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success to their characteristic faculty of shutting one eye," thus getting a more decided view of what immediately concerns them.

It is certainly far from correct that the result of the great critical contest "has been a gradual reaction, a progressive tendency of return to the old view," at least, as regards the common authorship of these poems in Homer. Mr. F. A. Paley, one of the best Homeric scholars and Greek philologists in England, reluctantly, but strongly, dissents from what is still in England the popular opinion. Those who are familiar with the recent expressions of German and French scholars will, we think, agree that the old view is further than ever from general acceptance. Reaction there has been from some of the theories advocated by followers of Wolf, and from an unwarranted application of his principles. But the most widely prevalent view, among competent critics, concerning the chief source of the Homeric poems and their rightful place in literature, far from being the old one, still finds its fundamental exposition in the Prolegomena.

It will doubtless be acceptable to many readers to sketch briefly, here, the views taken by a large class among the more cautious and conservative Homeric scholars in Germany. They are those of J. U. Faesi, given in an introduction to an edition of the Odyssey, which, as well as his edition of the Iliad, is extensively used in the German gymnasia. In condensed form they may be thus stated:

The legends of the Trojan war, assuming its date as 1184 B.C., were of mingled Aeolic and Ionic origin. They took their rise on the eastern coast of the Aegean, during the period of comparative peace and prosperity which succeeded the conflicts of the first settlement. During several centuries of oral transmission these poetic legends were gradually enriched, expanded, and formed into a connected. story, the interest of which centred in the heroic figure of Achilles. Afterwards, and probably during the first half of the ninth century B.C., there arose among the bards who

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chanted these lays at the national games and religious festivals, one master-bard of high constructive powers and comprehensive vision, who framed many of them into one, retaining the dramatic unity he had detected, and stamping all anew with the marks of his own genius. His name disappeared, and he was known as Homer (öunpos, the framer, the compiler). At a later period the epic lays which, with tales of travel and domestic life, celebrated the fame of Ulysses, were in like manner fashioned into the Odyssey, by another and less-gifted hand. In such a reconstruction of the old into the new, just such inconsistencies and contradictions as appear must naturally have been expected.

To the question whether these poems were then reduced to writing, the reply is a decided no; it was not until the seventh century B.C., at the earliest.1 But, even after their final reduction to writing, they were chiefly known and taught by oral communication, especially in the guilds or fraternities of rhapsodists. Thus, in the progress of time and of a wider diffusion, so many corruptions crept into the verse, and such an immethodical manner of recitation prevailed, as to suggest the reforms of Solon and Pisistratus. The former required by statute systematic adherence to the received version. The latter instituted a revision of both poems a new edition based upon a comparison of collected manuscripts, containing, in most cases, but a lay or fragment of the whole. Pisistratus was thus a restorer of a rapidly disappearing unity-a second Homer, as it were, to the Greek epos. It was this revision, probably, that finally incorporated those interpolated verses which are manifestly designed to forecast the political supremacy of Athens.2

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1 Thus from one to two centuries previous to the supposed date of the composition of the Iliad. How conclusive the evidence is against the existence of a written Iliad earlier than this, may be seen in Müller and Donaldson's "History of the Literature of Ancient Greece," Vol. i. chap. 4. Still more demonstrative on some points are facts in Kirchhoff's "Geschichte des Griechischen Alphabets." 2 We have given the view held by Faesi as fairly representing many of the moderate and eclectic school, and as one which in its substantial features is widely prevalent. As to the etymology and meaning of unpos, the high authority of (Professor Geo. Curtius) is against it. See his "Andeutungen über den gegenwartigen Stand der Homerischen Frage."

Faesi takes special note of the reasons for deeming the Odyssey the product of a later era; reasons drawn in part from style and language, but emphasizing chiefly the diverse mythologic conception and cast of the two poems. We may add that here, too, as remarked of the Iliad, the science of language is affording new criteria for judgment and new elements for the solution of the chronological problem. Thus far, the facts elicited tend to separate further and further the respective dates of at least the main portions of the two epics.

We draw to a conclusion with the following statement, which will, we think, be generally endorsed by those best entitled to pronounce in the case: It is in the primal Greek epos the epic stories of an age anterior to the earliest assigned date of Homer that the origin of the Homeric poems is to be found; to a degree unconceived by theory or tradition up to a century ago, they belong, both in substance and form, to that primitive stage of the human mind. As to the extent of the change wrought before passing into their present form, by what steps of authorship or intellectual lineage they are separated from that far beginning, history is utterly silent, and attainable evidence permits only an approximate judgment.

It is not difficult to see that this view, in so far, at least, as it deposes the individual Homer from his epic throne, is at first repugnant, not only to the great reading and listening public, but to the majority of educated minds, and perhaps in proportion to the degree of their aesthetic instinct and culture. Apart from the supposed destructive tendency of the criticism, which, as far as history is concerned, is now clearly proven to be imaginary, we naturally shrink from depersonalizing the mightiest literary force in all the ages. In the movements of thought, as well as political history, we seek the personal leader. By nature we are hero-worshippers. To reason down Homer, that regnant star of genius it is seemingly intellectual treason; it is the beginning of a backward revolution towards anarchy. Has this majestic thought

- this Iliad-cathedral looming up out of the Greek foretime -no architect? The very question appears analogous to atheism. Froude complained, nineteen years ago, that "the origin of these poems was distributed among the clouds of a prehistoric imagination, and, instead of a single inspired Homer for their author, we were required to believe in some extraordinary spontaneous generation, or in some collective genius of an age which ignorance had personified." But

it is no "spontaneous generation"; it is no fortuitous concourse of atoms which this theory assumes or requires; nor is it against its acceptance that it is seen in the chiaro-oscuro of antiquity. It takes on clearer certainty as historic light penetrates that misty distance.

Moreover, if we find our Homer a mythologic, rather than a historic fact, our conception of his race, the Hellenic nation, obtains a new significance. If we find the Parthenon rather Greek than Phidian, and the Iliad Hellenic more than Homeric, why, it is that the Nation asserts the kingship of its mind, and, as the individual lessens, the race is more. Criticism has long ago recognized the fact that literature cannot part from the popular mind without severing its tap-root. This is only a corollary of the fact that the people in its hereditary unity has laid the foundations of literature, as of law, of language, and of national institutions. Viewed thus, the Iliad outlines a grander unity to our sense than it had done before. Its historic facts acquire profounder meaning. They are embryologic, the germs of future civilization, factors whose value can be more accurately assigned according as we are able to eliminate the individual element. As history is not the loser, so national psychology is enriched with a whole thesaurus of material for its inductions. In computing the orbit of the splendid Hellenic mind, it will thus have furnished to its hand the elements of a larger curve.

The facts and principles referred to in the earlier part of

1 "Homer;" an Essay in Fraser's Magazine, 1851, republished in "Short Studies on Great Subjects," Vol. ii.

this discussion have a theological application still more important. Are the Christian scriptures merely the fragments of an earlier and larger national literature of the Hebrews? Are these books the recorded remnants of a prehistoric literature, in which the first task of the critic is to trace the growth of myth and legend, to detect interpolation and forgery, and to draw the line between tradition and history? We believe that rationalistic criticism finds no basis for its assumptions in the results of comparative research, but may be met on its own vantage-ground with a complete and triumphant refutation. But we defer this argument to a separate consideration.

ARTICLE II.

REVELATION AND INSPIRATION.

BY REV. E. P. BARROWS, D.D., LATELY PROFESSOR OF HEBREW LITERATURE IN ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

No. VIII.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE RECORD HOW ASCERTAINED.

THE gospel rests on a basis of facts, in such a full sense that if the substratum of facts be taken away the gospel itself perishes. The facts that underlie the gospel history are to be ascertained by candid investigation according to the ordinary rules of evidence. In the preceding series of Articles we have endeavored to point out concisely the main lines of historic evidence by which this basis of facts is shown to be impregnable to all the assaults of scepticism that the gospel history is genuine; that it has come down to us in a form essentially uncorrupt; and that it is worthy of full credence. In demonstrating this, we have also shown its supernatural character; and also that the very existence. of such a supernatural history implies a preceding series of supernatural revelations, such as we have in the Old Testament, and a sequel of supernatural manifestations, like that

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