the right conception of the Homeric epoch,—an organizing poetical mind, still preserving that freshness of observation and vivacity of details which constitutes the charm of the ballad. [283] Lange, in his Letter to Goethe, Ueber die Einheit der Iliade, p. 33 (1826); Nitzsch, Historia Homeri, Fasciculus 2, Præfat. p. x. Nothing is gained by studying the Iliad as a congeries of fragments once independent of each other: no portion of the poem can be shown to have ever been so, and the supposition introduces difficulties greater than those which it removes. But it is not necessary to affirm that the whole poem as we now read it, belonged to the original and preconceived plan.[284] In this respect, the Iliad produces, upon my mind, an impression totally different from the Odyssey. In the latter poem, the characters and incidents are fewer, and the whole plot appears of one projection, from the beginning down to the death of the suitors: none of the parts look as if they had been composed separately, and inserted by way of addition into a preëxisting smaller poem. But the Iliad, on the contrary, presents the appearance of a house built upon a plan comparatively narrow, and subsequently enlarged by successive additions. The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the eleventh to the twenty-second, inclusive, seem to form the primary organization of the poem, then properly an Achillêis: the twenty-third and twenty-fourth books are, perhaps, additions at the tail of this primitive poem, which still leave it nothing more than an enlarged Achillêis. But the books from the second to the seventh, inclusive, together with the tenth, are of a wider and more comprehensive character, and convert the poem from an Achillêis into an Iliad.[285] The primitive frontispiece, inscribed with the anger of Achilles, and its direct consequences, yet remains, after it has ceased to be coextensive with the poem. The parts added, however, are not necessarily inferior in merit to the original poem: so far is this from being the case, that amongst them are comprehended some of the noblest efforts of the Grecian epic. Nor are they more recent in date than the original; strictly speaking, they must be a little more recent, but they belong to the same generation and state of society as the primitive Achillêis. These qualifications are necessary to keep apart different questions, which, in discussions of Homeric criticism, are but too often confounded. [284] Even Aristotle, the great builder-up of the celebrity of Homer as to epical aggregation, found some occasions (it appears) on which he was obliged to be content with simply excusing, without admiring, the poet (Poet. 44 τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀγαθοῖς ὁ ποιητὴς ἡδύνων ἀφανίζει τὸ ἄτοπον.)