he chorus,
"Ah, hapless Isis, Osiris is no more." The tale has been a good deal
changed by the Sicilian muse of Bion, but in the boar which killed
Adonis, we have the wicked Typhon as carved on the monuments; we have
also the wound in the thigh, and the consolations of the priests,
who every year ended their mournful song with advising the goddess to
reserve her sorrow for another year, when on the return of the festival
the same lament would be again celebrated. The whole poem has a depth
and earnestness of feeling which is truly Egyptian, but which was very
little known in Alexandria.

To the Alexandrian grammarians, and more particularly to Aristophanes,
Aristarchus, and their pupil, Ammonius, we are indebted for our
present copies of Homer. These critics acted like modern editors, each
publishing an edition, or rather writing out a copy, which was then
re-copied in the museum as often as called for by the demands of the
purchasers of books. Aristophanes left perhaps only one such copy or
edition, while Aristarchus, in his efforts to correct the text of the
great epic poet, made several such copies. These were in the hands of
the later scholiasts, who appealed to them as their authority, and
ventured to make no further alterations; we therefore now read the Iliad
and Odyssey nearly as left by these Alexandrian critics. They no doubt
took some liberties in altering the spelling and smoothing the lines;
and, though we should value most highly a copy in the rougher form in
which it came into their hands, yet, on the whole, we must be great
gainers by their labours. They divided the Iliad and Odyssey into
twenty-four books each, and corrected the faulty metres; but one of
their chief tasks was to set aside, or put a mark against, those more
modern lines which had crept into the ancient poems. It had been
usual to call every old verse Homer's or Homeric, and these it was the
business of the critic to mark as not genuine. Aristarchus was jocosely
said to have called every line spurious which he did not like; but
everything that we can learn of him leads us to believe that he executed
his task with judgment. From these men sprang the school of Alexandrian
grammarians, who for several centuries continued their minute and often
unprofitable studies in verbal criticism.

[Illustration: 234.jpg THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER]

These were the palmy days of criticism. Never before or since have
critics held so high a place in literat