believing that the composition or primary arrangement of these poems, in their

present form, was the work of Peisistratus, I am rather persuaded that the fine

taste and elegant, mind of that Athenian would lead him to preserve an ancient

and traditional order of the poems, rather than to patch and reconstruct them

according to a fanciful hypothesis. I will not repeat the many discussions

respecting whether the poems were written or not, or whether the art of writing

was known in the time of their reputed author. Suffice it to say, that the more

we read, the less satisfied we are upon either subject.


I cannot, however, help thinking, that the story which attributes the

preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than a version of the

same story as that of Peisistratus, while its historical probability must be

measured by that of many others relating to the Spartan Confucius.


I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories with an attempt, made by an

ingenious friend, to unite them into something like consistency. It is as

follows:—


“No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common sailors of

some fifty years ago, some one qualified to ‘discourse in excellent

music’ among them. Many of these, like those of the negroes in the United

States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to events passing around them. But

what was passing around them? The grand events of a spirit-stirring war;

occurrences likely to impress themselves, as the mystical legends of former

times had done, upon their memory; besides which, a retentive memory was deemed

a virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly in those ancient

times. Ballads at first, and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were

merely recitations, with an intonation. Then followed a species of recitative,

probably with an intoned burden. Tune next followed, as it aided the memory

considerably.