any others relating to the Spartan Confucius.

I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories, with an attempt, made
by an ingenious friend, to unite them into something like consistency. It
is as follows:--

"No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common
sailors of some fifty years ago, some one qualified to 'discourse
in excellent music' among them. Many of these, like those of the
negroes in the United States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to
events passing around them. But what was passing around them? The
grand events of a spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to
impress themselves, as the mystical legends of former times had
done, upon their memory; besides which, a retentive memory was
deemed a virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly
in those ancient times. Ballads at first, and down to the
beginning of the war with Troy, were merely recitations, with an
intonation. Then followed a species of recitative, probably with
an intoned burden. Tune next followed, as it aided the memory
considerably.

"It was at this period, about four hundred years after the war,
that a poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or Moeonides,
but most probably the former. He saw that these ballads might be
made of great utility to his purpose of writing a poem on the
social position of Hellas, and, as a collection, he published
these lays, connecting them by a tale of his own. This poem now
exists, under the title of the 'Odyssea.' The author, however, did
not affix his own name to the poem, which, in fact, was, great
part of it, remodelled from the archaic dialect of Crete, in which
tongue the ballads were found by him. He therefore called it the
poem of Homeros, or the Collector; but this is rather a proof of
his modesty and talent, than of his mere drudging arrangement of
other people's ideas; for, as Grote has finely observed, arguing
for the unity of authorship, 'a great poet might have re-cast
pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive whole; but no
mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so.'

"While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a
ballad, recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon. His noble
mind seized the hint that there presented itself, and the
Achilleis(32) grew under his hand. Unity of desi