Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/15



poems of Homer differ from all other known poetry in this, that they constitute in themselves an encyclopaedia of life and knowledge at a time when knowledge, indeed, such as lies beyond the bounds of actual experience, was extremely limited, but when life was singularly fresh, vivid, and expansive. The only poems of Homer we possess are the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," for the Homeric hymns and other productions lose all title to stand in line with these wonderful works, by reason of conflict in a multitude of particulars with the witness of the text, as well as of their poetical inferiority. They evidently belong to the period that follows the great migration into Asia Minor, brought about by the Dorian conquest. The dictum of Herodotus, which places the date of Homer four hundred years before his own, therefore in the ninth century, was little better than mere conjecture. Common opinion has certainly presumed him to be posterior to the Dorian conquest. The "Hymn to Apollo," however, which was the main prop of this opinion, is assuredly not his. In a work which attempts to turn recent discovery to account, I have contended that the fall of Troy cannot properly be brought lower than about, and that Homer may probably have lived within fifty years of it. The entire presentation of life and character in the two poems is distinct