Homer and His Age

In Homer and the Epic, ten or twelve years ago, I examined the literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are chiefly based on alleged discrepancies in the narrative, of which no one poet, it is supposed, could have been guilty. The critics repose, I venture to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it the fallacy of the analytical reader. The poet is expected to satisfy a minutely critical reader, a personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not address.