derable portion could be subtracted without
converting the poem into a more or less admirable fragment. The
Iliad stands in a somewhat different position. There are unmistakable
peculiarities in its structure, which have led even Mr. Grote, who
utterly rejects the Wolfian hypothesis, to regard it as made up of
two poems; although he inclines to the belief that the later poem
was grafted upon the earlier by its own author, by way of further
elucidation and expansion; just as Goethe, in his old age, added a
new part to "Faust." According to Mr. Grote, the Iliad, as originally
conceived, was properly an Achilleis; its design being, as indicated in
the opening lines of the poem, to depict the wrath of Achilleus and
the unutterable woes which it entailed upon the Greeks The plot of
this primitive Achilleis is entirely contained in Books I., VIII., and
XI.-XXII.; and, in Mr. Grote's opinion, the remaining books injure the
symmetry of this plot by unnecessarily prolonging the duration of
the Wrath, while the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, unduly
anticipates the conduct of Agamemnon in the nineteenth, and is
therefore, as a piece of bungling work, to be referred to the hands of
an inferior interpolator. Mr. Grote thinks it probable that these books,
with the exception of the ninth, were subsequently added by the poet,
with a view to enlarging the original Achilleis into a real Iliad,
describing the war of the Greeks against Troy. With reference to this
hypothesis, I gladly admit that Mr. Grote is, of all men now living, the
one best entitled to a reverential hearing on almost any point connected
with Greek antiquity. Nevertheless it seems to me that his theory rests
solely upon imagined difficulties which have no real existence. I doubt
if any scholar, reading the Iliad ever so much, would ever be struck by
these alleged inconsistencies of structure, unless they were suggested
by some a priori theory. And I fear that the Wolfian theory, in spite of
Mr. Grote's emphatic rejection of it, is responsible for some of these
over-refined criticisms. Even as it stands, the Iliad is not an account
of the war against Troy. It begins in the tenth year of the siege, and
it does not continue to the capture of the city. It is simply occupied
with an episode in the war,--with the wrath of Achilleus and its
consequences, according to the plan marked out in the opening lines. The
supposed additions, therefore, though they may have given