Note 280 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.
Reading edition
Wolf admits, in most unequivocal language, the compact and artful structure of the Odyssey. Against this positive internal evidence, he sets the general presumption, that no such constructive art can possibly have belonged to a poet of the age of Homer: “De Odysseâ maxime, cujus admirabilis summa et compages pro præclarissimo monumento Græci ingenii habenda est.... Unde fit ut Odysseam nemo, cui omnino priscus vates placeat, nisi perlectam e manu deponere queat. At illa ars id ipsum est, quod vix ac ne vix quidem cadere videtur in vatem, singulas tantum rhapsodias decantantem,” etc. (Prolegomen. pp. cxviii-cxx; compare cxii.)