‘What do you know of Homer?’” “No such person,” I suppose, or “another bard of the same name,” or some such compact reply. It would be still more interesting to have Mr. Gomme replying to the same question. The _Outline_ is written now, but Mr. Gomme might yet distinguish himself by a popular _Life of Homer_ with chapters on his early life, his domestic troubles, his dietary, his dogs and so forth, and of course with model examination questions and answers at the end. Mr. Gomme makes much play with his remarkably complete ignorance of ethnology. It is really too much that I should be “slated” for anything in my _Outline_ that Mr. Gomme does not know or understand. Judgment by Mr. Gomme’s default would go against me on a thousand issues. He muddles up “Aryan,” which is the name of a language group, with “Mediterranean race,” which is the name of a racial group, and gets into a fine muddle with the word “Nordic.” And the deeper he gets into the muddle the crosser he gets with me. “This ugly word does not seem to mean anything other than ‘Northern’” he writes; but, of course, if it did not, as any undergraduate in science at Glasgow would explain to him, then scientific people would use the word “Northern” and not a special term. Amidst “Nordic,” a race name, “Germanic,” a national adjective, “Aryan,” a language name, Mr. Gomme rolls like a puppy in a ball of wool, losing his temper more and more. There are indications of a suspicion that the whole of this ethnology is wicked German propaganda. Mr. Gomme probably believes that the blue eyes so prevalent in Northern Europe are German propaganda organs. I am no scholastic Hercules to clean up the mind of Mr. Gomme. I note these matters merely to make it plain that much of this pamphlet with its air of heaping up a list of “errors” is really no more than the violent expression of Mr. Gomme’s eccentric dissent from views that have passed muster with the generality of sound scholars. I have neither time nor space here to deal with Mr. Gomme’s original view that Christianity is a “purely European” religion. One can best return him his “Nonsense!” and let the stuff go with that. I have already noted his utter unteachableness about the universality of the Roman Empire. His avoidance of instruction in the history of the Christian religion is, if possible, more complete. Let me come now to his conclusion. He declares, which is totally untrue, that it is “one of Mr. Wells’ curious theories” that “primitive men are in all ways inferior to their successors.” (I point out the exact contrary in relation to the artistic achievements of Palæolithic and Neolithic men.) And then, just to show how these things could be done, he floats away into this sublime specimen of classical-side prose:—