It is not necessary for me to repeat my unanswered criticisms, in _Homer and the Epic_, of many alleged discrepancies. If I have succeeded in showing that the three most flagrant inconsistencies are not inconsistent, it is easy to imagine how innocent are most of the other inculpated passages. One may be noted. In _Iliad_, xviii. 446-452, Thetis, who has gone to ask Hephaestus to make armour for her son, explains the causes of his mutiny. "And the princes (_γέροντες_) of the Argives entreated him, and told over many noble gifts. Then albeit he refused to ward destruction from them, he put his armour on Patroclus and sent him to the war." The gifts were offered "while Achilles in grief wasted his heart, while the men of Troy were driving the Achaeans on their ships, nor suffered them to come forth." The gifts were offered, in fact, when the Greeks had found it necessary to fortify their camp, purposing to act on the defensive; and Achilles did not send out Patroclus in consequence of the offer of gifts. Absorbed in her own grief for her son, whom she will never welcome home ("excited," as Miss Stawell says), Thetis has avoided the point of the question of Hephaestus, "Why hast thou come hither?" and poured forth her own lament (430-441). "Homer," says the Scholiast, "renders the nature of woman, she does not answer the question put to her, but dilates on her own sorrow." Then she hurriedly and confusedly describes the past events, hastening to her request that the god will make arms for her Achilles. As Mr. Leaf writes, "Though the reference (450, 451) does not give the whole course of events, it is near enough--there is only omission, not misstatement." To myself the speech of Thetis seems exactly what a distraught mother in a hurry would be apt to make. But Mr. Verrall takes it as proof positive that "a new hand" is at work, the new hand who invented "The Making of the Armour." _He_--the new hand--is in even a greater hurry, and is much more distraught than poor Thetis, it seems to me; but then Mr. Verrall observes he did not mean his story of the armour "for a continuation of the other's, otherwise he would have told the previous incident as he found it." Finally, some one, some time, for some reason--person, time, and reason being all equally unknown--"takes the "Sending of Patroclus" from one version and the "Making of the Armour" from another, and combines without reconciling them."[26] Here Mr. Verrall differs from Mr. Leaf, while we take it that Homer makes a grief-distraught mother in a hurry speak like a grief-distraught and hurried mother. But Homer, where there is a doubt, never gets the benefit of the doubt. [1] July 1908, pp. 75, 76. [2] _Homer and his Age_, p. 250. [3] Mr. Leaf's version, Lang, Leaf, and Myers. [4] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 256. [5] See chapter on "Homeric Religion." [6] _Iliad_, vi. 123-129. [7] _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 153. [8] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 370.