for us is our admiration of good.
No man living venerates Homer more than I do." (18)

But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests contented
with the poetry on which its best impulses had been nurtured and fostered,
without seeking to destroy the vividness of first impressions by minute
analysis--our editorial office compels us to give some attention to the
doubts and difficulties with which the Homeric question is beset, and to
entreat our reader, for a brief period, to prefer his judgment to his
imagination, and to condescend to dry details.

Before, however, entering into particulars respecting the question of this
unity of the Homeric poems, (at least of the Iliad,) I must express my
sympathy with the sentiments expressed in the following remarks:--

"We cannot but think the universal admiration of its unity by the better,
the poetic age of Greece, almost conclusive testimony to its original
composition. It was not till the age of the grammarians that its primitive
integrity was called in question; nor is it injustice to assert, that the
minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is not the best qualification
for the profound feeling, the comprehensive conception of an harmonious
whole. The most exquisite anatomist may be no judge of the symmetry of the
human frame: and we would take the opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on
the proportions and general beauty of a form, rather than that of Mr.
Brodie or Sir Astley Cooper.

"There is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in the lines of
Pope.--

"'The critic eye--that microscope of wit
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit,
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole
The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.'"(19)

Long was the time which elapsed before any one dreamt of questioning the
unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. The grave and cautious
Thucydides quoted without hesitation the Hymn to Apollo,(20) the
authenticity of which has been already disclaimed by modern critics.
Longinus, in an oft quoted passage, merely expressed an opinion touching
the comparative inferiority of the Odyssey to the Iliad,(21) and, among a
mass of ancient authors, whose very names(22) it would be tedious to
detail, no suspicion of the personal non-existence of Homer ever arose. So
far, the voice of antiquity seems to be in favour of