Wolf, Preface to the Göschen edit. of the Iliad, pp. xii-xxiii; Voss, Anti-Symbolik, part ii. p. 234; Nitzsch, Histor. Homeri, Fasciculus i. p. 112; and Vorrede to the second volume of his Comments on the Odyssey, p. xxvi: “In the Iliad (he there says) many single portions may very easily be imagined as parts of another whole, or as having been once separately sung.” (See Baumgarten-Crusius, Preface to his edition of W. Müller’s Homerische Vorschule, pp. xlv-xlix.) Nitzsch distinguishes the Odyssey from the Iliad, and I think justly, in respect to this supposed enlargement. The reasons which warrant us in applying this theory to the Iliad have no bearing upon the Odyssey. If there ever was an Ur-Odyssee, we have no means of determining what it contained. [300] The remarks of O. Müller on the Iliad (in his History of Greek Literature) are highly deserving of perusal: with much of them I agree, but there is also much which seems to me unfounded. The range of combination, and the far-fetched narrative stratagem which he ascribes to the primitive author, are in my view inadmissible (chap. v. § 5-11):— “The internal connection of the Iliad (he observes, § 6) rests upon the union of certain parts; and neither the interesting introduction, describing the defeat of the Greeks up to the burning of the ship of Protesilaus, nor the turn of affairs brought about by the death of Patroclus, nor the final pacification of the anger of Achilles, could be spared from the Iliad, when the fruitful seed of such a poem had once been sown in the soul of Homer, and had begun to develop its growth. But the plan of the Iliad is certainly very much extended beyond what was actually necessary; and in particular, the preparatory part, consisting of the _attempts_ on the part of _the other heroes to compensate for the absence of Achilles_, has, it must be owned, been drawn out to a disproportionate length, so that the suspicion that there were later insertions of importance applies with greater probability to the first than to the last books.... A design manifested itself at an early period to make this poem complete in itself, so that all the subjects, descriptions, and actions, which could alone give interest to a poem _on the entire war_, might find a place within the limits of its composition. For this purpose, it is not improbable that many lays of earlier bards, who had sung single adventures of the Trojan war, were laid under contribution, and the finest parts of them incorporated in the new poem.”