mony, as well as to a strong force of internal probability." It "ascribes to Peisistratus a character not only materially different from what is indicated by Cicero and Pausanias, [Wolf's chief authorities.] who represented him not as having put together atoms originally distinct, but as the renovator of an ancient order subsequently lost but also in itself unintelligible and inconsistent with Grecian habit and feeling."

"To sustain the inference that Peisistratus was the first architect of the Iliad and Odyssey, it ought at least to be shown that no other long and continuous poems existed during the earlier centuries. But the contrary of this is known to be the fact. The Ethiopis of Arktinus, which contained 9100 verses, dates from a period more than two centuries earlier than Peisistratus; several others of the lost cyclic epics, some among them of considerable length, appear during the century succeeding Arktinus; and it is important to notice that three or four at least of these poems passed under the name of Homer. There is no greater intrinsic difficulty in supposing long epics to have begun with the Iliad and Odyssey than with the Ethiopsis ; the ascendency of Homer and the subordinate position of Arktinus in the history of early Grecian poetry, tend to prove the former in preference to the latter." Vol. II., pp. 208-9.

But the chief argument is derived from the whole tenor of the poems themselves.

"There is nothing either in the Iliad or Odyssey which savors of modernism, applying that term to the age of Peisistratus; nothing which brings to our view the alterations brought about by two centuries in the Greek language, the coined money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and republican governments, the close military array, the improved construction of ships, the Amphictyonic convocations, *** &c., familiar to the latter epoch, which Onomacritus and the other literary friends of Peisistratus could hardly have failed to introduce, had they then for the first time undertaken the task of piecing together many self-existent epics into one large aggregate. Everything in the two great Homeric poems, both in substance and in language, belongs to an age two or three centuries earlier than Peisistratus." Vol. II., pp. 213-14.

At length we arrive at the great question - the unity of authorship. Mr. Grote, after lamenting the ferocious dogmatism which has too generally characterized this controversy, and confessed the difficulty, with our present limited means of knowledge, of forming a satisfactory conclusion one's self, much more of convincing others, thus continues:

"Nevertheless no classical scholar can be easy without some opinion respecting the authorship of these immortal poems; and the more defective the evidence we posses, the more essential is it that all that evidence should be marshalled in the clearest order, and its bearing upon the points in controversy distinctly understood beforehand. Both these conditions seem to have been often neglected throughout the long-continued Homeric discussion. To illustrate the first point: Since two poems are comprehended in the problem to be solved, the natural process would be, first to study the easier of the two, and then to apply the conclusions hence deduced as a means of explaining the other. Now the Odyssey, looking at its aggregate character, is incomparably more easy to explain than the Iliad. Yet most Homeric critics apply the microscope at once, and in the first instance, to the Iliad. To illustrate the second point: What evidence is sufficient to negative the supposition that the Iliad or the Odyssey is a poem originally and intentionally one? Not simply particular gaps and contradictions, though they be even gross and numerous; but the preponderance of these proofs of mere unprepared coalescence over the other proofs of designed adaptation scattered throughout the whole poem. For the poet (or the co-operating poets, if more than one) may have intended to compose a harmonious whole, but may have realized their intention incompletely and left partial faults; or perhaps the contradictory lines may have crept in through a corrupt text. A survey of the whole poem is necessary to determine the question, and this necessity, too, has not always been attended to." Vol. II., pp. 219, 220.

The Odyssey (to which Mr. Grote, contrary to the usual opinion, but we think on good grounds, does not assign a later date than that of the Iliad) he views as bearing throughout unequivocal proofs of unity of design. With respect to the Iliad his opinion is different, and the theory which he propounds is certainly original and ingenious. That poem presents to him the appearance of "a house built upon a plan comparatively narrow, and subsequently enlarged by successive additions." It was originally an Achilleis, comprising the first and eighth books with the books from the eleventh to the twenty-second inclusive. The last two books are a sort of appendix merely, but those from the second to the seventh, together with the tenth, "are of a wider and more comprehensive character, and convert the poem into an Iliad." The ninth book is a later interpolation, there being many passages in the eleventh and following books, which show that apology and atonement had not been offered to Achilles by

Agamemnon. This is explained at length, and also the continuity of structure observable in the books marked off as the original Achilleis, and the discrepancies introduced by the remaining books. Having characterized this theory as original and ingenious, we must be excused from expressing any further opinion upon it. Our own opinions about Homer have been always matter of faith rather than reason; we are too much interested in his romance ever to read him very critically; and as to the Teutonic Homeroclasts, we never could force ourselves to go continuously through one of them. On our slight acquaintance with them (and we refer more particularly to Wolf and Lachmann) they appear to us so prosaic and un-ideal and Poco Curanteish, that, however great their erudition, we do not admit their vocation to criticise poetry at all. With a man who puts the Iliad on the same footing with the Spanish ballads, we can find no common ground.

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This brings us to the close of the first part of Mr. Grote's work; about half way through his second volume, and rather more than half way through Thirlwall's first. After the return of the Heraclidæ which Thirlwall Euemerizes into a Doric invasion and conquest, requiring "many years, probably many generations," for its consummation, and Grote disposes of among the mythes of the legendary age - we pass at once to the definite region of Historical Greece. Not that even here we are entirely freed from uncertainty, but the races and institutions at which we arrive are real and tangible, though in some cases that of Lycurgus is a wellknown instance a cloud may still hang about their founders. We can always be pretty sure what laws, customs, and form of government existed in each place at a particular time, though something fabulous may still cling to the individual personages of the period. It is here, accordingly, that Mr. Grote takes occasion to bring in his sketch of Grecian geography. Something of the kind is generally considered a necessary introduction to a history: we confess to having some doubts of its indispensability. Arnold's most valuable and interesting work on Rome contains no geographical account of Italy; and yet singularly enough, Arnold himself has elsewhere insisted on the importance and necessity of the ordinary

course; nay, more, he illustrates its value by immediate reference to Italy, the natural features of which he proceeds to describe in his most felicitous manner. A good map is certainly always a requisite, and with this probably most readers would be satisfied. We half suspect that few persons, except conscientious reviewers like ourselves, peruse these geographical introductions. Both our authors are full and accurate in this part of their work; Grote, the more spirited and interesting of the two, as he has the greater dexterity in rendering a dry subject attractive, and illustrates his details by noting the differences as well as the resemblances of climate, natural productions, cultivation &c., in Ancient and Modern Greece.

And now before treating of the Peloponnesian Dorians, we have one more troublesome subject to adjust or get over in some way. Every student of Greek and Roman history has been more than once brought to a stand by the Pelasgi, an extinct people who seem to have been used as a convenient solution for all the problems in the archæology of the nations around the Mediterranean, much as electricity was once employed in physical philosophy to account for all unknown phenomena. The anxious inquirer, after laboring to shape some definite and consistent conclusion out of the various conflicting statements of ancient writers, and the still more conflicting inferences drawn from every one of these statements by modern scholars, generally has to end by confessing himself hopelessly puzzled. Whoever has worked through Niebuhr, and Thirlwall, and Malden, ** and Michelet whoever has tried to form a coherent opinion of his own on the principal questions in dispute: whether the Pelasgians spoke Greek, or something very different from Greek; whether Herodotus ought to have written Croton where he wrote Creston, or Dionysius ought to have quoted Creston where he quoted Croton; whether the Tyrsenian Pelasgians came from Greece to Italy or vice versa, or whether they ever were in Italy at all; whether the real name of

* Lectures on Modern History, pp. 123, 124, 125, 128, 129. ** Prof. Malden, of the London University, who began a History of Rome for the "Library of Useful knowledge" in 1830. The early numbers were remarkably promising, but under the fatality which seems to attend histories of Rome, it stopped short after the fifth.

the people whom we know through the Romans as Etruscans was Rasena, or whether these Rasena only exist in a wrong reading-whoever has blundered through all this, is struck with agreeable surprise, not unmingled with something like triumphant satisfaction, to find that Mr. Grote "shoots" these troublesome Pelasgi as unceremoniously as if they were so much rubbish. This is his summary method of dispatching them:

"If any man is inclined to call the unknown ante-Hellenic period of Greece by the name of Pelasgic, it is open for him to do so; but this is a name carrying with it no assured predicates, no way enlarging our insight into real history, nor enabling us to explain what would be the real historical problem how or from whom the Hellens acquired that stock of dispositions, aptitudes, arts, &c., with which they began their career. Whoever has examined the many conflicting systems respecting the Pelasgi from the literal belief of Clavier, Larcher and Raoul Rochette, (which appears to me at least the most consistent way of proceeding,) to the interpretative and half incredulous processes applied by abler men, such as Niebuhr, or O. Müller, or Dr. Thirlwall, will not be displeased with my resolution to decline so insoluble a problem. No attested facts are now present to us none were present to Herodotus and Thucydides even in their age on which to build trustworthy affirmations respecting the ante-Hellenic Pelasgians; and where such is the case, we may without impropriety apply the remark of Herodotus respecting one of the theories which he had heard for explaining the inundation of the Nile by a supposed connection with the ocean that 'the man who carries up his story into the invisible world, passes out of the range of criticism.' Vol. ii., pp. 346, 7.

Certainly this is the pleasantest and most convenient way of getting rid of these Pelasgi; but after all, is it doing full justice to them and to ourselves? It strikes us that a student who began with and depended upon Mr. Grote, would be likely to underrate the importance of the question, at least as much as some enthusiastic speculators have overrated it, and to form a most inadequate idea of its bearings. He would find nothing about the extent of ground covered by Pelasgic traces and traditions in Greece Proper, in Macedonia, around

* Mr. Grote is unusually liberal to the Rasena. He alludes to their existence without the least doubt or suspicion, at the close of the very chapter in which he has been making a clear sweep of the Pelasgi, the Græci, and the ante-Hellenic people generally.