described a blind man as attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had

been conscious that the memory of the bard was only maintained by constant

reference to the manuscript in his chest.”


The loss of the digamma, that crux of critics, that quicksand upon which

even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove beyond a doubt, that

the pronunciation of the Greek language had undergone a considerable change.

Now it is certainly difficult to suppose that the Homeric poems could have

suffered by this change, had written copies been preserved. If Chaucer’s

poetry, for instance, had not been written, it could only have come down to us

in a softened form, more like the effeminate version of Dryden, than the rough,

quaint, noble original.


“At what period,” continues Grote, “these poems, or indeed

any other Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture,

though there is ground for assurance that it was before the time of Solon. If,

in the absence of evidence, we may venture upon naming any more determinate

period, the question at once suggests itself, What were the purposes which, in

that state of society, a manuscript at its first commencement must have been

intended to answer? For whom was a written Iliad necessary? Not for the

rhapsodes; for with them it was not only planted in the memory, but also

interwoven with the feelings, and conceived in conjunction with all those

flexions and intonations of voice, pauses, and other oral artifices which were

required for emphatic delivery, and which the naked manuscript could never

reproduce. Not for the general public—they were accustomed to receive it

with its rhapsodic delivery, and with its accompaniments of a solemn and

crowded festival. The only persons for whom the written Iliad would be suitable

would be a select few; studious and curious men; a class of readers capable of