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great man, find that they have been put off with a vile counterfeit got up
at second hand. If we compare the theories of Knight, Wolf, Lachmann, and
others, we shall feel better satisfied of the utter uncertainty of
criticism than of the apocryphal position of Homer. One rejects what
another considers the turning-point of his theory. One cuts a supposed
knot by expunging what another would explain by omitting something else.
Nor is this morbid species of sagacity by any means to be looked upon as a
literary novelty. Justus Lipsius, a scholar of no ordinary skill, seems to
revel in the imaginary discovery, that the tragedies attributed to Seneca
are by four different authors.(34) Now, I will venture to assert, that
these tragedies are so uniform, not only in their borrowed phraseology--a
phraseology with which writers like Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were
more charmed than ourselves--in their freedom from real poetry, and last,
but not least, in an ultra-refined and consistent abandonment of good
taste, that few writers of the present day would question the capabilities
of the same gentleman, be he Seneca or not, to produce not only these, but
a great many more equally bad. With equal sagacity, Father Hardouin
astonished the world with the startling announcement that the Æneid of
Virgil, and the satires of Horace, were literary deceptions. Now, without
wishing to say one word of disrespect against the industry and
learning--nay, the refined acuteness--which scholars, like Wolf, have
bestowed upon this subject, I must express my fears, that 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
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