Confessedly and regretfully no grammarian, I remain unable, in face of what seem contradictory assertions about the value of linguistic tests, to ascertain what they are really worth, and what, if anything, they really prove. Mr. Monro allows much for "the long insensible influence of Attic recitation upon the Homeric text;" ... "many Attic peculiarities may be noted" (so much so that Aristarchus thought Homer must have been an Athenian!). "The poems suffered a gradual and unsystematic because generally unconscious process of modernising, the chief agents in which were the rhapsodists" (reciters in a later democratic age), "who wandered over all parts of Greece, and were likely to be influenced by all the chief forms of literature." [Footnote: Monro, _Homeric Grammar_, pp 394-396. 1891] Then, wherefore insist so much on tests of language? Mr. Monro was not only a great grammarian; he had a keen appreciation of poetry. Thus he was conspicuously uneasy in his hypothesis, based on words and grammar, that the two last Books of the _Iliad_ are by a late hand. After quoting Shelley's remark that, in these two Books, "Homer truly begins to be himself," Mr. Monro writes, "in face of such testimony can we say that the Book in which the climax is reached, in which the last discords of the _Iliad_ are dissolved in chivalrous pity and regret, is not the work of the original poet, but of some Homerid or rhapsodist?" Mr. Monro, with a struggle, finally voted for grammar, and other indications of lateness, against Shelley and against his own sense of poetry. In a letter to me of May 1905, Mr. Monro sketched a theory that Book IX. (without which he said that he deemed an _Achilleis_ hardly possible) might be a _remanie_ representative of an earlier lay to the same general effect. Some Greek Shakespeare, then, treated an older poem on the theme of Book IX. as Shakespeare treated old plays, namely, as a canvas to work over with a master's hand. Probably Mr. Monro would not have gone _so_ far in the case of Book XXIV., _The Repentance_ of Achilles. He thought it in too keen contrast with the brutality of Book XXII. (obviously forgetting that in Book XXIV. Achilles is infinitely more brutal than in Book XXII.), and thought it inconsistent with the refusal of Achilles to grant burial at the prayer of the dying Hector, and with his criminal treatment of the dead body of his chivalrous enemy. But in Book XXIV. his ferocity is increased. Mr. Leaf shares Mr. Monro's view; but Mr. Leaf thinks that a Greek audience forgave Achilles, because he was doing "the will of heaven," and "fighting the great fight of Hellenism against barbarism." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad,_ vol.-ii. p. 429. 1902.] But the Achzeans were not Puritans of the sixteenth century! Moreover, the Trojans are as "Hellenic" as the Achzeans. They converse, clearly, in the same language. They worship the same gods. The Achzeans cannot regard them (unless on account of the