Excerpt from Homeric Ballads: With Translations and Notes More than seven and twenty centuries have rolled away Since Homer's time, according to his received date; and, in all languages, half-a-dozen names have not been produced who can be allowed to approximate to him. I firmly believe he has had but one equal, and even the greatness of his genius is disputed - by those, however, who, in my Opinion, are not capable of appreciating either Shakespeare or Homer. I look only to the in ternal ew'dence of the poems themselves. As for external evidence, we know as much of Homer as the earliest Greek writer who'mentions him. The poems were in all men's months before history or biography - far before criticism or antiquarianism, were thought of; and Herodotus himself tells no thing certain of their author. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.