t many of our
modern Homeric theories will become matter for the surprise and
entertainment, rather than the instruction, of posterity. Nor can I help
thinking, that the literary history of more recent times will account for
many points of difficulty in the transmission of the Iliad and Odyssey to
a period so remote from that of their first creation.

I have already expressed my belief that the labours of Peisistratus were
of a purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason why
corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad in his
day, than that the poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus should have
given so much trouble to Poggio, Scaliger, and others. But, after all, the
main fault in all the Homeric theories is, that they demand too great a
sacrifice of those feelings to which poetry most powerfully appeals, and
which are its most fitting judges. The ingenuity which has sought to rob
us of the name and existence of Homer, does too much violence to that
inward emotion, which makes our whole soul yearn with love and admiration
for the blind bard of Chios. To believe the author of the Iliad a mere
compiler, is to degrade the powers of human invention; to elevate
analytical judgment at the expense of the most ennobling impulses of the
soul; and to forget the ocean in the contemplation of a polypus. There is
a catholicity, so to speak, in the very name of Homer. Our faith in the
author of the Iliad may be a mistaken one, but as yet nobody has taught us
a better.

While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that has nature
herself for its mainspring; while I can join with old Ennius in believing
in Homer as the ghost, who, like some patron saint, hovers round the bed
of the poet, and even bestows rare gifts from that wealth of imagination
which a host of imitators could not exhaust,--still I am far from wishing
to deny that the author of these great poems found a rich fund of
tradition, a well-stocked mythical storehouse from whence he might derive
both subject and embellishment. But it is one thing to _use_ existing
romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to patch up the poem
itself from such materials. What consistency of style and execution can be
hoped for from such an attempt? or, rather, what bad taste and tedium will
not be the infallible result?

A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other bards,
are features perfectly consistent with poeti