Centuries later than Pisistratus, in a critical age, Apollonius Rhodius set about writing an epic of the Homeric times. We know how entirely he failed, on all hands, to restore the manner of Homer. The editor of 540 B.C. was a more scientific man. Can any one who sets before himself the nature of the editor's task believe in him and it? To the master-less floating jellyfish of old poems and new, Mr. Leaf supposes that "but small and unimportant additions were made after the end of the eighth century or thereabouts," especially as "the creative and imaginative forces of the Ionian race turned to other forms of expression," to lyrics and to philosophic poems. But the able Pisistratean editor, after all, we find, introduced quantities of new matter into the poems--in the middle of the sixth century; that kind of industry, then, did not cease towards the end of the eighth century, as we have been told. On the other hand, as we shall learn, the editor contributed to the _Iliad_, among other things, Nestor's descriptions of his youthful adventures, for the purpose of flattering Nestor's descendant, the tyrant Pisistratus of Athens. One hypothesis, the theory of an Homeric school--which would answer our question, "How was the harmony of the picture of life in remote ages preserved in poems composed in several succeeding ages, and in totally altered conditions of life?"--Mr. Leaf, as we know, rejects. We might suggest, again, that there were written texts handed down from an early period, and preserved in new copies from generation to generation. Mr. Leaf states his doubt that there were any such texts. "The poems were all this time handed down orally only by tradition among the singers (_sic_), who used to wander over Greece reciting them at popular festivals. Writing was indeed known through the whole period of epic development" (some four centuries at least), "but it is in the highest degree unlikely that it was ever employed to form a standard text of the Epic or _ANY_ part of it. There can hardly have been any standard text; at best there was a continuous tradition of those parts of the poems which were especially popular, and the knowledge of which was a valuable asset to the professional reciter." Now we would not contend for the existence of any [blank space] text much before 600 B.C., and I understand Mr. Leaf not to deny, now, that there may have been texts of the _ODYSSEY_ and _Iliad_ before, say, 600-540 B.C. If cities and reciters had any ancient texts, then texts existed, though not "standard" texts: and by this means the harmony of thought, character, and detail in the poems might be preserved. We do not think that it is "in the highest degree unlikely" that there were no texts. Is this one of the many points on which every savant must rely on his own sense of what is "likely"? To this essential point, the almost certain existence of written texts, we return in our conclusion.