I have the firmest conviction that _Homer_ is a mere traditional synonyme
with, or figure for, the Iliad. You cannot conceivefor a moment any thing
about the poet, as you call him, apart from that poem. Difference in men
there was in a degree, but not in kind; one man was, perhaps, a better poet
than another; but he was a poet upon the same ground and with the same
feelings as the rest.
The want of adverbs in the Iliad is very characteristic. With more adverbs
there would have been some subjectivity, or subjectivity would have made
them.
The Greeks were then just on the verge of the bursting forth of
individuality.
Valckenaer's treatise[1] on the interpolation of the Classics by the later
Jews and early Christians is well worth your perusal as a scholar and
critic.
[Footnote 1: _Diatribe de Aristobulo Judaeo_.--ED.]
July 13. 1832.