seriously compromises the individuality of the authorship of the poems, and this given up, their historical relations are shifted at once. Thus is opened the vexed question of Homeric unity. Are the two poems the work of the same author? Is each poem the work of a single author, or of more than one, and if of more than one, by what plan of co-operation, or at what intervals of succession?

Vexed as these questions have been, they can no more be avoided here; my special purpose will explain the necessity of abbreviation, but something must be attempted to establish a few defensible positions as a base of farther operation. As regards the general discussion, nothing less is in question than to decide whether the Homeric Epics are in reality works of art or haps of accident; do they indeed represent an epoch, or are they the common heritage of undefined ages?

There is nothing in questions as to the mode of preservation of the poems from the earliest assigned age, it may now be said to be admitted, that is inconsistent with individual authorship; they may have been preserved in writing from the first, for anything that can be shewn to the contrary; and, for anything that can be shewn to the contrary, it is quite within the limits of possibility, that they were composed in the first instance, and preserved, and transmitted for centuries, quite independently of the art. The historical authorities, again, once much relied on in evidence for the earliest form of the poems, may be said now to be quite discredited, and by common agreement set aside.

The multifarious hypotheses of mixed authorship range under one or other of two leading types. According to the first, the epics were constructed at a late period,—even it may be as late as Peisistratus,-out of a number of earlier disconnected lays; according to the second, an early poet gave the outline and plan of the poems in short compositions, which were afterwards enlarged by a succession of poets till they reached their present dimensions.

The objection to the first view is, that the uniformity of poetic style throughout the poems is marked to such a degree, and the relevance of the parts to a general scheme is so decided, that it is inconceivable how poets of such equal merit composing without concert and at distant intervals, should furnish materials capable of being put together coherently-of

of being brought, by simple arrangement, into consistent har mony with the very restricted section of the Trojan war actually presented. The rival view has equal difficulties. No supposition of mere enlargement by addition and interpolation, will account for the phenomenon. The proportions of the poems have the completeness and symmetry that result from vital growth; the removal of the sections that appear most separable, will be found at once to destroy the balance of parts among what remains, and it is precisely in those portions of which the preservation is indispensable, that we find a scale of treatment, and standard of mass and movement, only compatible with a general scheme of the most magnificent extent.

Neither of the parties who hold these conflicting views in various forms, is bold enough to deny the ever unrivalled perfection of the Epics as they exist; and admitting this, they are alike open to the objection, that in all their speculations they ignore or exclude the one indispensable condition of such perfection in all works of art of most enduring popularity, the predominant and pervading impress of individual and incommunicable genius. To assign the two poems to two authors, is an elucidation that more than doubles all the difficulties; and what then shall we say to the explanation, that the parts of each were written by several poets, every one of whom, from his production, must have been capable of writing the whole, and that the combination of these parts, the very architectonic function of the epos, was the work of several others? Greece itself, with all its feracity of genius, could scarcely have supplied the wondrous troop; certainly the varied series of her poetical history furnishes no parallel to their supposed performance. The more extensive, perfect, and uniform in plan and finish a work of art, the stronger is the presumption against plural authorship, even by contemporaries; and in none of these respects can the best authentic instances of mixed productions be brought for a moment into comparison with the Homeric Epics.

This leading point-the moral necessity of assuming, not merely a principal, but a pervading and predominant agency of individual genius-must be kept steadily in view in estimating the significance of the discrepancies and incoherencies on which the hypotheses of the Chorizontes are now mainly based. Abrupt transitions, false reckonings of time, conflicting mythologies, inequalities of style and differences of tone and manner, have

been diligently collected, and it must be admitted, in numerous instances established. No ingenuity, for example, can synchronise the movements of Ulysses and Telemachus in the Odyssey. Aphrodite is the wife of Hephaistos in one Epic, and Charis in the other; Sarpedon, desperately wounded in one conflict, reappears at no long interval whole and active, and no account is rendered of his recovery, and so forth. A large crop of such inconsistencies is, however, perfectly compatible with single authorship. How many pearls of price to the finders are at once valueless, when the clear rule is recognised, that the best poets will, and do, and are allowed to treat as unimportant, discrepancies of any kind that do not interfere with poetical effect; therefore all those which, masked by the interest of associated beauty to the imaginative reader, are only revealed to the cold critic; and still farther, even those which it is impossible for any one to overlook, but that are conditions of beauties that more than compensate for the discord,-a class that cannot but be numerous in all poems of mythological and supernatural machinery.

Then we must allow for the poet's own lapses and inequalities, for his negligencies especially, and this is most important, in the adaptation of earlier poetical materials; in long works we may even be called on to take into consideration the changes dependent on his advancing age; and lastly, there is the possibility that every part of his work may not have received his last touches and retouches, that his latest modifications and views of improvement, perhaps of considerable range, may have been left half accomplished.

But a large proportion of the inconsistencies and false concatenations so boldly brought in charge against the integrity of Homeric authorship, may be challenged still more peremptorily, by impugning their veritable existence. Even numerous technical objections of no slight authority, have turned out on examination ludicrously unfounded. What errors then may not be expected when a rash critic assumes the all but irresponsible censorship of the aesthetic!

Poetic coherence does not submit itself readily to analytical examination; and in a poem this is the principle of coherence that is paramount to all others, to which all others will be made occasionally to give way. Let us remember how æsthetic criticism is still exercised on such problems as the poetical

dependence of incidents and characters in many of Shakspere's most finished dramas; through what difficulties, but at last how certainly where it has succeeded, it has conducted to the point from which the instinctive sympathies of the uncritical set out. Those who please, may disallow the poetical effect in question either in Homer or Shakspere; but the case founded on the objection for complexity of authorship, is no whit stronger in one case than the other. With as good reason as Mr. Grote and Mr. Lachmann dissect away their segments of the Iliad, half the characters and half the incidents of any one of Shakspere's best plays might be sacrificed, and the tale go on all the more fluently as a matter of business-like despatch, and with no farther damage than the entire loss of poetical force and beauty, as theatrical representations too perseveringly testify.

Thus the most serious imputation on the genuineness of a section of the poem, is not the most glaring technical incongruousness, but a slur on its poetical title to its position; in the first place, as unworthy in execution, and then as not only independent of its context, but positively detrimental. To bring forward objections of this class on a large scale, is to controvert the applauding echoes of admiring ages-perhaps on that account is more praiseworthy in those who entertain them; their mistake, however, I believe to be in all the more important cases decided and demonstrable, and that the incongruity challenged exists ordinarily no where but in the misapprehension of the critic. This I would confidently undertake to make good on the body of an imputation lately elaborately stated against the proper genuineness of a large consecutive portion of the Iliad, and the distinguished merits of the history in which it is put forth, forbid me to pass it over entirely here, though it must be touched but briefly.

Mr. Grote is satisfied that in an original Achilleis, the eighth and eleventh book of the Iliad as we possess it, followed in immediate succession to the first; the intermediate books, together with the twenty-third and twenty-fourth, being additions by other poets of the same age; the ninth book is "an unworthy addition," and the tenth is treated as harshly. This is merciless mutilation, and as rashly justified by passages cited as inconsistent; among these is the commencement of the fourth book, yet here how read we?

When the issue of the combat of Menelaus and Paris seems

about to frustrate the engagement of Zeus to Thetis, by concluding the war, the god provokes a discussion in Olympus on the course matters are taking, the result of which is, that the truce is violated by the instrumentality of the goddesses who favour the Greeks, the action proceeds, and the promise to Thetis, involving Greek disaster, is again open to fulfilment. Besides compassing this end, the deep-counselled son of Kronos, by affecting (napaßλýdŋv åɣopeúwv, v. 6,) indifference in the first instance, and then unwilling consent, assumes the merit of a concession, and exacts a concession in return from the passion-blinded Here, of great historical significance. The poet, however, could scarcely have expected his commentators to fall into the trap as unsuspectingly, yet it is thus that Mr. Grote interprets the scene, in all good faith and candour, and after attentive comparison :

"We find Zeus completely putting Achilles out of the question at the beginning of the fourth book. He is here the Zeus of the Iliad, not of the Achilleis. Forgetful of his promise to Thetis, in the first book, he discusses nothing but the question of continuance or termination of the war, and manifests anxiety only for the salvation of Troy, in opposition to the Miso-Trojan goddesses, who prevent him from giving effect to the victory of Menelaus over Paris, and the stipulated restitution of Helen; in which case, of course, the wrong offered to Achilles would remain unexpiated."-Vol. II. p. 252.

This is criticism of which I do not care to affect to dissemble my opinion, at the risk of a charge of complicity, and there is too much more on the same side, as open to question. At present, however, I turn to another instance elsewhere, of rashly assumed disconnection and discrepancy, as more within compass, and leading more directly to the points I desire to elucidate of the Art and the Age of Homer. I shall be happy if, in pursuing this, I can, in one capital instance, counteract the rage of dismemberment, whether I succeed or not in inducing future critics to temper their proper enthusiasm with reverence for the poet, and at least-to

"Carve him as a dish fit for the gods,

Not hew him as a carcase for the hounds."

I allude to the eighth book of the Odyssey, and the lively song in which Demodocus, bard of the Phæacians, relates the intrigues of Ares and Aphrodite, and the rage and revenge of the