Agreeing with my honoured friend in what I have italicised above, I think it is time that the Homeric question were set at rest, and, to atone for our error in shaking the vase, let it remain at peace forever. I offer my reflections on the subject with extreme diffidence, yet, though I confess myself open to correction, and desirous of it, as a friend to literature, I cannot say that I think my views will be found far from an approximation to the truth, which, at this remote age, is all we can possibly arrive at. As Plinius Secundus held that there was no book so bad but that something might be learned from it, so I hold that there is no theory so bad (always excepting that one put forth by some escaped Bedlamite, of Shakspeare's non-being, and that his works were the composition of the monks), but that there lies some truth at the bottom of it. On that principle I have endeavoured "to lay the keel" (as Southey used to say of his planned poems) of a reconciliation between all the beliefs of all the theorists.
I will state my theory, as I have done the others, in the plainest possible terms; and, to begin at the beginning, I must go back to the origin of song. Is it possible that an army like that of the Hellenes when at Troy, had no idea of passing the weary evenings except in drinking and talking? No: surely not. We find Phemios singing, in the Odyssea, lays of much the same kidney as those in Athenæos, and in Xenophon's Symposion. These were short recitals of some particular circumstance of antiquity, half religious and half earthly. No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common sailors of some fifty years ago, some one qualified to "discourse in excellent music" among them. Many of these, like those of the negroes in the United States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to events passing around them. But what was passing around them? The grand events of a spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress themselves, as the mystical legends of former times had done, upon their memory; besides which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly, in those ancient times. Ballads at first, and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were mere recitations with an intonation. Then followed a species of recitative, probably with an intoned burden. Tune next followed, as it aided the memory considerably.
It was at this period, about four hundred years after the war, that a poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or Meonides, but most probably the former. He saw that these ballads might be made of great utility to his purpose of writing a poem on the social position of Hellas, and as a collection he published these lays, connecting them by a tale of his own. This poem now exists under the title of the Odyssea. The author, however, did not affix his own name to the poem, which, in fact, was great part of it remodelled from the archaïc dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads were found by him. He therefore called it the poem of Homeros, or the Collector.[11] But this is rather a proof of his modesty and talent, than of his mere drudging arrangement of other people's ideas, for, as Grote has finely observed, arguing for the unity of authorship, "a great poet might have recast pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive whole; but no mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so."[12]
[11] Welcker, Der Epische Cyclus, p. 127. Professor Wilson, in his System of Hindu Mythology (Introduct. p. lxii.), has the following passage, quoted by Grote: "The sage Vyasa is represented not as the author, but as the arranger and compiler of the Vedas and the Purânas. His name dates his character, meaning the arranger or distributor; and the recurrence of so many Vyasas,—many individuals who new-modelled the Hindu Scriptures,—has nothing in it that is improbable, except the fabulous intervals by which their labours are separated."
[12] Hist of Greece, vol. ii. p. 232.
While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a ballad recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon; his noble mind seized the hint that there presented itself, and the Achilleïs[13] grew under his hand. Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the poem under the same pseudonyme as his former work; and the disjointed lays of the ancient bards were joined together, like those relating to the Cid, into a chronicle history, named the Iliad.[14] Melesigenes knew that the poem was destined to be a lasting one; and so it has proved. But first, the poems were destined to undergo many vicissitudes and corruptions, by the people who took to singing them in the streets, assemblies, and agoras. However, Solon first, and then Peisistratos, and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the poems, and restored the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their original integrity in a great measure. But that this was of no great avail is evident from the corruption οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, in the opening. All birds are not carnivorous, and therefore the passage must be wrong: besides, the words immediately following, savouring somewhat of interpolation, and, indeed, being condemned by some as such, would lead to the fair assumption that the whole line was corrupted.
[13] "The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the eleventh to the twenty-second inclusive, seem to form the primary organisation of the poem, then properly an Achilleïs," &c.—Grote, Vol. ii. pp. 235. fol.
[14] Mure, vol. i. p. 23 n. Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, vol. i. p. 11. seq.
I said before (Vol. v., p. 99.) that the Cyclic poems illustrated the history of the Homeric compositions, just as the letters of Poplicola, and those of Philo Junius, illustrate the history of Junius; but I am not inclined to deprive them all of credit as the compositions of the same poet. For instance, part of the Ιλιας μικρα was probably done from the notes of Melesigenes, who was, like Herodotos, always at work upon some matter.
The origin of writing has been made a stumbling-block in the Homeric question, and most foolishly; and I must again agree with Colonel Mure on this subject. Mr. Grote, Mr. Granville Penn, and the Colonel, have done more for the elucidation of the question than any other scholars of the present or last age; and it is to them we must turn for further assistance. I wish they would give their attention to the hymns, especially that to Hermes; for "thereby hangs a tale."