[24] Grote, vol. ii. pp. 179, 180.
[25] Grote, vol. ii. p. 202.
[26] Quarterly Review, July 1908, pp. 64-66.
[CHAPTER XX]
CONCLUSIONS
As much of this treatise is occupied with criticism of the views of the most modern representatives of the Wolfian school, I ought, in fairness, to state my own general conclusions. I am led to suppose that the Iliad is a work of one brief period, because, as has been shown, it bears all the notes of one age; and is absolutely free from the most marked traits of religion, rites, society, and superstition that characterise the preceding Aegean, and the later "Dipylon," Ionian, Archaic, and historic periods in Greek life and art.
Again, I believe that the Iliad is, in the main, the work of a single poet. To that conclusion I am led partly by the unity of the thought, temper, character, and ethos of both epics; partly by the perfect consistency in the drawing, throughout, of multitudes of characters, all conceived with as much delicacy as firmness. It is to me inconceivable that a number of poets should have developed, with such perfect consistency and with such fine nuances, the character, for example, of Achilles, who has been called "a splendid savage!"