Village books

We are too fond of seeing the
ancients as one thing and the moderns as another." Butler did not
undervalue the philological and archaeological importance of the
Iliad and the Odyssey, but it was mainly as human documents that
they appealed to him. This, I am inclined to suspect, was the root
of the objection of academic critics to him and his theories. They
did not so much resent the suggestion that the author of the Odyssey
was a woman; they could not endure that he should be treated as a
human being.
Of the remaining essays two were originally delivered as lectures;
the others appeared first in The Universal Review in 1888, 1889 and
1890. I should perhaps explain why two other essays which also
appeared in The Universal Review are not included in this
collection. The first of these, entitled "L'Affaire Holbein-
Rippel," relates to a drawing of Holbein's "Danse des Paysans" in
the Basle Museum, which is usually described as a copy, but which
Butler believed to be the work of Holbein himself.


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