e,
have ever been written which for combined keenness of observation,
elevation of thought, and sublimity of style can compare with the
Homeric poems, we must admit that the argument has very great weight
indeed. Let us take, for example, the sixth and twenty-fourth books
of the Iliad. According to the theory of Lachmann, the most eminent
champion of the Wolfian hypothesis, these are by different authors.
Human speech has perhaps never been brought so near to the limit of its
capacity of expressing deep emotion as in the scene between Priam and
Achilleus in the twenty-fourth book; while the interview between Hektor
and Andromache in the sixth similarly wellnigh exhausts the power of
language. Now, the literary critic has a right to ask whether it
is probable that two such passages, agreeing perfectly in turn of
expression, and alike exhibiting the same unapproachable degree of
excellence, could have been produced by two different authors. And the
physiologist--with some inward misgivings suggested by Mr. Galton's
theory that the Greeks surpassed us in genius even as we surpass the
negroes--has a right to ask whether it is in the natural course of
things for two such wonderful poets, strangely agreeing in their
minutest psychological characteristics, to be produced at the same time.
And the difficulty thus raised becomes overwhelming when we reflect that
it is the coexistence of not two only, but at least twenty such geniuses
which the Wolfian hypothesis requires us to account for. That theory
worked very well as long as scholars thoughtlessly assumed that the
Iliad and Odyssey were analogous to ballad poetry. But, except in the
simplicity of the primitive diction, there is no such analogy. The
power and beauty of the Iliad are never so hopelessly lost as when it is
rendered into the style of a modern ballad. One might as well attempt
to preserve the grandeur of the triumphant close of Milton's Lycidas by
turning it into the light Anacreontics of the ode to "Eros stung by a
Bee." The peculiarity of the Homeric poetry, which defies translation,
is its union of the simplicity characteristic of an early age with a
sustained elevation of style, which can be explained only as due to
individual genius.

The same conclusion is forced upon us when we examine the artistic
structure of these poems. With regard to the Odyssey in particular,
Mr. Grote has elaborately shown that its structure is so thoroughly
integral, that no consi