musket.

[34] Just as if a man spending his life to show the folly of Methodism
should burst into maudlin tears at sight of John Wesley, and say, 'Oh,
if all men, my dear brothers, were but Methodists!'

[35] How so? If the Jews were naturally infidels, why did God select
them? But, first, they might have, and they certainly had, other
balancing qualities; secondly, in the sense here meant, all men are
infidels; and we ourselves, by the very nature of one object which I
will indicate, are pretty generally infidels in the same sense as they.
Look at our evidences; look at the sort of means by which we often
attempt to gain proselytes among the heathen and at home. Fouler
infidelities there are not. Special pleading, working for a verdict,
etc., etc.

[36] [This idea is expanded and followed out in detail in the opening of
'Homer and the Homeridae;' but this is evidently the note from which that
grew, and is here given alike on account of its compactness and
felicity.--ED.]

[37] Satire ix., lines 60, 61.

[38] Who can answer a sneer?

[39] Butler--'unanswerable ridicule.'

[40] Said of members of the Bristol family.

_XXV. OMITTED PASSAGES AND VARIATIONS._

1.--THE RHAPSODOI.

The following on the 'Rhapsodoi' is a variation on that which appeared
in 'Homer and the Homeridae,' with some quite additional and new thoughts
on the subject.

About these people, who they were, what relation they bore to Homer, and
why they were called 'Rhapsodoi,' we have seen debated in Germany
through the last half century with as much rabid ferocity as was ever
applied to the books of a fraudulent bankrupt. Such is the natural
impertinence of man. If he suspects any secret, or any base attempt to
hide and conceal things from himself, he is miserable until he finds out
the mystery, and especially where all the parties to it have been
defunct for 2,500 years. Great indignation seems reasonably to have been
felt by all German scholars that any man should presume to have called
himself a _rhapsodos_ at any period of Grecian history without sending
down a sealed letter to posterity stating all the reasons which induced
him to take so unaccountable a step. No possible solution, given to any
conceivable question bearing upon the 'Rhapsodoi,' seems by any tendency
to affect any question outstanding about Homer. And we do not therefore
understand the propriety of intermingling this dispute with the general
Homeric litigation.