Let us return to the Iliad. The Iliad is a history told by a mind that is arbiter, to a certain extent only, of its own facts. For Homer takes his decennial War and its Heroes, nay, the tenor of the story too, from long-descended Tradition. To his contemporary countrymen he appears as a Historian--not feigning, but commemorating and glorifying, transmitted facts. SEWARD. Ottfried Müller, asking how far Homer is tied up in his Traditions, ventures to suspect that the names of the Heroes whom Achilles kills, in such or such a fight, are all traditionary. NORTH. 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. Who was then a real living flesh and blood Individual of the human species. NORTH. That he was---- SEWARD. And wrote the Iliad. NORTH. That he did--but how I have hinted rather than told. In the Paradise Lost, the part of Milton is, then, infinitely bolder than Homer's in the Iliad. He is far more of a Creator. SEWARD. Can an innermost bond of Unity, sir, be shown for the Iliad? NORTH. Yes. THE ILIAD IS A TALE OF A WRONG RIGHTED. Zeus, upon the secret top of Olympus, decrees this RIGHTING with his omnipotent Nod. Upon the top of Ida he conducts it. But that is done, and the Fates resume their tenor. Hector falls, and Troy shall fall. That is again the RIGHTING OF A WRONG, done amongst men. This is the broadly-written admonition: "DISCITE JUSTITIAM." SEWARD. You are always great, sir, on Homer. NORTH.