Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray'd,
Their manners noted, and their states survey'd.
On stormy seas unnumber'd toils he bore,
Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore :
Vain toils! their impious folly dar'd to prey
On herds devoted to the god of day;
The god vindictive doom'd them never more
(Ah, men unbless'd!) to touch that natal shore.
Oh, snatch some portion of these acts from fate,
Celestial Muse! and to our world relate.

Now at their native realms the Greeks arrived;
All who the wars of ten long years survived,
And 'scaped the perils of the gulfy main.
Ulysses, sole of all the victor train,
An exile from his dear paternal coast,
Deplor'd his absent queen and empire lost.
Calypso in her caves constrain'd his stay,
With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay:
In vain-for now the circling years disclose
The day predestined to reward his woes.
At length his Ithaca is given by fate,
Where yet new labours his arrival wait;

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or speaking, swimming or fighting, naked or in rags, in robes or in armour -he is ever before our eyes in some shape or other-the central heart from which life-blood flows into every the minutest vein and vesicle of the entire poem."-Coleridge, p. 254.

"That the Odyssey is not of the same age, or by the same hand or hands, as the Iliad, is one of the positions of the German theory which, though at variance with the prevalent belief of ancient and modern times, has been countenanced by many great scholars as probable, if not absolutely demonstrated. This opinion is founded on the striking discrepancy as to the wife of Vulcan, who in the Iliad is Charis, and in the Odyssey is Venus; on the appearance of Mercury as the constant messenger of Olympus, to the exclusion of Iris, who almost constantly acts that part in the Iliad; on the change in the forms of many words; on the decreased simplicity of the manners, and on the altered aspect of the mythology. These later points of difference have been already very strongly laid before the reader in the extract from Vico, and some of them will be more particularly mentioned in the course of this Introduction: and though it would not become me to pronounce a peremptory decision on this question, I cannot help owning that I never read a book of the Odyssey without being more and more convinced that a considerable number of years must have intervened between the composition of the two poems. It should be remarked, too, that, in every instance of difference, the statement in the Odyssey is invariably that which agrees with the finally prevailing habits and ereed of succeeding ages."-Ibid. p. 231, seq.

At length their rage the hostile powers restrain,
All but the ruthless monarch of the main.

But now the god, remote, a heavenly guest,
In Ethiopia graced the genial feast
(A race divided, whom with sloping rays
The rising and descending sun surveys);
There on the world's extremest verge revered
With hecatombs and prayer in pomp preferr'd,
Distant he lay while in the bright abodes
Of high Olympus, Jove convened the gods:
Th' assembly thus the sire supreme address'd,
Egysthus' fate revolving in his breast,
Whom young Orestes to the dreary coast
Of Pluto sent, a blood-polluted ghost.

"Perverse mankind! whose wills, created free,
Charge all their woes on absolute decree;
All to the dooming gods their guilt translate,
And follies are miscall'd the crimes of fate.
When to his lust Egysthus gave the rein,
Did fate, or we, th' adulterous act constrain?
Did fate, or we, when great Atrides died,
Urge the bold traitor to the regicide?
Hermes I sent, while yet his soul remain'd
Sincere from royal blood, and faith profaned;
To warn the wretch, that young Orestes, grown
To manly years, should re-assert the throne.
Yet, impotent of mind, and uncontroll❜d,
He plunged into the gulf which Heaven foretold.”
Here paused the god; and pensive thus replies
Minerva, graceful with her azure eyes:
"O thou! from whom the whole creation springs,
The source of power on earth derived to kings!
His death was equal to the direful deed;
So may the man of blood be doom'd to bleed!
But grief and rage alternate wound my breast
For brave Ulysses, still by fate oppress'd.
Amidst an isle, around whose rocky shore
The forests murmur, and the surges roar,
The blameless hero from his wish'd-for home
A goddess guards in her enchanted dome:
(Atlas her sire, to whose far-piercing eye
The wonders of the deep expanded lie;
Th' eternal columns which on earth he rears
End in the starry vault, and prop the spheres).

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By his fair daughter is the chief confined,
Who soothes to dear delight his anxious mind:
Successless all her soft caresses prove,

To banish from his breast his country's love;
To see the smoke from his loved palace rise,
While the dear isle in distant prospect lies,
With what contentment could he close his eyes!
And will Omnipotence neglect to save
The suffering virtue of the wise and brave?
Must he, whose altars on the Phrygian shore
With frequent rites, and pure, avow'd thy power,
Be doom'd the worst of human ills to prove,
Unbless'd, abandon'd to the wrath of Jove ? "

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“Daughter! what words have pass'd thy lips unweigh'd! (Replied the Thunderer to the martial maid :) Deem not unjustly by my doom oppress'd, Of human race the wisest and the best. Neptune, by prayer repentant rarely won, Afflicts the chief, t' avenge his giant son, Whose visual orb Ulysses robb'd of light; Great Polypheme, of more than mortal might! Him young Thoösa bore (the bright increase Of Phorcys, dreaded in the sounds and seas): Whom Neptune eyed with bloom of beauty bless'd, And in his cave the yielding nymph compress'd. For this, the god constrains the Greek to roam, A hopeless exile from his native home, From death alone exempt-but cease to mourn; Let all combine t' achieve his wish'd return: Neptune atoned, his wrath shall now refrain, Or thwart the synod of the gods in vain.

"Father and king adored!" Minerva cried,
"Since all who in the Olympian bower reside
Now make the wandering Greek their public care,
Let Hermes to th' Atlantic isle3 repair;
Bid him, arrived in bright Calypso's court,
The sanction of the assembled powers report:
That wise Ulysses to his native land

Must speed, obedient to their high command.
Meantime Telemachus, the blooming heir
Of sea-girt Ithaca, demands my care:

3 Ogygia.

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"Tis mine to form his green, unpractised years
In sage debates; surrounded with his peers,
To save the state, and timely to restrain
The bold intrusion of the suitor-train;

Who crowd his palace, and with lawless power
His herds and flocks in feastful rites devour.

COUNCIL OF JUPITER, MINERVA, AND MERCURY.

To distant Sparta, and the spacious waste
Of sandy Pyle, the royal youth shall haste.
There, warm with filial love, the cause inquire
That from his realm retards his god-like sire:
Delivering early to the voice of fame
The promise of a great, immortal name."

She said: the sandals of celestial mould,4
Fledged with ambrosial plumes, and rich with gold,
Surround her feet: with these sublime she sails
Th' aërial space, and mounts the winged gales :
O'er earth and ocean wide prepared to soar,
Her dreaded arm a beamy javelin bore,
Ponderous and vast: which, when her fury burns,
Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns.
From high Olympus prone her flight she bends,
And in the realms of Ithaca descends.

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4 Iris is, in the Odyssey, invested with the same symbols of office as Mercury in the Iliad.

Her lineaments divine, the grave disguise
Of Mentes' form conceal'd from human eyes
(Mentes, the monarch of the Taphian land):
A glittering spear waved awful in her hand.

THE DESCENT OF MINERVA TO ITHACA.

There in the portal placed, the heaven-born maid
Enormous riot and misrule survey'd.

On hides of beeves, before the palace gate
(Sad spoils of luxury), the suitors sate.
With rival art, and ardour in their mien,
At chess they vie, to captivate the queen;
Divining of their loves. Attending nigh,
A menial train the flowing bowl supply:
Others, apart, the spacious hall prepare,
And form the costly feast with busy care.
There young Telemachus, his bloomy face 5
Glowing celestial sweet, with godlike grace

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5 Young Telemachus. "Telemachus is very skilfully drawn, so as to be always subordinate to his father, and yet sufficiently full of promise and opening prowess to justify his heroic blood, and to give him a becoming eminence amongst the other characters of the poem: and when this is carried so far as to represent him a mere youth, on the point of bending a bow, which the suitors were unable to achieve, the real improbability is lost in a sense of poetical propriety, whilst, at the same time, his instantaneous submission to his father's nod replaces him in that relation of filial inferiority and obedience