former work: and the disjointed lays of the ancient bards were

joined together, like those relating to the Cid, into a chronicle

history, named the Iliad. Melesigenes knew that the poem was

destined to be a lasting one, and so it has proved; but, first,

the poems were destined to undergo many vicissitudes and

corruptions, by the people who took to singing them in the

streets, assemblies, and agoras. However, Solon first, and then

Peisistratus, and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the

poems, and restored the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their

original integrity in a great measure."(33)

Having thus given some general notion of the strange theories which have

developed themselves respecting this most interesting subject, I must

still express my conviction as to the unity of the authorship of the

Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions and interpolations disfigure

them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may here and there

have inflicted a wound more serious than the negligence of the copyist,

would be an absurd and captious assumption, but it is to a higher

criticism that we must appeal, if we would either understand or enjoy

these poems. In maintaining the authenticity and personality of their one

author, be he Homer or Melesigenes, quocunque nomine vocari eum jus

fasque sit, I feel conscious that, while the whole weight of historical

evidence is against the hypothesis which would assign these great works to

a plurality of authors, the most powerful internal evidence, and that

which springs from the deepest and most immediate impulse of the soul,

The Iliad of Homer