The two more certain works, on the other hand, belong only to those outskirts of our subject which have been so often characterised. The _Questions_[75] busy themselves almost wholly with the text and the meaning, though it is fair to say that Porphyry is much above the usual scholiast in sense and judgment, and sometimes approaches criticism proper. This approach, however, is generally, if not always, displayed in the same direction as that of Aristotle’s extant _Homeric Problems_ (_v. supra_, p. 49 _sq._) and of many of the remarks made by the Master in the twenty-fifth chapter of the _Poetics_—the direction, namely, of solving material _aporiæ_, such as Aristotle’s own comment on ζωρότερον κέραιε, and Porphyry’s[76] on the demurrer why Penelope did not send Telemachus for aid to her own parents? The process, in short, illustrates frequently, if not always, that curious _swerving_ from the purely literary question which we so often notice. Almost any magnet is strong enough to draw the commentator away from that question. He will even ask, and gravely answer, the question, Why men, but not gods, are represented as washing their hands before dinner? Footnote 75: Ed. Schrader, 2 vols., Leipsic, 1890. Footnote 76: For this and the subsequent oddity see Schrader (_op. cit._, _Ad Odysseam_), pp. 40-43. The subject is dealt with, from another point of view, in a monograph by M. Carroll, _Aristotle’s Poetics in the Light of the Homeric Scholia_, Baltimore, 1895. The _De Antro Nympharum_,[77] on the other hand, is the principal example, in intermediate times, of that allegorical interpretation or misinterpretation which, unless kept severely in order, is sure to usurp the place of the criticism to which it can at best be ancillary. From no other members of the school, so far as I know, have we anything that comes even as near to criticism as this. Footnote 77: My copy of this is the separate edition of Van Goens (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1765). It can hardly be necessary to say that the subject is the famous and beautiful opening of _Od._ xiii. As for the treatment—the cave, the double entrance, the nymphs, the vases, the bees, are all allegorised to the _n_^{th}, pressed to death, broken on the wheel, sublimated to a non-essence in the Neo-Platonic laboratory.