Professor Blackie, after paying a high compliment to the erudition, ingenuity, and fine taste of the Aberdeen Hellenist, proceeded to give reasons why, in his opinion, the theory now broached, to the effect that certain books of the “Iliad” were composed by the author of the “Odyssey,” which author is to be considered as the real Homer, though not destitute of a certain plausibility, is untenable. The reasons were—(1.) The character of the minstrel as distinguished from the literary epos warrants the presumption that any small diversity in certain secondary characteristics of different sections of the poem, as we now have it, is a legitimate proof, not of diversity of authorship, but only of diversity of materials collected from different sources. (2.) The manner in which the minstrel epos was originally circulated, not as a separate literary composition to be read and studied, but as a sequence of easily separable cantos to be handed about and sung separately, rendered it, even when wrought into a finished artistic whole by the genius of a great singer, peculiarly liable to interpolations and variations of various kinds, which form no legitimate ground of induction with regard to the character or attitude of the original composer.