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.
PRINCIPLES AND FACTS.--SCHMIDT.
I have read all the famous histories, and, I believe, some history of every
country and nation that is, or ever existed; but I never did so for the
story itself as a story. The only thing interesting to me was the
principles to be evolved from, and illustrated by, the facts.[1] After I
had gotten my principles, I pretty generally left the facts to take care of
themselves. I never could remember any passages in books, or the
particulars of events, except in the gross. I can refer to them. To be
sure, I must be a different sort of man from Herder, who once was seriously
annoyed with himself, because, in recounting the pedigree of some German
royal or electoral family, he missed some one of those worthies and could
not recall the name.
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