As to the Odyssey being the work of "a milder age," consider the hanging of Penelope's maids and the abominable torture of Melanthius. There is no torturing in the [blank space] for the _Iliad_ happens not to deal with treacherous thralls. _Enfin_, there is no appreciable moral advance in the _ODYSSEY_ on the moral standard of the _ILIAD_. It is rather the other way. Odysseus, in the _ODYSSEY_, tries to procure poison for his arrow-heads. The person to whom he applies is too moral to oblige him. We never learn that a hero of the _Iliad_ would use poisoned arrows. The poet himself obviously disapproves; in both poems the poet is always on the side of morality and of the highest ethical standard of his age. The standard in both Epics is the same; in both some heroes fall short of the standard. To return to linguistic tests, it is hard indeed to discover what Mr. Leaf's opinion of the value of linguistic tests of lateness really is. "It is on such fundamental discrepancies"--as he has found in Books IX., XVI.--"that we can depend, _AND ON THESE ALONE_, when we come to dissect the _ILIAD_ ... Some critics have attempted to base their analysis on evidences from language, but I do not think they are sufficient to bear the super-structure which has been raised on them." [Footnote: _Companion,_ p. 25.] He goes on, still placing a low value on linguistic tests alone, to say: "It is on the broad grounds of the construction and motives of the poem, _AND NOT ON ANY MERELY linguistic CONSIDERATIONS_, that a decision must be sought." [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. x.] But he contradicts these comfortable words when he comes to "the latest expansions," such as Books XXIII., XXIV. "The latest expansions are thoroughly in the spirit of those which precede, _them ON ACCOUNT OF linguistic EVIDENCE,_ which definitely classes them with the _ODYSSEY_ rather than the rest of the _ILIAD_." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. xiv.] Now as Mr. Leaf has told us that we must depend on "fundamental discrepancies," "on these alone," when we want to dissect the _ILIAD;_ as he has told us that linguistic tests alone are "not sufficient to bear the superstructure," &c., how can we lop off two Books "only on account of linguistic evidence"? It would appear that on this point, as on others, Mr. Leaf has entirely changed his mind. But, even in the _Companion_ (p. 388), he had amputated Book XXIV. for no "fundamental discrepancy," but because of "its close kinship to the _ODYSSEY_, as in the whole language of the Book." Here, as in many other passages, if we are to account for discrepancies by the theory of multiplex authorship, we must decide that Mr. Leaf's books are the work of several critics, not of one critic only. But there is excellent evidence to prove that here we would be mistaken.