[Foss4g2009] Primitive poem, which still leave it

[Churape]

Ity, one long entire poem. This continuity would be improved and
especially attended to, when a certain _order_ came to be preserved (as
we know it was) in the recitation of the several poems. We have no
difficulty, therefore, in believing that, in the time of Pisistratus,
the _editors_ of Homer might have had very little to do to give them
that degree of completeness and unity which they at present display. A
number of consecutive songs upon the same subject would naturally grow
into an epic. No decisive argument, we submit, can be drawn from the
absence or limited application of the art of writing at the era assigned
for the composition of these poems. There is nothing left for us but to
examine the poems themselves, to determine what degree of unity of plan
or of authorship may be attributed to them. Unfortunately the critical
perception of scholars, equally eminent, leads to such different
results, that the controversy appears to be hopeless. Where one sees
with the utmost distinctness the difference of workmanship, another sees
with equal clearness the traces of the same genius and manner. And in
controversies of this nature, there is unhappily a most perverse
combination of the strongest conviction with an utter impotence to force
that conviction upon another. Between these two, a man is generally
driven into a passion; and thus we often find a bitter, acrid mood
infused into literary discussions, which, lying as they do apart from
the selfish and conflicting interests of men, would seem to be the
theatre for no such display. The controversy rages s
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