but very narrow class), manuscripts of the Homeric poems and other old

epics,—the Thebais and the Cypria, as well as the Iliad and the

Odyssey,—began to be compiled towards the middle of the seventh century

B.C.; and the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, which took place about

the same period, would furnish increased facilities for obtaining the requisite

papyrus to write upon. A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless

slowly increase, and the number of manuscripts along with it: so that before

the time of Solon, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manuscripts, though

still comparatively few, might have attained a certain recognized authority,

and formed a tribunal of reference against the carelessness of individual

rhapsodies.”


But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in possession of the

credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of the following

observations:—


“There are several incidental circumstances which, in our opinion, throw

some suspicion over the whole history of the Peisistratid compilation, at least

over the theory that the Iliad was cast into its present stately and harmonious

form by the directions of the Athenian ruler. If the great poets, who

flourished at the bright period of Grecian song, of which, alas! we have

inherited little more than the fame, and the faint echo; if Stesichorus,

Anacreon, and Simonides were employed in the noble task of compiling the Iliad

and Odyssey, so much must have been done to arrange, to connect, to harmonize,

that it is almost incredible that stronger marks of Athenian manufacture should

not remain. Whatever occasional anomalies may be detected, anomalies which no

doubt arise out of our own ignorance of the language of the Homeric age;

however the irregular use of the digamma may have perplexed our Bentleys, to

whom the name of Helen is said to have caused as much disquiet and distress as