This is a point on which we cannot insist too strongly, as an argument against the theory that, till the middle of the sixth century B.C., the _Iliad_ scarcely survived save in the memory of strolling rhapsodists. If that were so, all the Books of the _Iliad_ would, in the course of recitation of old and composition of new passages, be equally contaminated with late Odyssean linguistic style. It could not be otherwise; all the Books would be equally modified in passing through the lips of modern reciters and composers. Therefore, if twenty out of twenty-four Books are pure, or pure in the main, from Odysseanisms, while four are deeply stained with them, the twenty must not only be earlier than the four, but must have been specially preserved, and kept uncontaminated, in some manner inconsistent with the theory that all alike scarcely existed save in the memory or invention of late strolling reciters. How the twenty Books relatively pure "in grammatical forms, in syntax, and in vocabulary," could be kept thus clean without the aid of written texts, I am unable to imagine. If left merely to human memory and at the mercy of reciters and new poets, they would have become stained with "the defining article"--and, indeed, an employment of the article which startles grammarians, appears even in the eleventh line of the First Book of the _Iliad_? [Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Cf. Monro and Leaf, on Iliad, I. 11-12.] Left merely to human memory and the human voice, the twenty more or less innocent Books would have abounded, like the Odyssey, in [Greek: amphi] with the dative meaning "about," and with [Greek: ex] "in consequence of," and "the extension of the use of [Greek: ei] clauses as final and objective clauses," and similar marks of lateness, so interesting to grammarians. [Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, ii. pp. 331-333.] But the twenty Books are almost, or quite, inoffensive in these respects.