translation even, though better than almost all its predecessors in the same field, is not worthy of taking rank beside Mr. Morris’s, for here we have a true work of art, a rendering not merely of language into language, but of poetry into poetry, and though the new spirit added in the transfusion may seem to many rather Norse than Greek, and, perhaps at times, more boisterous than beautiful, there is yet a vigour of life in every line, a splendid ardour through each canto, that stirs the blood while one reads like the sound of a trumpet, and that, producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight, exults the senses no less than it exalts the soul.  It may be admitted at once that, here and there, Mr. Morris has missed something of the marvellous dignity of the Homeric verse, and that, in his desire for rushing and ringing metre, he has occasionally sacrificed majesty to movement, and made stateliness give place to speed; but it is really only in such blank verse as Milton’s that this effect of calm and lofty music can be attained, and in all other respects blank verse is the most inadequate medium for reproducing the full flow and fervour of the Greek hexameter.  One merit, at any rate, Mr. Morris’s version entirely and absolutely possesses.  It is, in no sense of the word, literary; it seems to deal immediately with life itself, and to take from the reality of things its own form and colour; it is always direct and simple, and at its best has something of the ‘large utterance of the early gods.’

As for individual passages of beauty, nothing could be better than the wonderful description of the house of the Phoeacian king, or the whole telling of the lovely legend of Circe, or the manner in which the pageant of the pale phantoms in Hades is brought before our eyes.  Perhaps the huge epic humour of the escape from the Cyclops is hardly realised, but there is always a linguistic difficulty about rendering this fascinating story into English, and where we are given so much poetry we should not complain about losing a pun; and the exquisite idyll of the meeting and parting with the daughter of Alcinous is really delightfully told.  How good, for instance, is this passage taken at random from the Sixth Book: 

   But therewith unto the handmaids goodly Odysseus spake: 
   ’Stand off I bid you, damsels, while the work in hand I take,
   And wash the brine from my shoulders, and sleek them all around. 
   Since verily now this long while sweet oil they have not found. 
   But before you nought will I wash me, for shame I have indeed,
   Amidst of fair-tressed damsels to be all bare of weed.’ 
   So he spake and aloof they gat them, and thereof they told the may,
   But Odysseus with the river from his body washed away
   The brine from his back and his shoulders wrought broad and mightily,
   And from his head was he wiping the foam of the untilled sea;
   But when he had throughly washed