Note 3 — I. PROLEGOMENA.[1]

While speaking of this eminent labourer in the field of Homeric inquiry, I must not pass by the sympathising spirit and imagination of Mr. H. Nelson Coleridge, the admirably turned Homeric tone of the ballads of Dr. Maginn, or the valuable analysis contained in the uncompleted ‘Homerus’ of Archdeacon Williams. But of all the criticisms on Homer which I have ever had the good fortune to read, in our own or any language, the most vivid and entirely genial are those found in the ‘Essays Critical and Imaginative’ of the late Professor Wilson. In that most useful, and I presume I may add standard, work, Smith’s ‘Dictionary of Classical Biography and Mythology,’ I am sorry to find that the important article Homerus, by Dr. Ihne, though it has the merit of presenting the question in a clear light, yet is neither uniformly accurate in its references to the text of Homer, nor at all in conformity with the prevailing state at least of English opinion upon the controversy.