Now, this appetite for commemoration does not fix itself upon what is imaginary; it may tolerate fiction by way of accessory and embellishment, but in the main it must, from its nature, rely upon what it takes to be solid food. The actions of great men in all times, but especially in early times, afford it suitable material; and there is nothing irrational in believing that the race which in its infancy produced so marvellous a poet as Homer, should also in its infancy have produced great warriors and great statesmen. Composing, with such powers as his, about his own country, and for his own countrymen, he could scarcely fail, even independently of conscious purpose, to convey to us a great mass of such matter as is in reality of the very highest historic truth and value. If, indeed, we advance so far as to the conviction that his hearers believed him to be reciting historically, the main question may speedily be decided. For each generation of men, possessed of the mental culture necessary in order to appreciate Homer, knows too much of the generations immediately preceding to admit of utter and wholesale imposition. But it is a fair inference from the Odyssey, that the Trojan War was thus sung to the men and the children of the men who waged it. Four lays of bards[13] are mentioned in that poem; one of Phemius, three of Demodocus; and out of the four, three relate to the War, which appears to show clearly that its celebrity must have been both instantaneous and overpowering; the more so, as the only remaining one has reference not to any human transaction, but to a scene in Olympus. And I shall shortly advert to the question, whether the Homeric poems themselves were in all probability composed not later than within two generations of the War itself. It may be true that, with respect to some parts of his historical notices, the poet, adapting himself to the wishes and tastes of his hearers, might take liberties without fear of detection, most of all where he has filled in accessories, in order to complete a picture; but I think we should be wrong in supposing that in the interest of his art he would have occasion to make this a general practice, or to carry it in historical subjects beyond matters of detail. Nor can I wholly disregard the analogy between his history and his equally copious and everywhere intermixed geographical notices: such of them, I mean, as lay within the sphere of Greek experience. These indeed, he could not, under the eyes of the men who heard him, cast into the mould of fiction; yet there could be no call of popular necessity for his unequalled and most minute precision, and it can only be accounted for by the belief that accurate record was a great purpose of his poems. If he was thus careful to record both classes of particulars alike, and if, as to the one, we absolutely know that he has recorded them with exemplary fidelity, that fact raises a corresponding presumption of some weight as to the other.