This admission of premeditated adaptation to a certain extent breaks up the integrity of the Wolfian hypothesis.
[282] The advocates of the Wolfian theory, appear to feel the difficulties which beset it; for their language is wavering in respect to these supposed primary constituent atoms. Sometimes Lachmann tells us, that the original pieces were much finer poetry than the Iliad as we now read it; at another time, that it cannot be now discovered what they originally were: nay, he farther admits, (as remarked in the preceding note,) that the poet of the sixteenth song had cognizance of the fifteenth.
But if it be granted that the original constituent songs were so composed, though by different poets, as that the more recent were adapted to the earlier with more or less dexterity and success, this brings us into totally different conditions of the problem. It is a virtual surrender of the Wolfian hypothesis, which, however, Lachmann both means to defend, and does defend with ability; though his vindication of it has, to my mind, only the effect of exposing its inherent weakness by carrying it out into something detailed and positive. I will add, in respect to his Dissertations, so instructive as a microscopic examination of the poem,—1. That I find myself constantly dissenting from that critical feeling, on the strength of which he cuts out parts as interpolations, and discovers traces of the hand of distinct poets; 2. That his objections against the continuity of the narrative are often founded upon lines which the ancient scholiasts and Mr. Payne Knight had already pronounced to be interpolations; 3. That such of his objections as are founded upon lines undisputed, admit in many cases of a complete and satisfactory reply.
[283] Lange, in his Letter to Goethe, Ueber die Einheit der Iliade, p. 33 (1826); Nitzsch, Historia Homeri, Fasciculus 2, Præfat. p. x.
[284] Even Aristotle, the great builder-up of the celebrity of Homer as to epical aggregation, found some occasions (it appears) on which he was obliged to be content with simply excusing, without admiring, the poet (Poet. 44 τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀγαθοῖς ὁ ποιητὴς ἡδύνων ἀφανίζει τὸ ἄτοπον.)
And Hermann observes justly, in his acute treatise De Interpolationibus Homeri (Opuscula, tom. v. p. 53),—“Nisi admirabilis illa Homericorum carminum suavitas lectorum animos quasi incantationibus quibusdam captos teneret, non tam facile delitescerent, quæ accuratius considerata, et multo minus apte quam quis jure postulet composita esse apparere necesse est.”
This treatise contains many criticisms on the structure of the Iliad, some of them very well founded, though there are many from which I dissent.
[285] In reference to the books from the second to the seventh, inclusive, I agree with the observations of William Müller, Homerische Vorschule, Abschnitt viii. pp. 116-118.
[286] Lachmann, Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias, Abhandlungen Berlin. Acad. 1841, p. 4.
After having pointed out certain discrepancies which he maintains to prove different composing hands, he adds: “Nevertheless, we must be careful not to regard the single constituent songs in this part of the poem as being distinct and separable in a degree equal to those in the first half; for they all with one accord harmonize in one particular circumstance, which, with reference to the story of the Iliad, is not less important even than the anger of Achilles, viz. that the three most distinguished heroes, Agamemnôn, Odysseus, and Diomêdês, all become disabled throughout the whole duration of the battles.”