ground for conjecturing that (for the use of this newly-formed and important, but very narrow cl****), m****cripts of the Homeric poems and other old epics,--the Thebais and the Cypria, as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey,--began to be compiled towards the middle of the seventh century (B.C. 1); and the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, which took place about the same period, would furnish increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon. A reading cl****, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, and the number of m****cripts along with it; so that before the time of Solon, fifty years afterwards, both readers and m****cripts, though still comparatively few, might have attained a certain recognized authority, and formed a tribunal of reference against the carelessness of individual rhapsodes."(26) But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in possession of the credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of the following observations--