WHATEVER want of interest in modern Greek claims may be laid to the charge of our Government, we cannot as a nation be accused of neglecting classical Greek studies. The spread of a real interest in Hellenism of the best kind seems strangely parallel to the attacks upon the study of Greek by our breadand-butter-knowledge theorists. The teaching of the Greeks, not only in the extant branches of their fine arts, but in their social and political philosophy, and even in their abstract metaphysic, is still paramount among those who will think thoroughly upon these subjects. Hence the perpetual appearance of books bearing on some side of old Greek culture, from which I will choose for present consideration three recent books on Homer, the fountain-head of Greek poetry. Two of these are a short and a long book professedly on Homer-Mr. Gladstone's Primer, and Professor Geddes's Problem of the Homeric Poems. The third is a short but very comprehensive Primer of Greek Literature, by Professor Jebb, in which Homer necessarily occupies the foremost place and a large proportion of the available room.

Mr. Gladstone's Primer gives a valuable summary of the opinions he has advocated for many years with his usual force and ingenuity, and perhaps in after-days this summary will be quoted as the most convenient account of his views. A shilling primer, however unsuitable to a large subject, is peculiarly valuable when it discusses a single author or single epoch in literature. Thus without undue compression we can learn all that an educated outsider ought to know about Homer or Shakespeare, and even the scholar should have all the aspects and large controversies concerning them sketched, or at least suggested. This latter field,

however, is so vast in the case of Homer, that Mr. Gladstone prefers to tell the reader about Homer himself, and gives us little of what has been said about Homer. This, no doubt, suits his own taste; but I am not sure that at the present moment a primer on the Homeric controversy would not have been more useful and far more needful. Mr. Gladstone is so professedly the advocate of a particular view, that the task of reviewing the long conflict of opinion since Wolf's book must be disagreeable to him.

1

But surely it is somewhat scandalous that we have as yet no English book which gives us the least indication of Continental literature on the subject during the last generation. This must be asserted even in the face of Professor Geddes's book, which is so completely engrossed with establishing the author's theory that it omits to mention recent German works, though of the greatest value both in corroborating and in refuting it. Professor Jebb shows indeed both knowledge and appreciation of this literature, and, had space permitted, would doubtless have given us a scholarly and learned review of the Homeric question. His own opinion-which asserts not only separate authors for Iliad and Odyssey, but within each poem an earlier nucleus

1 Perhaps some such summary has escaped me, and if this be so I crave pardon. I should also add that in Professor Blackie's Homer and the Iliad (1866) the Dissertations vi. and ix. are full of sound and clear information on the Wolfian and Greek study of the text. But then Professor Blackie necessarily passes by the Odyssey, and his work was completed some fourteen years ago, so that much new material has since been added on both sides, or on all sides of the controversy. With Professor Blackie's conclusions I am more disposed to agree than will appear from this article, but space forbids me to add this discussion to a paper already too controversial.

evidently places the capture of Æneas' horses (told in E) in a previous period of the war. Even the very conservative Alexandrians considered K and to be later compositions, and I think the evidence goes to show that, once admitting the poem to be made up of an older nucleus and later additions, there is no reason to think that the additions were taken from one poem, or the work of one author.

As to the respective merits of the Achillean and Odyssean poets, Professor Geddes is in my opinion right in asserting the superiority of the latter, and in claiming for the Odyssey a higher place than it has usually held as a poem.

But here the general verdict is against us. For not only does a great host of critics, from Plato in the Hippias Minor to Mr. Gladstone in the Primer, assert the superiority of the Iliad, but most of them assert it on the score of those very parts which belong to the gloomy and fierce poet of the wrath of Achilles.

Indeed it is hopeless ever to expect agreement in the aesthetic judgments about the Homeric poems. What one critic thinks splendid, another equally competent thinks poor and tame. Thus Mr. Gladstone, and I think rightly, refers to the later books of the Odyssey, in which the just doom of vengeance is gradually closing round the wicked Suitors, as inferior in splendour to no part of the Iliad, while it is this very part that eminent Germans like Bonitz and Kirchhoff condemn as feeble and diluted, as well as exaggerated and unnatural. But the general tendency of separatist criticism has been to assert that the earliest bard was the most original and the greatest, and that the rest were feebler imitators. With some of them, like Bergk, who are more remarkable for learning than for common sense, it is even an axiom that what they think weak and feeble must be later, and conversely, just as if a later poet might not rival and even surpass his predecessors, as for example the poet of (the Ransom of Hector), which is vastly superior to

most of the oldest pieces of the Iliad. It is then very wholesome to find a new theorist overturning this common assumption, and maintaining that the second poet who contributed to the Iliad was a greater and maturer genius than the original bard.

There is another point too on which Professor Geddes brings so much evidence to bear that for my part I feel shaken in an opinion that I held in common with Professor Jebb and

many other scholars. There is a good deal of evidence in small points, and still more in the general tone and style of the poems, to make us place the Odyssey later in date than the Iliad. Emile Burnouf goes farthest when he separates them by two centuries. The Alexandrian critics did not venture beyond the interval from Homer's youth to his old age, and in this Mr. Gladstone concurs. Mr. Jebb's interval of about two generations, which is, if I remember, Bergk's also, seems to me the most reasonable. But in the many lists of words and usages common to the later books of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which Professor Geddes gives in support of his theory, there seems considerable evidence that in diction, as well as in ideas, there was no great severance in time between them. I do not accept it as a proof that they proceed from a single poet, but rather that the school of poets which completed the Iliad were the school which composed the materials for the Odyssey.

This seems to be the conclusion of one of the acutest Homeric scholars, Sengebusch, who follows Aristarchus in insisting upon the sameness of age of both poems, though he admits with Lachmann that each may be the composition of many bards. Indeed in many other points Sengebusch, from his close adherence to Aristarchus, approaches to Professor Geddes's conclusions. He holds, for example, that the earliest epic poetry arose not in Ionia, but in Greece—in Thrace or Thessaly; that it was transplanted to Attica, and passed over through Ios to Smyrna with the Ionic migration.

that his theory is merely a large view of the composition of the Iliad, leaving room for additions or corrections in detail. Of this theory, Mr. Gladstone says (p. 26) that "the very eminent historian has enlisted no disciples," a statement to which Professor Geddes's volume is a flagrant contradiction. But that volume has appeared since Mr. Gladstone's statement. What shall we say, however, of Friedländer, who adopts it, or of Düntzer, who boasts to have anticipated it in part? What shall we say of the cloud of critics who separate the Iliad into an earlier Achilleid, with later accretions, like Professor Jebb? Far from enlisting no disciples, it may rather be said that Grote's theory, so far as it goes, has met with very general acceptance.

But most critics who come to adopt a separatist theory will not stop where Grote did; they will not confine the Iliad to two authors, still less will they acquiesce in the unity of the Odyssey. In his day the latter poem was only beginning to excite critical attention, and though he could have read enough to excite doubts in his later years, his mind had passed from Homeric to later studies, and the Odyssean literature remained beyond his horizon. Professor Geddes has not the same excuse, and it is the main defect of his learned book, as a study on the controversy, that he accepts from Grote, as Grote did from Wolf, a passive acquiescence in the unity of the Odyssey, without suspecting that a sceptical critic may be conservative, and a singularly vigilant critic asleep, even on a problem closely akin to that which brought him his fame.

Professor Geddes quotes with contempt (p. 34) "the exercitations of such critics as Rhode and others to find flaws in the Odyssey, and the laborious efforts of such as Düntzer to answer them." It may be all very well to despise Rhode and other obscure persons, but is this a fair way of speaking, when such names as Bekker, Köchly, Kirchhoff, Hartel, are among his opponents, not to speak of the

equally great "defenders of the unity," such as Lehrs, Bergk, and a dozen more, who are also substantially against him? In the face of this great body of learned opinion we are told (p. 33) that the verdict of Mr. Grote is on this matter completely satisfactory: "If it had happened that the Odyssey had been preserved to us alone without the Iliad, I think the dispute respecting Homeric unity would never have been raised." This may be perfectly true, but what has it to say to the question? Many a murderer would never have been suspected but for the conviction of his accomplice. Does that prove him innocent? There has in fact been a growing body of criticism since about 1850, which has culminated in Kirchhoff's Composition der Odyssee, a book only second in importance to Wolf's Prolegomena. This body of criticism, which asserts that sutures and gaps are to be found in the apparently compact structure of the Odyssey, must be met by no appeal to Wolf and Grote, but by a consideration of the objections in detail.

In other respects Professor Geddes's Homeric Problem is a very ingenious attempt to establish the separatist theory with a new boundary line-a line not separating Iliad from Odyssey, but separating the Achilleis from the rest of the Iliad and Odyssey combined. There are a great many sound arguments adduced to show the greater rudeness and primitiveness of the Achillean or Thessalian bard, and it seems probable that the authorship of these parts of the Iliad may be single. But when Professor Geddes assumes not only the unity of the Odyssey, but of all the books of the Iliad not Achillean, and calls the common author of both the real Ionic Homer, I confess that his case seems to me very doubtful. The books composed by the author of the Odyssey in our Iliad are declared to be B-H, I, K, Y, and . Yet in these very books there are not a few signs of different hands. The author of the games in not only knows nothing of the horses of Rhesus in K, but

evidently places the capture of Æneas' horses (told in E) in a previous period of the war. Even the very conservative Alexandrians considered K and 2 to be later compositions, and I think the evidence goes to show that, once admitting the poem to be made up of an older nucleus and later additions, there is no reason to think that the additions were taken from one poem, or the work of one author.

As to the respective merits of the Achillean and Odyssean poets, Professor Geddes is in my opinion right in asserting the superiority of the latter, and in claiming for the Odyssey a higher place than it has usually held as a poem. But here the general verdict is against us. For not only does a great host of critics, from Plato in the Hippias Minor to Mr. Gladstone in the Primer, assert the superiority of the Iliad, but most of them assert it on the score of those very parts which belong to the gloomy and fierce poet of the wrath of Achilles.

Indeed it is hopeless ever to expect agreement in the aesthetic judgments about the Homeric poems. What one critic thinks splendid, another equally competent thinks poor and tame. Thus Mr. Gladstone, and I think rightly, refers to the later books of the Odyssey, in which the just doom of vengeance is gradually closing round the wicked Suitors, as inferior in splendour to no part of the Iliad, while it is this very part that eminent Germans like Bonitz and Kirchhoff condemn as feeble and diluted, as well as exaggerated and unnatural. But the general tendency of separatist criticism has been to assert that the earliest bard was the most original and the greatest, and that the rest were feebler imitators. With some of them, like Bergk, who are more remarkable for learning than for common sense, it is even an axiom that what they think weak and feeble must be later, and conversely, just as if a later poet might not rival and even surpass his predecessors, as for example the poet of (the Ransom of Hector), which is vastly superior to

most of the oldest pieces of the Iliad. It is then very wholesome to find a new theorist overturning this common assumption, and maintaining that the second poet who contributed to the Iliad was a greater and maturer genius than the original bard.

There is another point too on which Professor Geddes brings so much evidence to bear that for my part I feel shaken in an opinion that I held in common with Professor Jebb and many other scholars. There is a good deal of evidence in small points, and still more in the general tone and style of the poems, to make us place the Odyssey later in date than the Iliad. Emile Burnouf goes farthest when he separates them by two centuries. The Alexandrian critics did not venture beyond the interval from Homer's youth to his old age, and in this Mr. Gladstone concurs. Mr. Jebb's interval of about two generations, which is, if I remember, Bergk's also, seems to me the most reasonable. But in the many lists of words and usages common to the later books of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which Professor Geddes gives in support of his theory, there seems considerable evidence that in diction, as well as in ideas, there was no great severance in time between them. I do not accept it as a proof that they proceed from a single poet, but rather that the school of poets which completed the Iliad were the school which composed the materials for the Odyssey.

This seems to be the conclusion of one of the acutest Homeric scholars, Sengebusch, who follows Aristarchus in insisting upon the sameness of age of both poems, though he admits with Lachmann that each may be the composition of many bards. Indeed in many other points Sengebusch, from his close adherence to Aristarchus, approaches to Professor Geddes's conclusions. He holds, for example, that the earliest epic poetry arose not in Ionia, but in Greece—in Thrace or Thessaly; that it was transplanted to Attica, and passed over through Ios to Smyrna with the Ionic migration.

Hence earlier Thessalian lays might have come with the emigrants, which were utilised by the bards who composed the more complete epic poem in Ionia. This explanation mediates between the prevalent and well-grounded theory that Homer lived in Ionia, and the persistence of Mr. Gladstone that he was an Achaian living in Greece before the migration. The early parts of the Iliad may be from such a poet, the remainder, to which others have attended, were composed in Asia Minor (Geddes, p. 322). The independent agreement of two competent inquirers in the main point is very instructive, though Sengebusch reaches it through the Athenian claim for Homer, which Professor Geddes rejects.

Moreover Professor Geddes has not expressed himself fully on the name Homer,1 which Mr. Gladstone abandons as a proper name, and thinks a symbolical title. This from so conservative a Homerist is very strange, especially as the weight of evidence is clearly in favour of its genuineness. Mr. Jebb rightly asserts this, correcting at the same time (p. 36, note) Mr. Gladstone's rendering of "the Fitter," as the root dp has been shown by G. Curtius to be originally intransitive, so that if it be present at all, the word means fitted together. But the absence of any local form Homarus, which ought to occur, makes the derivation very doubtful, and I think Sengebusch's learned disquisition (H.D. post., p. 90, sec. 9) makes it possible that we have a proper name formed from ou, with an ending at first èros, and not connected with the idea of fitting at all.

For my part I am convinced that there was a famous old Ionic bard called Homer, whose name lived on in people's memory as the most delightful of epic singers. He certainly did not compose the long series of poems con

1 A reference to it in the index is wrong (p. 23), so that the reader cannot find the passage without hunting all through the book, which, owing to its fulness of matter and consequent intricacy, requires a much fuller, and at least an accurate, index.

sistently ascribed to him by the earlier ages. For his name was assumed, like that of Plato and of Hippocrates, long after, by various anonymous productions of the same kind, which floated down into history, nay, even by poems. of which the authors were definitely known. Whether indeed he composed the two poems which were left to him, when criticism had rejected the rest, is still under dispute. But in opposition to Mr. Gladstone, who anticipates (p. 45) a final judgment that he did, I venture to anticipate a final agreement that he did not, and that only a small portion of the poems can be shown to be the work of a single Homer. If indeed he is brought down to the dawn of literary days, and called the arranger of old materials-a sort of Sir Thomas Malory dealing with early poems, then indeed both poems may be in some sense his work. But then we must surely have heard of him as we hear of Solon and of Peisistratus, or of Onomakritus, to whom tradition ascribes this critical function. This is not the kind of man whose name fascinates the people, and lives on

tradition, transformed into an all-embracing ideal of perfection.

Thus my difference from Mr. Gladstone on other points does not prevent my heartily subscribing to his remarks (p. 45) on the practical unity of the poems as a mine of knowledge on the earliest Greek mythology, polity, domestic life, manners, art, and industry, to which all, even the sceptics, may refer as the picture of practically the same age and the same society. In the sketch which occupies the remainder of the book, Mr. Gladstone has indeed given us a valuable and complete summary of the many observations made during a long life of Homeric study, and I know no better or more suggestive introduction to the reading of the text.2

2 This is the broad way of looking at the matter, and is quite sufficient for a Primer, though I acknowledge, on the other hand, most fully the value of the researches of Professor Geddes's exhaustive and learned treatise in establishing that within this unity there is at