afterthought of a subsequent age; or sometimes not even themselves as integers, but as aggregates grouped together out of fragments still smaller—short epics formed by the coalescence of still shorter songs. Now there is some plausibility in these reasonings, so long as the discrepancies are looked upon as the whole of the case. But in point of fact they are not the whole of the case; for it is not less true that there are large portions of the Iliad, which present positive and undeniable evidences of coherence, as antecedent and consequent, though we are occasionally perplexed by inconsistencies of detail. To deal with these latter, is a portion of the duties of a critic; but he is not to treat the Iliad as if inconsistency prevailed every where throughout its parts; for coherence of parts—symmetrical antecedence and consequence—is discernible throughout the larger half of the poem.
"Now the Wolfian theory explains the gaps and contradictions throughout the narrative, but it explains nothing else. If (as Lachmann thinks) the Iliad originally consisted of sixteen songs or little substantive epics, not only composed by different authors, but by each without any view to conjunction with the rest—we have then no right to expect any intrinsic continuity between them; and all that continuity which we now find must be of extraneous origin. Where are we to look for the origin? Lachmann follows Wolf in ascribing the whole constructive process to Peisistratus and his associates, at the period when the creative epical faculty is admitted to have died out. But upon this supposition, Peisistratus (or his associate) must have done much more than omit, transpose, and interpolate, here and there; he must have gone far to re-write the whole poem. A great poet might have re-cast pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive whole, but no mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so; and we are thus left without any means of accounting for that degree of continuity and consistency which runs through so large a portion of the Iliad, though not through the whole. The idea that the poem as we read it grew out of atoms, not originally designed for the places which they now occupy, involves us in new and inextricable difficulties when we seek to elucidate either the mode of coalescence or the degree of existing unity.
"Admitting, then, premeditated adaptation of parts to a certain extent as essential to the Iliad, we may yet inquire whether it was produced all at once or gradually enlarged—whether by one author or by several; and, if the parts be of different age, which is the primitive kernel, and which are the additions?
"Welcker, Lange, and Nitzeh, treat the Homeric poems as representing a second step in advance in the progress of popular poetry: First comes the age of short narrative songs; next, when these have become numerous, there arise constructive minds who re-cast and blend together many of them into a larger aggregate, conceived upon some scheme of their own. The age of the epos is followed by that of the epopee: short spontaneous effusions prepare the way, and furnish materials for the architectonic genius of the poet. It is farther presumed by the above-mentioned authors that the pre-Homeric epic included a great abundance of such smaller songs—a fact which admits of no proof, but which seems countenanced by some passages in Homer, and is in itself no way improbable. But the transition from such songs, assuming them to be ever so numerous, to a combined and continuous poem, forms an epoch in the intellectual history of a nation, implying mental qualities of a higher order than those upon which the songs themselves depend. Nor is it at all to be imagined that the materials pass unaltered from their first state of combination: they must of necessity be re-cast, and undergo an adapting process, in which the genius of the organising poet consists; and we cannot hope, by simply knowing them as they exist in the second stage, ever to divine how they stood in the first. Such, in my judgment, is the right conception of the Homeric epoch—an organising poetical mind, still preserving that freshness of observation and vivacity of details which constitutes the charm of the ballad.
"Nothing is gained by studying the Iliad as a congeries of fragments once independent of each other: no portion of the poem can be shown to have ever been so, and the supposition introduces difficulties greater than those which it removes. But it is not necessary to affirm that the whole poem, as we now read it, belonged to the original and preconceived plan. In this respect the Iliad produces upon my mind an impression totally different from the Odyssey. In the latter poem the characters and incidents are fewer; the whole plot appears of one projection, from the beginning down to the death of the suitors: none of the parts look as if they had been composed separately, and inserted by way of addition into a pre-existing smaller poem. But the Iliad, on the contrary, presents the appearance of a house built upon a plan comparatively narrow, and subsequently enlarged by successive additions. The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the eleventh to the twenty-second inclusive, seem to form the primary organisation of the poem, then properly an Achilleïs: the twenty-third and twenty-fourth books are additions at the tail of this primitive poem, which still leave it nothing more than an enlarged Achilleïs: but the books from the second to the seventh inclusive, together with the tenth, are of a wider and more comprehensive character, and convert the poem from an Achilleïs into an Iliad. The primitive frontispiece, inscribed with the anger of Achilles and its direct consequences, yet remains, after it has ceased to be co-extensive with the poems. The parts added, however, are not necessarily inferior in merit to the original poem: so far is this from being the case, that amongst them are comprehended some of the noblest efforts of the Grecian epic."—(Vol. ii. p. 230.)
To many persons the undisputed fact that the Homeric poems were composed to be recited, not read, has appeared a convincing proof that they could not have originally assumed the form in which they are known to us. For setting aside the difficulty of preserving by the aid only of memory, and the still greater difficulty of composing a long poem without help of the manuscript, to keep secure the part already completed, what motive, it has been said, could induce the poet to undertake so great and so superfluous a labour? Why indite a poem so much longer than could be recited on any one occasion, and which, as a whole, could never be appreciated? But we would suggest that it is not necessary to suppose that the poet commenced his labours with the project in view of writing a long epic, in order to believe that we possess these two great poems very nearly in the original form in which they were composed. If it were the task of the poet or poets to supply a number of songs on the adventures of a popular hero, or the achievements of some famous war, such number of songs must assume a certain consecutive order, the one will necessarily grow out of the other. Let any one reflect for a moment how the work of composition proceeds, and he will perceive that it would be impossible for a poet to take any one such subject as the siege of Troy, or the return of Ulysses, as the theme for a number of separate poems, and not find that he was writing, with more or less continuity, one long entire poem. This continuity would be improved and especially attended to, when a certain order came to be preserved (as we know it was) in the recitation of the several poems. We have no difficulty, therefore, in believing that, in the time of Pisistratus, the editors of Homer might have had very little to do to give them that degree of completeness and unity which they at present display. A number of consecutive songs upon the same subject would naturally grow into an epic.
No decisive argument, we submit, can be drawn from the absence or limited application of the art of writing at the era assigned for the composition of these poems. There is nothing left for us but to examine the poems themselves, to determine what degree of unity of plan or of authorship may be attributed to them. Unfortunately the critical perception of scholars, equally eminent, leads to such different results, that the controversy appears to be hopeless. Where one sees with the utmost distinctness the difference of workmanship, another sees with equal clearness the traces of the same genius and manner. And in controversies of this nature, there is unhappily a most perverse combination of the strongest conviction with an utter impotence to force that conviction upon another. Between these two, a man is generally driven into a passion; and thus we often find a bitter, acrid mood infused into literary discussions, which, lying as they do apart from the selfish and conflicting interests of men, would seem to be the theatre for no such display. The controversy rages still in Germany, and, it seems, with considerable heat. Lachmann, after dissecting a certain portion of the Iliad into four songs, "in the highest degree different in their spirit," tells us that whoever thinks the difference of spirit inconsiderable—whoever does not feel it at once
