an artistic epic, adds, that this will make
itself at once evident to all those who have any sense of artistical
symmetry, but that to those to whom that sense is wanting, no conclusive
demonstration call be given. He warns the latter, however, they are not
to deny the existence of that which their short-sighted vision cannot
distinguish, for every thing cannot be made clear to children, which the
mature man sees through at a glance! Mr Grote, from whom we quote these
instances, adds that he has the misfortune to dissent both from Lachmann
and Ulrici; for to him it appears a mistake to put (as Ulrici and others
have done) the Iliad and the Odyssey on the same footing. The sort of
compromise which Mr Grote offers seems very fair; but, for our part, we
beg _to reserve the point_; we will not commit ourselves on so delicate
a subject, by a hasty assent. But we promise to read our Homer again
with an especial regard to these boundaries he has pointed out between
the _Achilleis_ and the _Iliad_.

Who Homer himself may have been, and if the blind bard ever existed, is
a question, of course, very different from the degree of unity to be
traced in the two great poems which have descended to us under his name.
On this subject Mr Grote gives us an hypothesis which, as far as we are
aware, is new and original. It has not, however, won our conviction--and
we had intended to offer some objections against it. But we have already
dwelt so long on this legendary period, that unless we break from it at
once, we shall have no space left to give any idea whatever of the
manner in which Mr Grote treats the more historical periods of his
history. We must be allowed, therefore, to make a bold and abrupt
transition; and, as every one in a history of Greece turns his eye first
toward Athens, we shall, at one single bound, light upon the city of
Minerva as she appeared in the age of Solon and Pisistratus.

A fidelity to the spirit of the epoch upon which he is engaged, as well
as to the text of his authorities, we have already remarked, is a
distinguishing merit of Mr Grote. Of this, his chapters upon the age of
Solon might be cited as an illustration. We are persuaded that a reader
of many a history of Greece, unless himself observant, and on the watch
to detect, as he passes, the signs of the times, might proceed from the
age of Pisistratus to that of Pericles, and not be made aware how very
great the advancement, during that period, of the