As rules of the kind above propounded can only be fully understood when applied, the application of them has accordingly been attempted, in the work to which these pages form an Introduction. In this view, it may be regarded as their necessary sequel. I commit it to the press with no inconsiderable apprehension, and with due deference to the judgments of the learned: for I do not feel myself to have possessed either the fresh recollection and ready command of the treasures of ancient Greece, or the extended and systematic knowledge of the modern Homeric literature, which are among the essential requisites of qualification to deal in a satisfactory manner with the subject. I should further say, that the poems of Homer, to be rightly and thoroughly sounded, demand undoubtedly a disengaged mind, perhaps would repay even the study of a life. One plea only I can advance with confidence. The work, whatever else it be, is one which has been founded in good faith on the text of Homer. Whether in statement or in speculation, I have desired and endeavoured that it should lead me by the hand: and even my anticipations of what we might in any case expect it to contain have been formed by a reflex process from the suggestions it had itself supplied: Oh degli altri poeti onore e lume! Vagliami il lungo studio, e il grande amore Che m’ ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume; Tu sei lo mio maestro, e il mio autore[121]. * * * * * Finally, though sharing the dissatisfaction of others at the established preference given among us to the Latin names of deities originally Greek, and at some part of our orthography for Greek names, I have thought it best to adhere in general to the common custom, and only to deviate from it where a special object was in view. I fear that diversity, and even confusion, are more likely to arise than any benefit, from efforts at reform, made by individuals, and without the advantage either of authority or of a clear principle, as a groundwork for general consent. I am here disposed to say, ‘οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιρανίη;’ and again with Wordsworth, ‘Me this unchartered freedom tires.’ Yet I should gladly see the day when, under the authority of Scholars, and especially of those who bear rule in places of education, improvement might be effected, not only in the points above mentioned, but in our solitary and barbarous method of pronouncing both the Greek and the Latin language. In this one respect the European world may still with justice describe the English at least as the _penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos_. FOOTNOTES: [93] Mure, ii. 282. [94] Mure, ii. 286. [95] Od. viii. 499. [96] Exc. i. ad Æn. ii. [97] Hist. of Greece, chap. i. sect. iv. p. 62. 4to. [98] Ibid. sect. iii. p. 47. [99] History of Greece, vol. i. p. 146; chap. vi. Introd. [100] Minos, 12, in Plato’s Works. [101] Preface, p. xi. [102] Ibid. p. xii. [103] Vol. i. p. 2.