Where, then, is the Feigned History? Lord Bacon, Ottfried Müller, and Jacob Bryant, are here not in the main unagreed. "I nothing doubt," says Bacon, "but the Fables, which Homer having received, transmits, had originally a profound and excellent sense, although I greatly doubt if Homer any longer knew that sense."
BULLER.
What right, may I ask, had Lord Bacon to doubt, and Ottfried Müller to suspect——
NORTH.
Smoke your cigar. Ottfried Müller——
BULLER.
Whew!—poo!
NORTH.
Ottfried Müller imagines that there was in Greece a pre-Homeric Age, of which the principal intellectual employment was Myth-making. And Bryant, we know, shocked the opinion of his own day by referring the War of Troy to Mythology. Now, observe, Buller, how there is feigning and feigning—Poet after Poet—and the Poem that comes to us at last is the Poem of Homer; but in truth, of successive ages, ending in Homer——
SEWARD.