with the startling announcement that the AEneid of Virgil, and the satires of

Horace, were literary deceptions. Now, without wishing to say one word of

disrespect against the industry and learning—nay, the refined

acuteness—which scholars like Wolf have bestowed upon this subject, I

must express my fears, that many of our modern Homeric theories will become

matter for the surprise and entertainment, rather than the instruction, of

posterity. Nor can I help thinking that the literary history of more recent

times will account for many points of difficulty in the transmission of the

Iliad and Odyssey to a period so remote from that of their first creation.


I have already expressed my belief that the labours of Peisistratus were of a

purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason why corrupt and

imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad in his day, than that the

poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus should have given so much trouble to

Poggio, Scaliger, and others. But, after all, the main fault in all the Homeric

theories is, that they demand too great a sacrifice of those feelings to which

poetry most powerfully appeals, and which are its most fitting judges. The

ingenuity which has sought to rob us of the name and existence of Homer, does

too much violence to that inward emotion, which makes our whole soul yearn with

love and admiration for the blind bard of Chios. To believe the author of the

Iliad a mere compiler, is to degrade the powers of human invention; to elevate

analytical judgment at the expense of the most ennobling impulses of the soul;

and to forget the ocean in the contemplation of a polypus. There is a

catholicity, so to speak, in the very name of Homer. Our faith in the author of

the Iliad may be a mistaken one, but as yet nobody has taught us a better.


While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that has nature herself