for Mr. Morris’s tendency to emphasise the etymological meaning of words, a point commented on with somewhat flippant severity in a recent number of Macmillan’s Magazine, here Mr. Morris seems to us to be in complete accord, not merely with the spirit of Homer, but with the spirit of all early poetry.  It is quite true that language is apt to degenerate into a system of almost algebraic symbols, and the modern city-man who takes a ticket for Blackfriars Bridge, naturally never thinks of the Dominican monks who once had their monastery by Thames-side, and after whom the spot is named.  But in earlier times it was not so.  Men were then keenly conscious of the real meaning of words, and early poetry, especially, is full of this feeling, and, indeed, may be said to owe to it no small portion of its poetic power and charm.  These old words, then, and this old use of words which we find in Mr. Morris’s Odyssey can be amply justified upon historical grounds, and as for their artistic effect, it is quite excellent.  Pope tried to put Homer into the ordinary language of his day, with what result we know only too well; but Mr. Morris, who uses his archaisms with the tact of a true artist, and to whom indeed they seem to come absolutely naturally, has succeeded in giving to his version by their aid that touch, not of ‘quaintness,’ for Homer is never quaint, but of old-world romance and old-world beauty, which we moderns find so pleasurable, and to which the Greeks themselves were so keenly sensitive.

As for individual passages of special merit, Mr. Morris’s translation is no robe of rags sewn with purple patches for critics to sample.  Its real value lies in the absolute rightness and coherence of the whole, in the grand architecture of the swift, strong verse, and in the fact that the standard is not merely high but everywhere sustained.  It is impossible, however, to resist the temptation of quoting Mr. Morris’s rendering of that famous passage in the twenty-third book of the epic, in which Odysseus eludes the trap laid for him by Penelope, whose very faith in the certainty of her husband’s return makes her sceptical of his identity when he stands before her; an instance, by the way, of Homer’s wonderful psychological knowledge of human nature, as it is always the dreamer himself who is most surprised when his dream comes true.

Thus she spake to prove her husband; but Odysseus, grieved at heart, Spake thus unto his bed-mate well-skilled in gainful art:  ’O woman, thou sayest a word exceeding grievous to me!  Who hath otherwhere shifted my bedstead? full hard for him should it be, For as deft as he were, unless soothly a very God come here, Who easily, if he willed it, might shift it otherwhere.  But no mortal man is living, how strong soe’er in his youth, Who shall lightly hale it elsewhere, since a mighty wonder forsooth Is wrought in that fashioned bedstead, and I wrought it, and I alone.  In the close grew a thicket of olive, a long-leaved