn burial of the Trojan warrior. If any 

 one reflect* on the form which the first imaginative compositions of 

 any people in an early stage of progress must take, and when lie haa 

 ascertained, what he probably will ascertain, that thoae compositions, 

 if not of a acnd nature, will bear reference to external mid active 

 life, poes on to apply hi* concl unions to the Greek nations in particular, 

 and furthermore to the heroic age of the Greeks, he will doubtles* find 

 little difficulty in agreeing with a remark which ha* already been 

 made regarding heroic poetry, namely, that KB a simple form of art it 

 doe* not imply the development of a plot, but rather the extraction of 

 a certain portion from the poetical annals of a nation, beginning and 

 ending just where the subject may seem to suggest, but not necessarily 

 ending with a regular disengagement of a plot regularly worked up 

 and studiously combined from the beginning of the poem. To apply 

 this to the ' Iliad :' we shall ace that it would be vain, not to say out 

 of place, to aim at proving, as some have done, that the 'Iliad' is a 

 poem constructed on regular principles of art. It is a poem of natural 

 growth ; the earliest and yet the noblest attempt made by the epic 

 spirit in the most imaginative nation of which we have any record, 

 and, as Thirlwtdl has remarked, perhaps the first work to which was 

 applied the newly-invented art of writing. This lai>t supposition, if 

 adopted, would load us to infer that the reason why tho 'Iliad' has 

 attained to a siie much greater, as far as we can tell, than any < u lin 

 poems, is because Homer, seeing tho art of writing iu its rudest state 

 already practised, was the first to apply it, as well as tho first to 

 supply extensive material for its application. Whether what we now 

 possess be the exact poem which thus forms the beginning of all lite- 

 rature, projwrly so called, or not, U scarcely doubtful. The lapse of 

 DO many agca can hardly have failed to have introduced some passages, 

 and altered and removed others, but whether to any great extent seems 

 almost impossible to decide. Particular scholars may impugn par- 

 ticular passages, and themselves entertain no doubt of their own 

 infallibility ; but it behoves every one to remember that the same 

 practice in style which would be necessary to enable a scholar to 

 decide correctly on a passage of doubtful authenticity would, unless 

 that scholar's ingenuity were under perfect control, bo very likely to 

 suggest difficulties and questions too tempting for his judgment to 

 resist. But the some spirit of criticism which suggested these doubts 

 has also suggested others, as it would seem, on better foundation : we 

 mean thoae relating to the authorship of the ' Odyssey.' Before 

 entering on this question, it will be as well to observe that the 

 ' Odyssey ' can hardly be called a national epic. It is much nearer 

 the romance of chivalry than any other ancient work. It contains the 

 account of those adventures which Ulysses encountered on his way 

 home from Troy, and iu its present stat consists of twenty-four books, 

 which division is said to bo owing to the grammarians in the time of 

 the Ptolemies. Nitzsch ('Aumerkungen,' vol. ii. p. 34) divides the 

 'Odyssey' into four parts, ending with the -1th, the 92nd line of the 

 13th, the 19th, and the 24th books respectively, and containing the 

 story of the absent, the returning, tho vengeancc-planning, and the 

 vengeance-accomplishing Ulyt-ses ; and he professes, as many others 

 have done, to point out all the interpolations. 



Our limits do not permit us to say more on this subject than to 

 notice that there is little doubt that much has been interpolated in 

 the account of Ulysses's visit to the shades, and that Aristophanes and 

 Aristarclius the grammarians considered the latter part of the 23rd 

 and all the 24th book spurious. It will be more to our purpose to 

 consider the question whether the Iliad and Odyssey are. or are not to 

 be referred to the same author, and this we shall do rather more 

 with the view of pointing out some important features in the dis- 

 cussion, than as hoping to arrive at any very definite result. A sect 

 arose very early among the grammarians called ' The Dividers ' (of 

 Xpi(NT<f), who denied to Homer the authorship of tho Odyssey. 

 The grounds of this opinion were mostly critical, such as tho different 

 use of different words in tho two poems ; or historical, such as con- 

 tradictions, real or apparent, in ' itin ; (> Helen, Neleus' 

 sons, Aphrodite's husband, &c. ; but we possess but little of the 

 fruit* of their researches, although enough, according to Qrauert 

 (' Kheiuischcs Museum,' i.), to show that they could not havo 

 belonged to the early childhood of criticism. In our day, or at least 

 in that of our fathers, the question has been revived, with a power of 

 suggesting doubts, as much greater as that of satisfying them is less. 

 With regard to the argument from the use of different words in tho 

 two poems, both in ancient and in modern times, it must be observed 

 that in the Iliad itself, compared with itaelf, there in, if anything, a 

 more remarkable variety in the use of words than in the two 

 We do not remember to havo seen the observation, but wo think that 

 any one who reads the Iliad, noting down any words which strike 

 him, will find that no sooner has he got acquainted with a set of 

 words than they disappear, and that this ruing and setting of words 

 continues all through tho poem. If then the use of different words 

 argues different authors, there will be some difficulty in escaping the 

 conclusion that different books of the Iliad, as well as the two Homeric 

 poems, were the production of separate authors. The dill' ' 

 of words however U a strong argument, but a stronger than all is to 

 be found iu the different state of civilisation which the tw 

 exhibit, and iu the tendency which tho Odyssey displays to exalt tho 



individual above the clasj, a tendency which proves that an advance 

 had been made to that kind of poetry which treats of individual 

 feeling, namely lyrical poetry. But there is one other characteristic 

 of the Odyssey to which we have before slightly alluded, we mean its 

 romantic look, using romantic as opposed to domical. There is some- 

 thing quite northern iu the adventures of Ulyases ; they in .-lit 

 have happened to a knight of Arthur** court, or perhaps still better 

 to Beowulf. The Sirens would be singing maidem, who decoy 

 travellers by their strains; the nymph Calypso would fin>l an anti- 

 type in some enchantress. Ulysses slays the suitors, much in tho 

 way of William of Cloudcaley, in the old ballad ; and tho horror of 

 great darkness which the prophet sees surrounding the suitors is so 

 like Sir \V. Scott's description of the banquet at the end of tho ' I-ay 

 of the Last Minstrel,' where the goblin-page is recalled, that we might 

 suppose that it had suggested the scene, were we not almost certain 

 that he had borrowed, consciously or unconsciously, from some 

 northern story, if at all To this we might add the charm in shape 

 of a fillet, which Leucothee gives Ulysses ('Oil.,' v. 340), tho story of 

 the Lotos-eaters, the tying up the winds in n bag ('<>d.,' x. I'.'), a 

 practice still iu use among the Laplanders, and tho aliip ol 

 i'hujuicians, 



it tusked no aiii of sail or 

 Thai feuied nu i-liitc of wlntl 01 



These grounds and others have impressed many modern i-cholars 

 with tho opinion that tho Odyssey and Iliad are not the produce of 

 the same mind. How far either pinna can claim a single am. 

 another question, and one which it is far less easy to solve. W 

 mentioned some of tho arguments that have 1. rn ur. '!, and to these 

 we might odd an hiMorical analogy from the same kind of poetiy iu 

 our own country. The great romances, some of them nt i 

 more than a century in their production, an 1 one, the'ltorn:>' 

 Alexander,' had, if we mistake not, at least a do i niton. 



Whether there be tho same traces of uuity of design iu the two poems, 

 wo must leave to others ; if not, the instance proves no m-nv than it 

 would to refer to the 'Mirror for Magistrates' which contains more 

 separate accounts than it had authors. Again, Henry the Minstrel, 

 although blind, was the author of a poem which rival i the 11 

 length ; so that it is not impossible that Homer, whether blind or not, 

 should have composed and recited the whole Iliad, even without the 

 aid of letters. Kxamples then lead in this case to no delimit- re-ult, 

 and if we attempt to base our conclusions upon them, we may 

 with nearly equal probabilities to opposite results. But there is an 

 historical fact which has been adduced in support of on side of this 

 question, namely, the existence of a race of men called Rhapso<:i 

 llomcridu;, who imitated Homer, enlarged upon him, and interpolated 

 his poems with verses of their own (Hermann, ' Pn-fac: to Homer's 

 Hymns,' p. 7) ; treating him very much as tho 13ible wa 

 one school of the early Mystery-mongers. Now those who deny the 

 unity of the Iliad assert that these Rhapsodists manufactured it 

 among themselves, until it gradually assumed that forui iu wM<h 

 Pisiatratua finally established it, and in which we now have it. Tho 

 question then comes again to be one of taste. Those who think they 

 sec in tho Iliad proofs of such unity of design as outweigh all tho 

 arguments brought from history and criticism, will have reason for 

 considering the Iliad to be the work of one author far stranger than 

 any which their opponents can possibly possess on tho other side, 

 inasmuch as the conviction of taste is always much more binding than 

 a logical proof, especially one which only goes on probabilities. Kach 

 man who engages in tho controversy will have it decided for him as 

 much by his own natural character and bent as by argument ; and 

 here we may leave it, with this one remark, that the most which can 

 be proved, even by the rules of taste, is that the great design and 

 chief filling-lip U by one author : individual lines or even whole 

 passages may in any case be interpolations. On this part of the 

 question the reader will find some very valuable remarks in 

 Hermann's preface already quoted, which relate also to tho opening 

 lines of tho Theogony, and more especially to those other poems 

 which wo now come to notice, the Homeric Hymns. 



The Hymn to Apollo, as Hermann thinks, owes its present form 

 to the fact of tho last transcriber having had before him at least four 

 hymns, each with a similar introduction, all which introductions, in 

 transcribing, he mixed up together ; and furthermore to his having 

 mixed up two separate hymns, one to the Delian and one to the 

 Pythian Apollo, of which the latter was itself composed of two, one 

 to the Pythian and one to the Tilphussian Apollo. The Hyniu to 

 Hermes ia very corrupt, consisting of a larger and a smaller hymn, 

 aii'l interpolations. The Hymn to Aphrodite and that to Demeter 

 are also much altered ; the latter, according to Hermann, bears marks 

 of at least two editions. These are the principal of the Homeric 

 hymus : tho fragmentary one to Dionysius seems also to have been 

 one of the larger and more important ones. There arc twenty-eight 

 shorter hymns given in Hermann's edition, as well as seventeen 

 epigrams, or rather epigraphs. These, with the ' Battle of the Frogs 

 and Mice,' make up the sum of the Homeric poems, genuine and 

 spurious. 



The earliest mention made of Homer Is by Pindar. Herodotus and 

 Thucydidcs quote and refer to him ; and when we get to Plato he is 

 constantly either hinted at or transcribed. There is a good deal of 



