Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/190

 174 HISTORY OF GREECE. Admitting then premeditated adaptation of parts to a certain extent as essontial to the Iliad, we may yet inquire, whether it was produced all at once, or gradually enlarged, whether by one author, or by several ; and, if the parts be of different age, which is the primitive kernel, and which are the additions. Welcker, Lange, and Nitzsch 1 treat the Homeric poems as representing a second step in advance, in the progress of popular poetry. First, comes the age of short narrative songs ; next, when these have become numerous, there arise constructive minds, who recast and blend together many of them into a larger aggre- gate, conceived upon some scheme of their own. The age of the epos is followed by that of the epopee, short, spontaneous effu- sions preparing the way, and furnishing materials, for the archi- tectonic genius of the poet. It is farther presumed by the above- mentioned authors, that the pre-Homeric epic included a great abundance of such smaller songs, a fact which admits of no proof, but which seems countenanced by some passages in Homer, and is in itself no way improbable. But the transition from such songs, assuming them to be ever so numerous, to a combined and continuous poem, forms an epoch in the intellectual history of the nation, implying mental qualities of a higher order than those upon which the songs themselves depend. Nor is it to be imag- ined that the materials pass unaltered from their first state of isolation into their second state of combination. They must of necessity be recast, and undergo an adapting process, in which with more or less dexterity and success, this brings us into totally different conditions of the problem. It is a virtual surrender of the Wolfian hypoth- esis, which, however, Lachmann both means to defend, and does defend with ability ; though his vindication of it has, to my mind, only the effect of exposing its inherent weakness by carrying it out into something detailed and positive. I will add, in respect to his Dissertations, so instructive as a microscopic examination of the poem, 1. That I find myself constantly dissenting from that critical feeling, on the strength of which he cuts out parts as interpolations, and discovers traces of the hand of distinct poets ; 2 That his objections against the continuity of the narrative are often founded upon lines which the ancient scholiasts and Mr. Payne Knight had already pronounced to be interpolations ; 3. That such of his objections as are founded upon lines undisputed, admit in many cases of a complete and satisfactory reply. 1 Lange, in his Letter to Goethe, Ueber die Einhcit der Iliade, p. 33 (1826) Nitzsch, Historia Homeri, Fasciculus 2, Praefat. p. x.