398 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
literary subjects were read at the Society’s meetings, and are in 
general either summarised or published at length in the first six 
volumes of the Transactions. The most material are ten Gramma- 
tical papers by Dalzel, Hill, Hunter, Young, and Gregory, chiefly ; 
one Etymological by Dr Jamieson ; three Critical, on the iEneid, by 
Beatty, the character of Hamlet by Dr T. Robertson, and the 
German theatre, by Henry Mackenzie ; three on Historical Com- 
position by Hill and Fraser Tytler ; three General Dissertations 
connected with the subject of poetry, by Dalzel and Hill ; on the 
Standard of Taste, by Dalzel ; on the Principles of Translation, by 
Fraser- Tytler ; on the Argonautic Expedition, by the Rev. Mr 
Marshall of Cockpen ; on the Origin of the Hellenes and of their 
name, by Dr Doig, of Stirling, who traces the Greeks to Chaldea; 
on Written Language as a Sign of Speech, by Dr Hutton ; four Eth- 
nological papers, — 1. By Dr Gregory, on a Lacustrine Fort in Loch 
Urr, Kirkcudbrightshire ; 2. By Colonel Montgomery, on an Ancient 
Sculptured Stone in Coilsfield; 3. By Fraser- Tytler, on the Vitrified 
Forts in the Highlands; 4. By Dr Anderson, on theAncient Circular 
Buildings, or Houses of Scotland ; and last, and one of the chief of 
all, the elaborate researches of Chevalier into the Plain of Troy, 
read by the author himself to the Society in 1791, and published 
in extenso in the French language, in the third volume of the 
Society’s Transactions. I must leave to the literary members of 
your number to say, whether there is not, in these diversified papers, 
rare materials for such a historical summary of the work done at 
our meetings of old as I have indicated. I myself can only aim 
for the present at a brief allusion to the remarkable investigations 
of Chevalier. 
Doubts have often been raised, and keen controversy has arisen 
among the learned, as to the reality of the existence of a Homer in 
poetry, an ancient Troy in geography, and a Trojan war in history. 
Chevalier, by his careful personal survey of the plain of Troy -and 
its neighbourhood, contributed much to dispel these doubts, in so 
far as he ascertained that the leading incidents described in the 
Iliad fall in exactly with the remarkable structure of the Plain and 
surrounding country ; thus furnishing internal evidence that the 
composer of the Iliad must have been intimately acquainted with 
the district where the Trojan war was carried on. It is only in the 
