HOMER AND HIS AGE

BY

ANDREW LANG


[Illustration: ALGONQUINS UNDER SHIELD _Frontispiece_]


To R. W. RAPER IN ALL GRATITUDE




PREFACE


In _Homer and the Epic_, ten or twelve years ago, I examined
the literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are
chiefly based on alleged discrepancies in the narrative, of which
no one poet, it is supposed, could have been guilty. The critics
repose, I venture to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it
the fallacy of "the analytical reader." The poet is expected to
satisfy a minutely critical reader, a personage whom he could not
foresee, and whom he did not address. Nor are "contradictory
instances" examined--that is, as Blass has recently reminded his
countrymen, Homer is put to a test which Goethe could not endure.
No long fictitious narrative can satisfy "the analytical reader."