66 17 of Chaucer marking a period of transition and incapable of reproduction at any later time. There is a dignity of style which belongs only to the work of a lofty mind; the adjective "Homeric" has a meaning as well defined as the adjective "Miltonic." Like every one of the greatest poets, the author of the "Iliad" and of the Odyssey" is master of all the knowledge of his time, and this conscious mastery breathes everywhere through his verse-incedit regina. I suppose it was the convergence of all these proofs which moved Aristotleone of the most sagacious thinkers the world has seen -to declare that the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" constitute the standard of epic unity. Consider, for a moment, what demands the opposite hypothesis makes upon our credulity. Instead of one Homer, or even of two Homers, we are to believe in many Homers, each equal to the production of a poem which may ultimately constitute a part of the "Iliad" or the "Odyssey." Are great poets, then, so plenty in human history? The critics seem to think them thick as blackberries in August. But even the Elizabethan age has but one Shakespeare; we may count ourselves well off if one such star of poesy rises in each five hundred years. Granting that a whole galaxy of poets rose at once, is it probable that they would all choose for their theme the war of Troy, the last year of that war, Achilles among all the chiefs, and, more narrowly still, the one incident of Achilles' wrath? Would they all, with one accord, ignore the story of Troy's fall, and passing over the fates of all the other heroes, devote their genius to depicting only the wanderings and the return of Ulysses? B Or, if this is credible, can we believe that out of these independent lays a consistent whole could be constructed, with parts so nicely balanced, and with such unity of effect as to make it a paragon of art? As well believe that the Parthenon is the work of a multitude of successive builders, each beginning where the last left off, but without architect or plan: the rambling incongruities and incompleteness of some English cathedrals show the results of such a method. Or is the genius of the poems the genius of the patient bookmaker-some critical and selecting and combining Peisistratus, or servant of Peisistratus, five hundred years after the original composition of the separate lays? Then we have a double problem to deal with: first, why such genius should have occupied itself with work so mechanical and inglorious; and secondly, why the composer of the nucleus should not have been equally competent at the first to organize his material into the finished poem. Whatever proves such genius in the separate parts, proves ability to construct the whole; whatever proves genius in the compiler proves that compiling would never satisfy his poetical ambition. Professor Mahaffy, in his "Problems of Greek History," has well said that, while the "Iliad" and " "Odyssey" are made up of many different legends, their co-ordination is the work of one great poet. Even the great German critic of Homer calls the "Iliad" "the Greek Bible." Yet he denies the unity of its authorship, and would break it into its component parts. He represents the innovating and destructive tendency of the modern criticism in general. Now that the same method is applied to the Hebrew Bible, and only the nucleus of the UNITY OF THE "ODYSSEY" 19 Pentateuch is accepted as the work of Moses, we can see somewhat more clearly both the nature of the method and its results. It It would rob us of every great name of literature. would give to the late and inferior talent which can only patch together the works of others the praise that belongs to supreme creative genius. The large design and simple elegance of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" are not the natural product of an artificial age like that of Peisistratus; they belong to the mighty childhood of the race. Moses and Homer were possibly added to and supplemented as their work passed down through generations following; Ezra in the former case and Peisistratus in the latter had doubtless a part to play in determining what was canonical and genuine. The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" probably supplanted other and earlier poems which ceased to be read or recited and so were lost forever. But the former supplanted the latter because the former possessed a unity and majesty in which the latter were lacking. It was a case of the survival of the fittest. Homer himself, granting that our doctrine of a single authorship is correct, may have taken many years for the complete elaboration of his poems, and during those years versions of various degrees of perfection may have been set in circulation. Some such hypothesis fully accounts. for ancient diversities of reading and provides abundant work for Peisistratus, while it saves the integrity of the poems. Goethe, in one of his letters to Schiller, cites different versions of his own poems to refute the theory we are considering. He had at various times amended and enlarged them, but he did not propose on that account to concede that there was a second Goethe, or many Goethes. Wolf's "Prolegomena" itself, treated in this way, would furnish evidence that the one Wolf was many Wolfs instead. "The London Spectator" sums up the argument none too forcibly when it says: "It is as impossible that a first-rate poem or work of art should be produced without a great master-mind to conceive the whole, as that a fine living bull should be developed out of beef sausages." Here we must consider a most plausible objection proposed by Paley, the latest English representative of the Wolfian theory. He denies the original unity of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" upon the ground that it is impossible to preserve intact so long poems unwritten, and that written they could not have been. Let us take these two points in the reverse order from that in which they are stated. Both assertions are without warrant. We meet the first with the counter-assertion that the poems could have been, and probably were, written. All arguments for the unity and the internal vital connections of the poems are also arguments for the writing of them. The burden of proof rests upon those who deny that they were originally written, and the proof of such a negative as this will be found a very considerable burden. We do not choose, however, to avail ourselves of our privilege in this matter. We rather desire to state all the important facts which make against our own view, as well as those which favor it; let the balance then be struck, and let the reader decide for himself. What was the date of Homer? or, if any dislike to put the question in that form, when was the substance of the "Iliad " TESTIMONY OF ABOU SYMBEL 21 and of the "Odyssey" composed? We answer, Homer lived, or the poems were composed, many years after the Trojan war. This we infer from the fact that the poet speaks of the superior size and strength of the warriors who fought before Troy, as of a generation long since passed away. If then we take 1050 B. C., the traditional date of the Trojan war, as approximately correct, we may put Homer, or the rise of the Homeric poems, at 850 B. C., or four hundred years before the time of Herodotus. The question before us is therefore this: Is it probable that the Greek language was committed to writing and was used for literary purposes so early as 850 B. C.? We must grant that no actual literary remains, unless it be the poems of Homer, have come down to us from that time. The earliest specimens of Greek epigraphy do not antedate the middle of the seventh century before Christ. The fragmentary inscriptions of Thera, of Crete, and of Naucratis, may be assigned to 650, 640, and 630, respectively. Those of Melos and of About Symbel come later still, and probably within the sixth century. As the last of these is peculiarly interesting and significant, I dwell upon it at greater length. On its front is the Far up the river Nile, in modern Nubia, and at the very confines of ancient Egypt, still stand the remains of the temple of Abou Symbel. famous row of colossal statues, seventy feet high, though each is sitting with hands upon the knees. They are awe-inspiring in their solitary grandeur. But to the archæologist one of the most curious things about them is an inscription cut long after the statues themselves were carved out of the solid rock. That inscription is |