We can also trace, in _remaniements_ of the _Chanson DE ROLAND_, comparatively rapid and quite revolutionary variations from the oldest--the Oxford--manuscript. Rhyme is substituted for assonance; the process entails frequent modernisations, and yet the basis of thirteenth-century texts continues to be the version of the eleventh century. It may be worth the while of scholars to consider these parallels carefully, as regards the language and prosody of the Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_, and to ask themselves whether the processes of alteration in the course of transmission, which we know to have occurred in the history of the Old French, may not also have affected the _ILIAD_, though why the effect is mainly confined to four Books remains a puzzle. It is enough for us to have shown that if Odyssean varies from Iliadic language, in all other respects the two poems bear the marks of the same age. Meanwhile, a Homeric scholar so eminent as Mr. T. W. Allen, says that "the linguistic attack upon their age" (that of the Homeric poems) "may be said to have at last definitely failed, and archaeology has erected an apparently indestructible buttress for their defence." [Footnote: _Classical Review, May_ 1906, p. 194.]
Of all Books in the [blank space] Book X., called the _Doloneia_, is most generally scouted and rejected. The Book, in fact, could be omitted, and only a minutely analytic reader would perceive the lacuna. He would remark that in Iliad, IX. 65-84, certain military preparations are made which, if we suppress Book X., lead up to nothing, and that in _Iliad_, XIV. 9-11, we find Nestor with the shield of his son, Thrasymedes, while Thrasymedes has his father's shield, a fact not explained, though the poet certainly meant something by it. The explanation in both cases is found in Book X., which may also be thought to explain why the Achaeans, so disconsolate in Book IX., and why Agamemnon, so demoralised, so gaily assume the offensive in Book XI. Some ancient critics, Scholiast T and Eustathius, attributed the _DOLONEIA_ to Homer, but supposed it to have been a separate composition of his added to the _Iliad_ by Pisistratus. This merely proves that they did not find any necessity for the existence of the _DOLONEIA_. Mr. Allen, who thinks that "it always held its present place," says, "the _DOLONEIA_ is persistently written down." [Footnote: _Classical Review_, May 1906, p. 194]