Without the court, and to the gates adjoined, A spacious garden lay, fenced all around Secure, four acres measuring complete. There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree, Pomegranate, pear, the apple blushing bright, The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth. Those fruits nor winter’s cold nor summer’s heat Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang Perennial, whose unceasing zephyr breathes Gently on all, enlarging these, and those Maturing genial; in an endless course Pears after pears to full dimensions swell, Figs follow figs, grapes clustering grow again Where clusters grew, and (every apple stripped) The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before. There too, well-rooted, and of fruit profuse, His vineyard grows; part, wide-extended, basks In the sun’s beams; the arid level glows; In part they gather, and in part they tread The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes Here put their blossom forth, there gather fast Their blackness. On the garden’s verge extreme Flowers of all hues smile all the year, arranged With neatest art judicious, and amid The lovely scene two fountains welling forth, One visits, into every part diffused, The garden ground, the other soft beneath The threshold steals into the palace court, Whence every citizen his vase supplies. Such were the ample blessings on the house Of King Alcinoüs by the gods bestowed.”—COWPER. =Minor Poems of Homer.=—The Iliad and the Odyssey are the only authentic productions of Homer. To their author, however, have been attributed about thirty hymns and several minor poems, which have little claim to so distinguished an origin. Of these, “the Margites,” a satire on a blockhead who knew much “but everything knew ill,” was probably the work of some clever Athenian in an age when epic poetry was a thing of the past; the poem is no longer extant. “The Battle of the Frogs and Mice,” a mock heroic of comparatively modern birth, is still preserved and appreciated. It is a witty burlesque on the Iliad (perhaps the earliest burlesque extant), written in a bold and flowing style. The plot is brief. A mouse, Crumb-snatcher, son of the Mice-king, flying from an enemy, reaches a pool over which a courteous frog, Puff-cheek, undertakes to carry him. But during the passage a water-snake appears; the frightened frog dives to escape his foe, and thoughtlessly leaves his newly-made friend to drown. The mice gather to avenge the loss of their prince; a great battle ensues, and but for the interference of Jupiter the frogs would have been annihilated.