lphic. So Mr. Verrall regards the _Cento_ as "a
religious pasquinade against the sanctuary on Parnassus," a pasquinade
emanating from Athens, under the Pisistratidae, who, being Ionian
leaders, had a grudge against "the Dorian Delphi," "a comparatively
modern, unlucky, and from the first unsatisfactory" institution.
Athenians are interested in the "far-seen" altar of the seaman's Dolphin
God on the shore, rather than in his inland Pythian habitation.

All this, with much more, is decidedly ingenious. If accepted it might
lead the way to a general attack on the epics, as _tendenz_ pieces, works
with a political purpose, or doctored for a political purpose. But how
are we to understand the uses of the pasquinade Hymn? Was it published,
so to speak, to amuse and aid the Pisistratidae? Does such remote
antiquity show us any examples of such handling of sacred things in
poetry? Might we not argue that Apollo's threat to the Crisaeans was
meant by the poet as a friendly warning, and is prior to the fall of
Crisa? One is reminded of the futile ingenuity with which German
critics, following their favourite method, have analysed the fatal Casket
Letters of Mary Stuart into letters to her husband, Darnley; or to
Murray; or by Darnley to Mary, with scraps of her diary, and false
interpolations. The enemies of the Queen, coming into possession of her
papers after the affair of Carberry Hill, falsified the Casket Letters
into their present appearance of unity. Of course historical facts make
this ingenuity unavailing. We regret the circumstance in the interest of
the Queen's reputation, but welcome these illustrative examples of what
can be done in Germany. {16a}

Fortunately all Teutons are not so ingenious. Baumeister has fallen on
those who, in place of two hymns, Delian and Pythian, to Apollo, offer us
half-a-dozen fragments. By presenting an array of discordant conjectures
as to the number and nature of these scraps, he demonstrates the purely
wilful and arbitrary nature of the critical method employed. {16b} Thus
one learned person believes in (1) two perfect little poems; (2) two
larger hymns; (3) three lacerated fragments of hymns, one lacking its
beginning, the other wofully deprived of its end. Another _savant_
detects no less than eight fragments, with interpolations; though perhaps
no biblical critic _ejusdem farinae_ has yet detected eight Isaiahs.
There are about ten other theories of similar plausibility