translations interspersed. Where the design is unapparent, and the work fragmentary, much of the taste of a commentator is superseded; and where the hoar of extreme antiquity has hallowed the edifice, criticism is awed into silence. Let us come into the company of the herd of poets, and, great and glorious spirits though they be, we shall breathe more freely, and judge less sparingly; but-there again, as sure as we look up, that grand old bust, blind and fillet-bound, is looking on us as we are writing; it is the concentration of human majesty, the type of the age of heroes; surely it has descended, with the poems, to bless our libraries with its venerable presence; and, be the critic's doubts what they may, that brow meditated, that mouth uttered, these ancient songs. Reader, examine as thou wilt-judge as thou canst-convince as thou mayest,-but in thy heart of hearts' never call in question the identity or truth of THE IDEAL HOMER! H CHAPTER IV. Book IX. THE ODYSSEY. He bade me tell it Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field; Of hair-breadth 'scapes i'th' imminent deadly breach; Of being taken by the insolent foe, And sold to slavery: of my redemption thence, And portance in my travels' history; Wherein of antres vast, and deserts wild, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven It was my hint to speak, such was the process; And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads THUS spoke Othello, and thus also Odysseus. We left him Thence sailed we, grieving in our inmost spirit, To each lost friend farewell had thrice been spoken. Very beautiful is the next adventure, and very beautifully has it been enlarged upon by one who might be the greatest poet of the coming age-Alfred Tennyson. We shall make no scruple of quoting largely from his admirable poem, the Lotoseaters; no translation of ours could equal the rich melody of the following stanzas: 'Courage,' he said, and pointed toward the land, In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, A land of streams-some like a downward smoke, They saw the gleaming river's sea-ward flow The charmed sunset lingered low adown In the red West; through mountain clefts the dale A land where all things always seemed the same! Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, To each; but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave In the printed copy," About the valley burned the golden moon;" we much prefer the line in the text, which was in the original MS. Far far away did seem to mourn and rave They sat them down upon the yellow sand Is far beyond the wave: we will no longer roam.' The resolve however is broken, for Odysseus forces them into their ships, and binds them to their benches; ordering those who had not tasted the Lethean fruit to make all way. The burden of the adventures recurs after each with melancholy sound; Thence we sailed further, grieving in our spirits. And this time well they might, for their next sojourn is with a host who does not dine with them, but dines off themeven the well known Cyclops. Here is the description of them and their land: Thence to the region of the haughty Cyclops They range at pleasure. There no folds nor shepherds Good is the island, and each fruit would render Then they refresh themselves, and in the morning obliging nymphs bring goats to them that they might eat. They look over into the land of the Cyclops, and see their dwellings smoking, and hear their voices and the bleating of their flocks. The next night past, Odysseus is stung by the traveller's gadfly, curiosity. He must go with his ship and his companions, leaving the rest in the island, and see these Cyclops. They set off—a black Monday for some of them! The first thing that greets their sight in the new land is a cave, high, and embowered with laurel: surrounded by sheep and goats lying about. All this was very pretty; but there lay also a man sleeping there, and what a man! if that could be called so, which was not like (says Odysseus) common men who eat bread and butter, but more resembled a shaggy top of some hill seen above others from afar. the Doubtless Odysseus had heard and sung many a song on power of wine. • Punch cures the gout, the colic, and the phthysick,' is not a modern strain alone. Bethinking himself of this and |