objections to this theory were obvious to Wolf himself--more
obvious to him than to his followers. He was aware, and some of
them are not, of the distinction between reading the _ILIAD_
as all poetic literature is naturally read, and by all authors is
meant to be read, for human pleasure, and studying it in the
spirit of "the analytical reader." As often as he read for
pleasure, he says, disregarding the purely fanciful "historical
conditions" which he invented for Homer; as often as he yielded
himself to that running stream of action and narration; as often
as he considered the _harmony_ of _colour_ and of
characters in the Epic, no man could be more angry with his own
destructive criticism than himself. Wolf ceased to be a Wolfian
whenever he placed himself at the point of view of the reader or
the listener, to whom alone every poet makes his appeal.

But he deemed it his duty to place himself at another point of
view, that of the scientific literary historian, the historian of
a period concerning whose history he could know nothing. "How
could the thing be possible?" he asked himself. "How could a long
poem like the _Iliad_ come into existence in the historical
circumstances?" [Footnote, exact place in paragraph unknown:
Preface to Homer, p, xxii., 1794.]. Wolf was unaware that he did
not know what the historical circumstances were. We know how
little we know, but we do know more than Wolf. He invented the
historical circumstances of the supposed poet. They were, he said,
like those of a man who should build a large ship in an inland
place, with no sea to launch it upon. The _Iliad_ was the
large ship; the sea was the public. Homer could have no
_readers_, Wolf said, in an age that, like the old hermit of
Prague, "never saw pen and ink," had no knowledge of letters; or,