their way unconscious in the
deep. Chiefly, therefore, he failed with all his cleverness. Brain he
had, logic he had; the heart was a-wanting and the intention faltered.
_Gnosis_ again and _agape_!

Brain he had, logic he had; but brain must follow upon emotional
intention if it is to create; and logic must follow upon sound
premisses if it is to convince. Now if his prime intention was to
annoy, or, if you granted him his premisses, Butler would never miss
the mark. But is that intention worthy of more than it earned? I don't
think so. And can you grant him his premisses? I don't think that you
can. He argued _a priori_, apparently always. I am not a biologist,
nor was he, but if I know enough of scientific method to be sure that
biologists cannot argue that way, so undoubtedly did he. What should
Darwin, who had spent years in patient accumulation of fact, have
to say to him? In Homeric criticism--_a priori_ again. He had an
instinct--he owns it was no more--that the _Odyssey_ was written by a
woman. Then he studied the _Odyssey_ to prove that it was. Perhaps
a woman did write it, and perhaps it will one day be proved. The
_Odyssey_, as Butler used it, will never prove it. So also with the
Sicilian origin of the poem. He got his idea, and went to Trapani
to fit it in. It does not seem to have occurred to him that all the
things he found there are to be found also in the Ionian Islands and
might be found in half a hundred other places in a sea pullulating
with islands or a coast-line cut about like a jigsaw puzzle. But it
won't do, of course. No one knew that better than he.

Mr. Jones says that "Butler's judgments were arrived at by thinking
the matter out for himself." I don't know what judgments he means: in
the context he is talking about "other writers." Among such he would
not, perhaps, include Dante, Virgil or Charles Lamb. If he includes
Homer and Shakespeare there would be a good deal to say. I don't
believe he had thought about the authorship of the _Odyssey_ at all
until he had assumed what he afterwards spent his time and pains in
supporting. As to Shakespeare's age when he wrote his Sonnets, I don't
myself find that the Sonnets support him. Those which he quotes in
particular show that W.H. was a youth, but not that the author was.
But there, again, he was arguing _a priori_. He desired to prove what
he set out to prove, and the scholars disregarded him. Mr. Bridges, in
a letter which Mr. Jones has the c