"The romances collectively designated by the title of Carlovingian, are, it would seem, the most ancient of all in the Provençal literature. They were not, originally, more than very short and simple poems, popular songs destined to be recited with more or less musical intonation, and susceptible, consequently on their shortness, of preservation without the aid of writing, and simply by oral tradition among the _jongleurs_, whose profession it was to sing them. Almost insensibly these songs developed themselves, and assumed a complex character; they attained a fixed length, and their re-composition required more invention and more design. In another point of view, they had increased in number in the same ratio as they had acquired greater extent and complexity; and things naturally attained such a position, that it became impossible to chant them from beginning to end by the aid of memory alone, nor could they be preserved any longer without the assistance of a written medium. They might be still occasionally sung in detached portions; but there exists scarcely a doubt, that from that period they began to be read; and it was only necessary to read them, in order to seize and appreciate their contents."[1] [Footnote 1: P. xxx., quoted in Thirlwall's _History of Greece_ (Appendix I.), vol. i. p. 506., where it is given in French.] These remarks, though applied to another literature, contain the essentials of the theory developed by Wolf in regard to Homer. Before the time of Wolf, the popularly accepted opinion on this subject was as follows: That Homer, a poet of ancient date, wrote the _Iliad_ and _Odyssea_ in their present form; and that the rhapsodists having corrupted and interpolated the poems, Peisistratos, and Hipparchos, his son, corrected, revised, and restored these poems to their original condition. Such was the general opinion, when at the end of the seventeenth century doubts began to be thrown upon it, and the question began to be placed in a new light. The critics of the time were Casaubon, Perizon, Bentley, Hédelin, and Perrault, who, more or less, rejected the established opinion. Giambattista Vico made the first attempt to embody their speculations into one methodical work. His _Principi di Scienza nuova_ contain the germ of the theory reproduced by Wolf with so much scholarship. Wolf, founding his theory on the investigations of Vico and Wood, extended or modified their views, and assumed that the poems were never written down at all until the time of Peisistratos, their arranger. In 1778, the famous Venetian Scholia were discovered by Villoison, throwing open to the world the investigations of the Alexandrian critics; and by showing what the ideas of the Chorizontes were (on whom it were madness to write after Mure), strengthening the views of Wolf. In 1795, then, were published his famous _Prolegomena_, containing the theory--