7. The tenth Book, though it refers sufficiently to what precedes, has no bearing on what follows in the poem. Grote has argued conclusively against the supposition that we owe the continuous Iliad[687] to the labours of Pisistratus, and shows that it must have been known in its continuity long before. He places the poems between 850 and 776 B. C.[688]; admits the splendour of much of the poetry which he thus tears from its context[689]; yet he apparently is not startled by the supposition, that the man, or the men, capable of composing poetry of the superlative kind that makes up his Achilleis, should be so blind to the primary exigencies of such a work for its effect as a whole, that he or they could also be capable of thus spoiling its unity by adding eight books, which do not belong to the subject, to fifteen others in which it was already completely handled and disposed of. And though our historian leans to the belief of a plurality of authors for the Iliad, he does not absolutely reject the supposition that it may be the work of one[690]. [687] Grote’s History of Greece, vol. ii. p. 210. [688] Ibid. p. 178. [689] Ibid. p. 260, 236, 267. [690] Ibid. p. 269. ~_Offer of Il._ ix. _and its rejection_.~ As to the Ninth Book[691], he refers it more decisively to a separate hand; and he makes no difficulty about presuming that the Homerids could furnish men capable of composing (for example) the wonderful speech of Achilles from the 307th to the 429th line. Happy Homerids! and _felix prole virûm_, happy land that could produce them! [691] Ibid. It appears to me that these are wild suppositions. Against no supposition can there be stronger presumptions than against those which, by dissevering the prime parts of the poem, produce a multiplication of Homers; and however Grote may himself think that enlargements such as he describes, do not imply of necessity at least a double authorship, few indeed, I apprehend, will be found, while admitting his criticisms on the poem, to contend that it can still be the production of a single mind. Still less can I think that any one would now be satisfied with the sequence of Books proposed, or with the mutilated proportions, any more than with the reduced dimensions, of the work as a whole. I will say not that the propounder of such a theory, but that such a propounder of any theory, is well entitled to have the question discussed, whether those proportions are indeed mutilated by the change, or whether they are, on the contrary, restored. Let me observe, however, at the outset, that it is the general argument with which only I shall be careful to deal. I do not admit the discrepancies[692] alleged; but neither is it requisite to examine each case in detail, since Grote concedes, that his own theory does not relieve him from conflict with particular passages of the poem. [692] Note, pp. 240-4.