I also entirely agree that "the later literary whole" (by which I at least mean Hesiod, the "Cyclic" fragment, and much of Greek tragedy, not to speak of antiquarian learning) "contains the more primitive modes of thought, the earlier religion." But the theory that these things were once in, but were purged out of, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_ still baffles me. If they were usages peculiar to the conquered races, how could they appear in the poetry of the uncontaminated Northern or Achaean conquerors? How, again, can we say that "the great mass of saga poetry began to be left on one side and neglected from about the eighth century"? Notoriously the "Cyclic" poems, or the legends which were given in those poems, were greatly preferred as subjects of art by the Athenian vase-painters of the sixth century, and by Polygnotus when he decorated the Lesche at Delphi. The stories, I have shown, reached the Middle Ages through Rome and through Graeco-Roman literature, and eclipsed our Homer. To them we owe the unhappy _Troilus and Cressida_ of Shakespeare. We have no evidence known to me that proves the selection, "at some early time for public recitation," of "two poems," at the solemn four-yearly meeting of "All Ionians" and afterwards of "all Athenians." Mr. Verrall supposes the "Cyclic" poems, as well as our Homer, to have been recited at the Panathenaea. I know no evidence that they were, and none proving that they were not. I am unaware of any reason for which our _Iliad_ should have been specially selected for education in the Ionia of the eighth century, and for public recitation. The reason is the further to seek if the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, when thus selected, "were demonstrably still in a fluid condition"; indeed, while they were still in a fluid condition, I do not know how they could have been deemed so much more choiceworthy than other poems still (I presume) fluidic. If "the intellect of Greece was focussed upon" _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ while they were still fluidic, but already selected, then the expurgation was due, not to Achaean poets who ignored and pruned away the usages and beliefs of the conquered races, but to _les intellectuels_ of Greece, who (whatever their private opinions might be) saw hero-worship in daily practice; and if they killed any one, were purified by pigs' blood. Hesiod stood high in universal knowledge, was a consecrated authority; if he could be purged, why was he not purged? Because he was not recited? Yet he was part of education, and needed a Bowdler much more than Homer. The practices and beliefs expurgated from Homer were not "done in a corner" in historic Greece.