Above, each row of asterisks marks a stanza missed, and it is here that the line of demarcation occurs. I proceed to B, in four stanzas, the last modified by C:

In B1 the dialect is the Scottish vernacular, in B2 the classic English meets us. Their differences are far more strongly marked than those on account of which certain metrical pieces in the Old Testament, e.g., the Song of Moses in Deut. xxxii., have been assigned to a poet of Northern Israel. For here the differences include that of grammatical form, and that of vocabulary as well as that of divergent moldings of words common to both dialects. The one glaring instance of grammatical form is that of the third person singular of the verb in classic English being used for the second in Scotch. This occurs five times in the five stanzas of B-"Thou 's [has] met,' ""Thou . . . adorns," and in the two omitted stanzas, "Thou glinted forth," Thou lifts," and "Thou lies." Con

trast with these repeated instances the opposite one in the concluding stanza, "Thou who mourn'st,' for which B1 would certainly have given "Thou that mourns." A different vocabulary is shown by the terms, stoure, weet, bield; modified word-forms meet us in maun, neebor, cauld, wa', and in the easily recognized amang, stane, alane, snawie; while in the phrase, the histie stibble-field, we have an example of each of these two latter combined.

I have dwelt thus far on linguistic points. But the contrast in the thoughts presented is no less marked than that of language. Who does not see that pure physical objectivity characterizes B1, while B' is marked by moral subjectivity and sentimental reflection? The former deals with rustic features which appeal directly and simply to the senses, like those of Mrs. Barbauld's "Ode to Spring." The latter exhibits in every stanza a new image of pathetic sadness. Moreover, the two differences correspond and confirm one another. The northern dialect claims the physical realm as its own, and the southern the ethical. That B1 and B2" form two clearly definable independent sources is a conclusion that may be accepted without hesitation," since form and matter concur to establish it.

But, further, B2 "is marked by a series of recurring features which are absent from the others," and in it "particular formulæ are repeated with great frequency," considering the brevity of the work. Thus we have in stanza vi., "such is the fate of artless maid"; in vii., we have ditto repeated "of simple bard"; in viii., “such fate," with a slight variation, "to suffering worth"; while in ix., the variation from the norm, due, perhaps, as above suggested, to C, is greater, the phrase appearing as "that fate is thine," and being here transposed from the first to the second line of the stanza. Again, we have a precisely similar formulaic recurrence in the fifth line of every stanza in succession, "Till she, like thee, . . Till billows rage, . . Till wrenched of, . . . Till crushed beneath," etc. This love of formulaic iterancy is wholly absent from B1, the "style" of which "is freer and more varied"; while these last four stanzas are “marked uniformly by the same distinctive and stereotyped phraseology" in each.

Yet more, B2 exhibits a “distinctive and stereotyped" syntactic form likewise. In every one of its stanzas except the last, the second and the third line form each a compound term constructed in apposition to a simple term in the first line, and yet not coupled to each other by any conjunction. To put it briefly, every such pair of lines forms apposed asyndeta. Thus to "maid” in stanza vi., line 1, is apposed, "Sweet floweret of," etc., and again is apposed, "by love's simplicity," etc. To "bard" in vii. I is apposed, "On . . . luckless starred," and again is apposed "unskillful he," etc., where "he" virtually repeats the first term. Again, in viii. 1 suffering worth" (a poetical abstraction for “a worthy man who suffers") has similarly attached to it its two following lines;

and although helped by the relative "who," yet the effect is the same. Thus "sentences cast in the same type recur." From any such monotony of structure B1 is wholly free; not to mention that such a poetical abstraction as that just noticed is wholly foreign to his rustic muse. "Suffering worth" reminds us of Shakespeare's phrase "patient merit,' and this suggests that the author had access to sources of culture to which that of B' was a stranger.

The compiler, whose hand we trace in the closing stanza, or else the poet of B2, had evidently, in his apostrophe to himself, "E'en thou who mourn'st," reproduced a trace of Gray's "Elegy" in the stanza which links to it the personality of the poet,

"For thee, who, mindful of the unhonored dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate," etc.

But he had forgotten that "thee" of the preceding stanzas is the daisy itself. Here then the hand of a compiler seems clearly betrayed. Of course we need not doubt that the poet of B2 had B' before him, and adjusted a moral, or series of morals, to it; to which joint composition C put some finishing touches, and thus completed "the process by which the" Ode to the Daisy "assumed its present shape."

To sum up then, B1 and B2 are distinct from each other, as being products respectively of a northern and a southern dialect; and this affects their grammatical form, including that of the verb personal, the vocabulary, and the type of word-molding. They are distinct also in respect of marked phraseological recurrences, which one exhibits freely, while from the other they are wholly absent. They are distinct in respect of syntactical arrangement, which in B1 is free and varied, but in B2 tends to fall into a fixed norm. And they are even more strongly contrasted, if possible, in respect of subject-matter, and the absence or presence of implied references to other standard works. And "where," as in the case before us, "the differences are," in proportion to the very slight bulk of the whole, "at once numerous, recurrent, and systematic, they may be regarded as conclusive evidence that the compositions in which they occur are not the work of one and the same author."

But indeed we know from another poem in the same collection, in the same northern dialect, and in the same meter, that B1 could moralize, when the fit seized him, and that too without forsaking his native rustic tongue. I will quote a short sample only from the stanzas, “To a Mouse," whose nest, it seems, had been stirred by the same plowshare which tore up the daisy:—

"Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,

An' weary winter comin' fast,

An' cozie here, beneath the blast,

Thou thought 1 to dwell;

Till, crash! the cruel coulter past

Out thro' thy cell.

"That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Hae cost thee mony a weary nibble.
Now thou's turn'd out for a' thy trouble,
But 2 house or hauld,

To thole the winter's sleety dribble

Then follows the moral:

An' cranreuch cauld!"

"But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft a-gley,

And lea'e us nought but grief and pain
For promis'd joy.”

"Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!"

Here then we trace the hand and style of B1 throughout. Thus the argument from resemblance confirms that from difference; and both together lead us to an assured conviction that B1 and B2 are distinct and separate authors. In this last case, however, there is no B2, and therefore no room for the work of C.

I venture, therefore, to express the genesis of the "Ode to the Daisy," by the formula B1+B2+BC. The quotations in inverted commas, where not from the poem itself, are from the valuable article of Professor S. R. Driver on "Genesis," 3 in his enumeration of the characteristics which distinguish the P of the critics from their J or JE. Where the phrases of so distinguished an authority were so apposite to the purpose, it would have been a mere affectation of originality to invent new ones. I am not aware that I have omitted any of the tests applied by him. I am not conscious of using them in any changed sense; or if any change there be, it is a change to a fortiori; for, e.g., the difference between Scotch vernacular and classic English is greater than any amount of difference in style where the vernacular used is the same. Some may perhaps be led by the above to frame and apply a destructive hypothetical syllogism:-"If A is B, then C is D; but, if C be not D, then A is not B"; or, to clothe form with matter:-"If the method of the higher criticism is trustworthy, then the above Ode must be by more than one author." Any who have got thus far will be able to judge for themselves, whether this consequent is to be admitted or denied, and to clinch the argument accordingly. HENRY HAYMAN.

ALDINGHAM, ULVERSTON.

1These will be recognized as examples of the dialectic usage of the verb personal above referred to in the text.

2" But" in the northern dialect is a preposition "without."

Dict. of the Bible, 2d ed., I. ii. pp. 1149, foll.

DR. HAYMAN ON THE UNITY OF HOMER.

THE preceding critical note is not Dr. Hayman's first piece of iconoclastic work. For forty years he has been a keen student of the Homeric question, and has revealed many a joint in the harness of the critics. Believing in the essential unity and early date of the two great epics, he has shown in numerous instances, particularly in his monumental edition of the Odyssey, by applying it to other poets ancient or modern, that some arbitrary standard adopted by the critics proves altogether too much; as, for example, that Homer was contemporary with poets who lived in three different centuries. In the light of comparative philology, his suggestions concerning the Homeric treatment of the digamma are especially remarkable, since they were made at least twenty-five years ago. H. W. MAGOUN.