he return of Ulysses, as the theme for a number of separate
poems, and not find that he was writing, with more or less continuity,
one long entire poem. This continuity would be improved and especially
attended to, when a certain _order_ came to be preserved (as we know it
was) in the recitation of the several poems. We have no difficulty,
therefore, in believing that, in the time of Pisistratus, the _editors_
of Homer might have had very little to do to give them that degree of
completeness and unity which they at present display. A number of
consecutive songs upon the same subject would naturally grow into an
epic.

No decisive argument, we submit, can be drawn from the absence or
limited application of the art of writing at the era assigned for the
composition of these poems. There is nothing left for us but to examine
the poems themselves, to determine what degree of unity of plan or of
authorship may be attributed to them. Unfortunately the critical
perception of scholars, equally eminent, leads to such different
results, that the controversy appears to be hopeless. Where one sees
with the utmost distinctness the difference of workmanship, another sees
with equal clearness the traces of the same genius and manner. And in
controversies of this nature, there is unhappily a most perverse
combination of the strongest conviction with an utter impotence to force
that conviction upon another. Between these two, a man is generally
driven into a passion; and thus we often find a bitter, acrid mood
infused into literary discussions, which, lying as they do apart from
the selfish and conflicting interests of men, would seem to be the
theatre for no such display. The controversy rages still in Germany,
and, it seems, with considerable heat. Lachmann, after dissecting a
certain portion of the Iliad into four songs, "in the highest degree
different in their spirit," tells us that whoever thinks the difference
of spirit inconsiderable--whoever does not feel it at once when pointed
out--whoever can believe that the parts as they stand now belong to one
artistically constructed epos, "will do well not to trouble himself any
more either with my criticisms, or with epic poetry, because he is too
weak to understand any thing about it--("_weil er zu schwach ist etwas
darin zu verstehen._") On the contrary, Ulrici, after having shown (or
tried to show) that the composition of Homer satisfies perfectly, in the
main, all the exigencies of