B91 to B194

Homer (Paley) and quotations from Pindar

B 91,92,102,102v, 103,103v, 104,104v, 105,105v, 92v, 94,96,97

In the autumn of 1873, GE returned to the Berg Notebook, resuming a topic that had occupied some of its earlier pages: Homeric studies. Between July 1869 and October 1872 she had transcribed, in black ink, passages from the Iliad and the Odyssey (B 12, 22, 67, 71, 72, and 84). In violet ink she later added the heading ‘Iliad’ (B 72) and a note on an image in the Odyssey (B 66v). Her study of Homeric scholarship began in December 1870, when her reading of Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena adHomerum (1795) was recorded in the GE Journal and reflected in her notes from Wolf on B 72 and Folger 13 83. A ‘list of books on the Homeric Question’ (Pf 711 15, 16) was copied in the summer of 1873. Her notes below are from two articles by Frederick Apthorp Paley: ‘The Odyssey of Homer’ in the British Quarterly Review 58 (October 1873): 414–45; and ‘On the Comparatively Late Date and Composite Character of our Iliad and Odyssey’ in Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 11, Part II (1871): 360–86. GHL's Diary records his reading of the British Quarterly Review on 16 October 1873. It is probable that GE's reading of the 1873 article prompted her to look up the 1871 article; her copious notes suggest the use of a borrowed copy of the Transactions. For an account of her discussion of the Homeric question on 23 November 1873 with John Fiske, who found her ‘a strong Wolfian!’, see the headnote to Pf 711 15 and 16.