XIII.— On the Depositions of the Remains of Katharine de Valois, Queen of Henry V., in Westminster Abbey

Before I begin to read this paper I must apologise to the Society of Antiquaries for its mode of composition. In the controversies respecting the origin of the Homeric poems, which have raised so much attention of late in connection with Dr. Schliemann's discoveries, there was a theory started amongst scholars that Homer was not the author of the Iliad and Odyssey, but, as the word might imply in the original, “the man who joined or weaved together” the various poems supplied to him by other persons, which, from this stitching or joining process, were called Rhapsodies. This theory has of late years in England—partly under the influence of a celebrated political personage—fallen into discredit. But the present paper is an exact example of the process in question. I am on this occasion but the “Homerus,” the compiler, who has woven together the fragments communicated to him

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