330 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



instance (in Book II.), not only is a message delivered 

 thus, but the person who has received it repeats it to 

 others in precisely the same terms. In the combat 

 between Hector and Ajax (Book VI.)? the flight of 

 Ajax's spear, and the movement by which Hector 

 avoids the missile; are described in six lines, differing 

 only as to proper names from those which had been 

 already used in describing the encounter between Paris 

 and Menelaus (Book III.). 



This peculiarity would be a decided blemish in a 

 written poem. Tennyson, indeed, occasionally copies 

 Homer's manner for instance, in " Enid," he twice 

 repeats the line 



" As careful robins eye the delver's .toil ; " 

 but with a good taste which prevents the repetition 

 from becoming offensive. The fact is, that the pe- 

 culiarity marks Homer as the singer, not the writer, 

 of poetry. I would not be understood as accepting 

 the theory, according to which the u Iliad " is a mere 

 string of ballads. I imagine that no one w r ho justly 

 appreciates that noble poem would be willing to 

 countenance such a theory. But that the whole poem 

 was sung by Homer at those prolonged festivals which 

 formed a characteristic peculiarity of Achaian manners 

 seems shown, not only by what we learn respecting 

 the later " rhapsodists," but by the internal evidence 

 of the poem itself.* 



* Besides Homer's reference, both in the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," 

 to poetic recitations at festivals, there is the well-known invocation in 



