Note 906 — LECTURE VI LITERARY WORKS (continued); SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The two points in which the Metra are said to show less accuracy than the prose version, viz. the making Ulysses king of Thracia instead of Ithaca, and calling Homer the friend as well as the teacher of Virgil, are possibly merely due to the needs of alliteration, xxvi. 7; xxx. 3 (pp. 193, 203). Almost the only thing in the Metra to which there is nothing corresponding in the prose version is the well-known simile of the egg, xx. 169 ff. (p. 182), and this, though possibly suggested by a commentary, is thoroughly Alfredian. Editors have, I think, unduly prejudiced the question by either omitting the Metra altogether (as Cardale, who merely gives one as a specimen), or printing them as a sort of appendix at the end. It would be fairer to print them in the text in parallel columns with the prose version, an arrangement which would also greatly facilitate the study of them. They have, be it remembered, the authority of the MS. which is by nearly 200 years the more ancient of the two.