Early in 1888 the leading members of the Shrewsbury Archaeological Society asked Butler to write a memoir of his grandfather and of his father for their Quarterly Journal. This he undertook to do when he should have finished Ex Voto. In December, 1888, his sisters, with the idea of helping him to write the memoir, gave him his grandfather's correspondence, which extended from 1790 to 1839. On looking over these very voluminous papers he became penetrated with an almost Chinese reverence for his ancestor and, after getting the Archaeological Society to absolve him from his promise to write the memoir, set about a full life of Dr. Butler, which was not published till 1896. The delay was caused partly by the immense quantity of documents he had to sift and digest, the number of people he had to consult and the many letters he had to write, and partly by something that arose out of Narcissus, which we published in June, 1888. Butler was not satisfied with having written only half of this work; he wanted it to have a successor, so that by adding his two halves together, he could say he had written a whole Handelian oratorio. While staying with his sisters at Shrewsbury with this idea in his mind, he casually took up a book by Alfred Ainger about Charles Lamb and therein stumbled upon something about the Odyssey. It was years since he had looked at the poem, but, from what he remembered, he thought it might provide a suitable subject for musical treatment. He did not, however, want to put Dr. Butler aside, so I undertook to investigate. It is stated on the title-page of both Narcissus and Ulysses that the words were written and the music composed by both of us. As to the music, each piece bears the initials of the one who actually composed it. As to the words, it was necessary first to settle some general scheme and this, in the case of Narcissus, grew in the course of conversation. The scheme of Ulysses was constructed in a more formal way and Butler had perhaps rather less to do with it. We were bound by the Odyssey, which is, of course, too long to be treated fully, and I selected incidents that attracted me and settled the order of the songs and choruses. For this purpose, as I out-Shakespeare Shakespeare in the smallness of my Greek, I used The Adventures of Ulysses by Charles Lamb, which we should have known nothing about but for Ainger's book. Butler acquiesced in my proposals, but, when it came to the words themselves, he wrote practically all the libretto, as he had done in the case of Narcissus; I did no more than suggest a few phrases and a few lines here and there.