~_Why Ææa cannot lie North-westward._~ It is quite plain, from the accounts given of the route both ways, that the Ocean-mouth is meant by Homer to be near the island of Ææa; that is, within a day’s sail[620] of that island. How is this reconcilable with the doctrine, which places the island in the far north-west? In the north-east we have an Ocean-mouth, the situation of which the Poet, guided up to a certain point by his inner-world knowledge, has not very inaccurately conceived. In the north-west there is no Ocean-mouth. The Straits of Gibraltar, though they lie rather to the south of west from Ithaca, must be carried far into the north for the purpose; in what form, or with what accompaniments, it is hard to conceive. To attempt such a transposition would involve the complete abandonment of all actual geography, and would after all leave us involved in hopeless confusion in the effort to construct any tolerable scheme from the text of Homer. [620] Od. xi. 11. ~_Construction of_ Od. xii. 3, 4.~ At the mere transportation, indeed, we need not scruple overmuch, if we could justify the proceeding by other clear indications of Homer’s intention. But there is no such justification. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the violence done to the text of Od. xii. 3, 4, by the interpretation which Nitzsch (following, as I admit, Eustathius), puts upon it. The ship, leaving the stream of Ocean, reaches the sea and the island[621]: [621] Od. xii. 3. νῆσόν τ’ Αἰαίην, ὅθι τ’ Ἠοῦς ἠριγενείης οἰκία καὶ χοροί εἰσι, καὶ ἀντολαὶ Ἠελίοιο. The ἀντολαὶ, the rising, or rising-point of the sun, does not, he says, mean the east, but only the first appearance of the sun on their return from darkness, which is a kind of dawning on them. And the dwelling of the early-born Dawn, and the place (such appears to be the meaning of χόροι) of the Dances of her kindred or attendant Nymphs--who in later mythology became the virgin train of Hours, that now delight us in the frescoes of Guido and Guercino--not only do not mean anything eastern, but apparently in this place are conceived to have no meaning whatever, and to be an idle, indeed a most inconvenient and bewildering, pleonasm. And thus the magic poetry of this passage and all the curious traditions it involves, are destroyed, in order to make room--for what? For the hypothesis that Homer places the dwelling of Morning and the chamber of the rising Sun far to the westward of the country that he himself inhabited[622]! [622] In the well known case of a noble description in the Antiquary, Walter Scott has made the sun set on the east coast of Great Britain: but _this_ was unawares and not on purpose. Had he recited instead of writing, the error could not have escaped correction.