But I must pass on to the scenery of the Odyssey. No doubt this poem contains much more description of landscape than the Iliad, and in that description, as Mr. Ruskin says, there seems to be a preference for the tame and domestic rather than for the wild in Nature. But is there not enough in the subject and circumstance of the two poems to account for such difference? Ulysses, the much-traveled, much-suffering man, who had endured so many things by land and sea, his home-sick heart is yearning for his native Ithaca. That his heart should be weary of the sea and the mountains and all wild untractable things is only too natural. It is quite in keeping with and as a set-off against this feeling of home-weariness that the poet, in describing such a wanderer, should dwell with peculiar emphasis on all that is warm and comfortable and home-like in scenery. Let me give one or two samples from Worsley’s translation of the Odyssey, which I am disposed to think is the best poetic translation of any classical poet that we have in English. Mr. Worsley rendered the hexameters of Homer into the Spenserian stanza, and he so perfectly caught the whole rhythm and cadence of Spenser, and this answers so well to the spirit of the Odyssey, the most romantic of Greek poems, that I know no more delightful reading than those picturesque and melodious stanzas. Here is one sample. Ulysses, having left Calypso’s island on a raft, is shipwrecked in mid-seas, and this is the description of his coming to land on the island of Phæacia:— “Two nights and days in the tumultuous swell He wandered. Often did his heart forebode Utter extinction in the yawning hell, But when the fair-haired Dawn arising glowed, And in the eastern heaven the thin light showed, Came a calm-deepening day, windless and clear. Then when Odysseus on a tall wave rode, And his keen eyes along the heaving mere Stretched in extreme desire, he saw the land rise near. “As when a father, on the point to die, Who for long time in sore disease hath lain, By the strong Fates tormented heavily, Till the pulse faileth for exceeding pain, Feels the life stirring in his bones again; While glad at heart his children smile around, He also smiles—the gods have loosed his chain; So welcome seemed the land with forest crowned, And he rejoicing swam, and yearned to feel the ground. “But now within a voice-throw of the rocks The sound of waters did his ears appall. Full on the coast the great waves’ thunder-shocks Roll, and afar the wet foam-vapors fall. No roadstead there, no haven seemed at all, Nor shelter where a ship might rest at ease; But from the main-earth darted a wild wall Of headlands. Then Odysseus’ heart and knees Were loosened; and his soul thus spake in the deep seas.”