The last two books of the Iliad may have formed part of the original Achillêis. But the probability rather is, that they are additions; for the death of Hector satisfies the exigencies of a coherent scheme, and we are not entitled to extend the oldest poem beyond the limit which such necessity prescribes. It has been argued on one side by Nitzsch and O. Müller, that the mind could not leave off with satisfaction at the moment in which Achilles sates his revenge, and while the bodies of Patroclus and Hector are lying unburied,—also, that the more merciful temper which he exhibits in the twenty-fourth book, must always have been an indispensable sequel, in order to create proper sympathy with his triumph. Other critics, on the contrary, have taken special grounds of exception against the last book, and have endeavored to set it aside as different from the other books, both in tone and language. To a certain extent, the peculiarities of the last book appear to me undeniable, though it is plainly a designed continuance, and not a substantive poem. Some weight also is due to the remark about the twenty-third book, that Odysseus and Diomêdês, who have been wounded and disabled during the fight, now reappear in perfect force, and contend in the games: here is no case of miraculous healing, and the inconsistency is more likely to have been admitted by a separate enlarging poet, than by the schemer of the Achillêis. The splendid books from the second to v. 322 of the seventh,[307] are equal, in most parts, to any portion of the Achillêis, and are pointedly distinguished from the latter by the broad view which they exhibit of the general Trojan war, with all its principal personages, localities, and causes,—yet without advancing the result promised in the first book, or, indeed, any final purpose whatever. Even the desperate wound inflicted by Tlepolemus on Sarpêdon, is forgotten, when the latter hero is called forth in the subsequent Achillêis.[308] The arguments of Lachmann, who dissects these six books into three or four separate songs,[309] carry no conviction to my mind; and I see no reason why we should not consider all of them to be by the same author, bound together by the common purpose of giving a great collective picture which may properly be termed an Iliad. The tenth book, or Doloneia, though adapted specially to the place in which it stands, agrees with the books between the first and eighth in belonging only to the general picture of the war, without helping forward the march of the Achillêis; yet it seems conceived in a lower vein, in so far as we can trust our modern ethical sentiment. One is unwilling to believe that the author of the fifth book, or Aristeia of Diomêdês, would condescend to employ the hero whom he there so brightly glorifies,—the victor even over Arês himself,—in slaughtering newly-arrived Thracian sleepers, without any large purpose or necessity.[310] The ninth book, of which I have already