It may be said that I mean by "Legion" something which M. Gaston Paris did not mean. But what _did_ he mean? Did he mean that a different _laisses_, or strings of verses on one assonance in the _Chanson de Roland_, were by different poets, and were tacked together by one man, who, perhaps, made omissions and additions? If this was what M. Gaston Paris meant, I do not agree with him, nor with any one who may hold the same opinion about the evolution of our _Iliad_. I know perfectly well what I mean, when I say that Legion provided Homer's materials, and showed various methods of treating them. What these materials were we cannot exactly know. There must have been much heroic poetry in hexameter verse; in Homer the form has reached perfection. The style retains some peculiarities of popular poetry, of ballads, as in stereotyped formulae descriptive of habitual actions of every kind. Like our ballads, the poet never avoids a formula, if he can find one current; if he invents a new one, he clings to it. This recurrence of formulae is no less marked in _Iliad_ viii. than in Child's four hundred _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, or in _La Chancun de Willame_, one of the oldest _chansons de geste_. Homer's chief heroes need no introduction to his audience, as Roland and Oliver, Ganelon and Naismes needed none. All his characters were familiar figures in an ancient legend of an expedition against the Northern shore of Asia. About that we have no historic knowledge, and it is rare indeed that chronicles record any "facts" given in early _chansons de geste_. The rear-guard action at Roncevaux is an exception; it is a historical fact. Homer surveyed the whole, selected some situations, invented others, combined and fused all in the furnace of his genius, just as did Milton and Shakespeare. But how Legion made the _Iliad_, with no Homer, no one great genius, but in some incomprehensible manner of combination, I have never understood. I have never seen any description of the processes which was clear, coherent, intelligible, and corroborated by an example historically known. Theories of "redactors," "editors," literary committees, are all in the air; we cannot say, with Mrs. Quickly, "You, or any man, knows where to have them." No theory shows us "where to have" the _Dichter_, where, or when, or in what circumstances he did whatever he is supposed to have done. [1] _Homer and his Age_, pp. 276-278. [2] _Légendes du Moyen Age_, pp. 46-47. APPENDIX A THE CATALOGUE