of
design, and of what he rather quaintly calls "single-headed authorship."
With regard to the _Iliad_, he admits that there is not the same
stringent evidence of an original plan according to which the whole poem
has been written, and he detects here the signs of interpolation and
addition. According to his view, there is in the poem, as we possess it,
an original whole, which he calls the Achilleis, to which additions have
been made from other sources, converting the Achilleis into an Iliad.
But our readers would prefer to have the words themselves of the author;
and the following passage will present them with a very intelligent view
of this famous controversy:--

"That the _Iliad_ is not so essentially one piece as the _Odyssey_,
every man agrees. It includes a much greater multiplicity of
events, and what is yet more important, a greater multiplicity of
prominent personages: the very indefinite title which it bears, as
contrasted with the speciality of the name _Odyssey_, marks the
difference at once. The parts stand out more conspicuously from the
whole, and admit more readily of being felt and appreciated in
detached recitation. We may also add, that it is of more unequal
execution than the _Odyssey-_-often rising to a far higher pitch of
grandeur, but also occasionally tamer: the story does not move on
continually; incidents occur without plausible motive, nor can we
shut our eyes to evidences of incoherence and contradiction.

"To a certain extent, the _Iliad_ is open to all these remarks,
though Wolf and W. Mueller, and above all, Lachmann, exaggerate the
case in degree. And from hence has been deduced the hypothesis
which treats the part in their original state as separate integers,
independent of, and unconnected with each other, and forced into
unity only by the afterthought of a subsequent age; or sometimes
not even themselves as integers, but as aggregates grouped together
out of fragments still smaller--short epics formed by the
coalescence of still shorter songs. Now there is some plausibility
in these reasonings, so long as the _discrepancies_ are looked upon
as the whole of the case. But in point of fact they are not the
whole of the case; for it is not less true that there are large
portions of the _Iliad_, which present positive and undeniable
evidences of _coherence_,