tree full-grown, That flourished and grew goodly as big as a pillar about, So round it I built my bride-room, till I did the work right out With ashlar stone close-fitting; and I roofed it overhead, And thereto joined doors I made me, well-fitting in their stead.  Then I lopped away the boughs of the long-leafed olive-tree, And shearing the bole from the root up full well and cunningly, I planed it about with the brass, and set the rule thereto, And shaping thereof a bed-post, with the wimble I bored it through.  So beginning, I wrought out the bedstead, and finished it utterly, And with gold enwrought it about, and with silver and ivory, And stretched on it a thong of oxhide with the purple dye made bright.  Thus then the sign I have shown thee; nor, woman, know I aright If my bed yet bideth steadfast, or if to another place Some man hath moved it, and smitten the olive-bole from its base.’

These last twelve books of the Odyssey have not the same marvel of romance, adventure and colour that we find in the earlier part of the epic.  There is nothing in them that we can compare to the exquisite idyll of Nausicaa or to the Titanic humour of the episode in the Cyclops’ cave.  Penelope has not the glamour of Circe, and the song of the Sirens may sound sweeter than the whizz of the arrows of Odysseus as he stands on the threshold of his hall.  Yet, for sheer intensity of passionate power, for concentration of intellectual interest and for masterly dramatic construction, these latter books are quite unequalled.  Indeed, they show very clearly how it was that, as Greek art developed, the epos passed into the drama.  The whole scheme of the argument, the return of the hero in disguise, his disclosure of himself to his son, his terrible vengeance on his enemies and his final recognition by his wife, reminds us of the plot of more than one Greek play, and shows us what the great Athenian poet meant when he said that his own dramas were merely scraps from Homer’s table.  In rendering this splendid poem into English verse, Mr. Morris has done our literature a service that can hardly be over-estimated, and it is pleasant to think that, even should the classics be entirely excluded from our educational systems, the English boy will still be able to know something of Homer’s delightful tales, to catch an echo of his grand music and to wander with the wise Odysseus round ‘the shores of old romance.’

The Odyssey of Homer.  Done into English Verse by William Morris, Author of The Earthly Paradise.  Volume II. (Reeves and Turner.)

SIR CHARLES BOWEN’S VIRGIL

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 30, 1887.)