[Footnote 1: See "eventuate," in Mr. Washington Irving's "Tour On the Prairies," passim.—ED.]
* * * * *
Never take an iambus as a Christian name. A trochee, or tribrach, will do very well. Edith and Rotha are my favourite names for women.
July 9. 1832.
HOMER.—VALCKNAER.
I have the firmest conviction that Homer is a mere traditional synonyme with, or figure for, the Iliad. You cannot conceivefor a moment any thing about the poet, as you call him, apart from that poem. Difference in men there was in a degree, but not in kind; one man was, perhaps, a better poet than another; but he was a poet upon the same ground and with the same feelings as the rest.
The want of adverbs in the Iliad is very characteristic. With more adverbs there would have been some subjectivity, or subjectivity would have made them.
The Greeks were then just on the verge of the bursting forth of individuality.
Valckenaer's treatise[1] on the interpolation of the Classics by the later Jews and early Christians is well worth your perusal as a scholar and critic.
[Footnote 1: Diatribe de Aristobulo Judaeo.—ED.]