Note 273 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.

“Non esse totam Iliadem aut Odysseam unius poetæ opus, ita extra dubitationem positam puto, ut qui secus sentiat, eum non satis lectitasse illa carmina contendam.” (Godf. Hermann, Præfat. ad Odysseam, Lips. 1825, p. iv.) See the language of the same eminent critic in his treatise “Ueber Homer und Sappho,” Opuscula, vol. v. p. 74.

Lachmann, after having dissected the two thousand two hundred lines in the Iliad, between the beginning of the eleventh book, and line five hundred and ninety of the fifteenth, into four songs, “in the highest degree different in their spirit,” (“ihrem Geiste nach höchst verschiedene Lieder,”) tells us that whosoever thinks this difference of spirit inconsiderable,—whosoever does not feel it at once when pointed out,—whosoever 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 anything about it,” (“weil er zu schwach ist etwas darin zu verstehen:”) Fernere Betrachtungen Ueber die Ilias: Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841, p. 18, § xxiii.

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 an artistic epic,—adds, that this will make itself at once evident to all those who have any sense of artistical symmetry; but that, for those to whom that sense is wanting, no conclusive demonstration can be given. He warns the latter, however, that they are not to deny the existence of that which their shortsighted vision cannot distinguish, for everything cannot be made clear to children, which the mature man sees through at a glance (Ulrici, Geschichte des Griechischen Epos, Part i. ch. vii. pp. 260-261). Read also Payne Knight, Proleg. c. xxvii, about the insanity of the Wolfian school, obvious even to the “homunculus e trivio.”

I have the misfortune to dissent from both Lachmann and Ulrici; for it appears to me a mistake to put the Iliad and Odyssey on the same footing, as Ulrici does, and as is too frequently done by others.