The Iliad of Homer - Get a Free Blog

a blind man as attaining the utmost perfection
in his art, if he had been conscious
that the memory of the bard was
only maintained by constant reference to
the manuscript in his chest."
The loss of the digamma, that crux of
critics, that quicksand upon which even
the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked,
seems to prove beyond a doubt, that the
pronunciation of the Greek language had
undergone a considerable change. Now it
is certainly difficult to suppose that the
Homeric poems could have suffered by
this change, had written copies been preserved.
If Chaucer's poetry, for instance,
had not been written, it could only have
come down to us in a softened form,
more like the effeminate version of Dryden,
than the rough, quaint, noble original.