animals on earth we least know what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is

best for us is our admiration of good. No man living venerates Homer more than

I do.”


But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests contented with

the poetry on which its best impulses had been nurtured and fostered, without

seeking to destroy the vividness of first impressions by minute analysis, our

editorial office compels us to give some attention to the doubts and

difficulties with which the Homeric question is beset, and to entreat our

reader, for a brief period, to prefer his judgment to his imagination, and to

condescend to dry details. Before, however, entering into particulars

respecting the question of this unity of the Homeric poems, (at least of the

Iliad,) I must express my sympathy with the sentiments expressed in the

following remarks:—


“We cannot but think the universal admiration of its unity by the better,

the poetic age of Greece, almost conclusive testimony to its original

composition. It was not till the age of the grammarians that its primitive

integrity was called in question; nor is it injustice to assert, that the

minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is not the best qualification for

the profound feeling, the comprehensive conception of an harmonious whole. The

most exquisite anatomist may be no judge of the symmetry of the human frame;

and we would take the opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on the proportions and

general beauty of a form, rather than that of Mr. Brodie or Sir Astley Cooper.


“There is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in the lines of

Pope:—


“‘The critic eye—that microscope of wit—

Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;

How parts relate to parts, or they to whole.

The body’s harmony, the beaming soul,

Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see,

When man’s whole frame is obvious to a flea.’”