Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/221

 POPULAR CHARACTER OF THE POEMS. 205 Whatever there may be of truth in the different conjectures of critics respecting the authorship and structure of these unrivalled poems, we are not to imagine that it is the perfection of theit epical symmetry which has given them their indissoluble hold upon the human mind, as well modern as ancient. There is some tendency in critics, from Aristotle downwards, 1 to invert the order of attributes in respect to the Homeric poems, so as to dwell most on recondite excellences which escape the unaided reader, and which are even to a great degree disputable. But it is given to few minds (as Goethe has remarked 2 ) to appreciate fully the mechanism of a long poem ; and many feel the beauty of the sep- arate parts, who have no sentiment for the aggregate perfection of the whole. Nor were the Homeric poems originally addressed to minds of the rarer stamp. They are intended for those feelings which the critic has in common with the unlettered mass, not for that enlarged range of vision and peculiar standard which he has acquired to himself. They are of all poems the most absolut ly and unreservedly popular : had they been otherwise, they could their present compass, and were regarded each as a complete and well-defined whole, not as a fluctuating aggregate of fugitive pieces." (p. 509.) This marks out the Homeric poems as ancient both in the items and in the total, and includes negation of the theory of Wolf and Lachmann, who contend that, as a total, they only date from the age of Peisistratus. It is then safe to treat the poems as unquestionable evidences of Grecian antiquity (meaning thereby 776 B. c.), which we could not do if we regarded all con- gruity of parts in the poems as brought about through alterations of Peisistratus and his friends. There is also a very just admonition of Dr. Thirlwall (p. 516} as to the difficulty of measuring what degree of discrepancy or inaccuracy might or might not have escaped the poet's attention, in an age so imperfectly known to us. 1 There are just remarks on this point in Ileyne's Excursus, ii. sect. 2 and 4, ad II. xxiv. vol. viii. pp. 771-800. 2 " Wenig Deutsche, und vielleicht nur wenige Menschen aller neuern Nationen, haben Gefuhl fur ein sesthetisches Ganzes : sie loben und tadeln BUT stellenweise, sie entzucken sich nur stellenweise." (Goethe, Wilhelm Meister : I transcribe this from Welcker's JEschyl. Trilogie, p. S06.) What ground there is for restricting this proposition to modern u con- trasted with an:i'->it nations, I am ur.ablc to conceive.