Though the poems of Homer are replete, perhaps beyond any others, with refined and often latent adaptations, yet it may be observed in general of the modes of representation used by him, that they are preeminently the reverse of systematic. Institutions or characters, which are in themselves consistent, probably gain by this method of proceeding, provided the execution be not unworthy of the design. For it secures their exhibition in more, and more varied, points of view, than can possibly be covered by the more didactic process. But the possession of this advantage depends upon the fact, that there is in them a harmony, which is their base, and which we have only to discover. Whereas, if that harmony be wanting, if in lieu of it there be a groundwork of fundamental discrepancy, then the conditions of effect are wholly changed. The multiplied variety of view becomes a multiplication of incongruity; each new aspect offers a new problem: and the more masterly the hand of the artist, the more arduous becomes the attempt to comprehend and present in their mutual bearings the pictures he has drawn, and the suggestions he has conveyed. Thus it has been with that which, following German example, I have denominated the Theo-mythology of Homer. By that term it seems not improper to designate a mixture of theology and mythology, as these two words are commonly understood. Theology I suppose to mean, a system dealing with the knowledge of God and the unseen world: mythology, a system conversant with the inventions of man concerning them. In the Homeric poems I find both of these largely displayed: but with this difference, that the first was in visible decline, the second in such rapid and prolific development, that, while Homer is undoubtedly a witness to older fable, which had already in his time become settled tradition, he is also in this department himself evidently and largely a Maker and Inventor, and the material of the Greek mythology comes out of his hands far more fully moulded, and far more diversified, than it entered them. Of the fact that the Homeric religion does not present a consistent and homogeneous whole, we have abundant evidence in the difficulties with which, so soon as the literary age of Greece began, expositors found themselves incumbered; and which drove them sometimes upon allegory as a resource, sometimes, as in the case of Plato, upon censure and repudiation[1]. [1] Döllinger Heid. u. Jud. v. 1. p. 254. ~_Extended relations of God to man._~