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The Delphic oracle had announced, that whichever side first lost a man should be victorious. Protesilaus, a Thessalian chief, "revolved the oracle upon the silent sea," leaped on shore first, and was slain by Hector. Afterwards his mourning widow, Laodamia, was allowed to have a three hours' interview with his ghost, when, from excess of grief, she died broken-hearted. The gods, in condemnation of this vehemence of human passion, did not allow her ghost to wander in the happy shades with her husband; and she is placed by Virgil among the gloomy crowd of infelicitous lovers. A clump of trees, so said the legend, grew up from the spot were Protesilaus fell; and it was beautifully believed, that as soon as the leafy shoots got high enough to look upon the site of Troy, they withered down, and grew again, and withered down again; and so would do for ever.

"Upon the side

Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained)
A knot of spiry trees for ages grew

From out the tomb of him for whom she died;
And ever, when such stature they had gained,
That Ilium's walls were subject to their view,
The trees' tall summits withered at the sight,
In constant interchange of growth and blight."

Alas! there is no clump of sufficient character and distinctness, whose branches fancy could burden with that wise legend.

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Our day at Mycenæ, and the Palamede at Napoli, and the dells of Ionia, and the coasting of the Troad, are passages of our wanderings which have filled us full of Homeric recollections. I sat looking on the Troad, with the Excursion in my hand. It was not chance alone which had made me open it there. There are no two great works of ancient and modern literature which will so well bear a comparison as the Odyssey and Excursion. There are of course obvious distinctions between all old and new literature which tell here; but we may come nearer to a comparison in the case of those two poems than in any other instance. In pathetic power and sustained dignity, the Excursion is superior to the Odyssey; in technical execution and craft inferior to it, probably as being only a splendid portion of a poem; for although the Excursion may not look forward to any conclusion, there are many places in which it looks backward, and presupposes principles taught elsewhere. It is not indeed that Wordsworth is Homeric, but that Homer is in the Odyssey (if the anachronism is allowable) Wordsworthian. Neither, again, is the amiable old Wanderer an entire parallel to the crafty Ulysses, although in several points they are not unlike. Both are, as it were, the centres round which the poems revolve, or rather the oracles inside the sounding temples, sitting on their tripods and sending their wise words forth, written on the fairest green leaves, which shall not wither because of their

immortal inscriptions. Both are, not heroes, nor gorgeous motes in the sunbeams of pagan or Christian chivalry, but types and symbols of sage discretion and moral prudence, deep, tranquil, provident, concerned with little things and common-place occurrences, the philosophy of common life. But the Wanderer's is a simplehearted wisdom, liberal, holy, sympathetic, and childlike; while that of Ulysses is mostly hard-featured wariness, or even cold craft, running into selfishness, the serpent without the dove. Christianity makes that difference between the two. Again, cities and the manners of men are the branches of experience on which the wisdom of both the sages is manifold and eminent. But in the Wanderer's case, there is superadded an intelligent fear and love of natural objects; and this again is part of the wise romance infused into literature by the Gospel. And, finally, the different ways in which Ulysses and the Wanderer came by their experience are very striking. That of Ulysses has been acquired by rough event and rude contact, as a pagan's must have been; the Wanderer's, on the contrary, has been gleaned from quiet, unchecked sympathy and inward vicissitude, as a Christian's mostly is, if he is a thoughtful man :

"The common growth of mother earth

Suffices him, her tears and mirth,

Her humblest mirth and tears."

The "potent wand of sorrow" and the "tender sprite repentance" are uppermost in the Wanderer's wisdom. The heathen sage knew dread, but not sorrow, save as a weakness; remorse, but not repentance, save as a fruitless moral cowardice. His wisdom could scarcely be, as the Christian's is,

"The harvest of a quiet eye,

That broods and sleeps on its own heart."

Making these distinctions, then, which are rather distinctions between the moral feelings of heathenism and the Gospel than between the Odyssey and Excursion, there still remains a singular and interesting resemblance between these two great works. The unusual position and prominence which discreet prudence has in both poems, the gentleness and almost pensiveness of tone, the simple, domestic narrative, the way in which everything is kept subordinate to the utterance of moral wisdom, the tales and incidents, most trifling to thoughtless men, by which the wisdom is conveyed, the elegant naiveté of the descriptions of manners,-all these are striking points of resemblance. There is one point of contrast, too, which is no less striking. If the Homeric poems, or even the basis of them, were the work of one intellect, it is evident that the author was an older man when he wrote the Odyssey than when he wrote the Iliad. There is a melancholy and almost hallowed disappointment thrown over the thoughts

of the Odyssey, like the evening coloring which surrounds an old man's meditations'. Look, for instance, at the book of the Excursion entitled Despondency Corrected, where the Wanderer shows how a sense of spiritual destitution has always been exorcised from man's life, even by every false faith which the world has ever seen: and then compare with it the almost bitter gloom of the Necyomanteia in the Odyssey, and the bewildering veil which hung over death and the things of death before the old heathen poet's eyes, and through which there came no illumination from the sanctuary behind. The whole of the Excursion lies in a deep, tranquil light. But the poet has managed, from his own serene, capacious, and profoundly meek faith, to throw the strongest sunset glory upon the Cross erected in the

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Cuique suum; this view of the Necyomanteia is taken from one of Professor Keble's lectures at Oxford. Another writer, whose Christian interpretation of anything in paganism would have great weight, says, "What reader has not been struck with wonder at Homer's description of the place of the dead; so expressive of demerit, and the expectation of righteous judgment in man, yet not without a secret hope in God? That first and greatest of poets describes the souls of the dead as wrapt in mysterious gloom, and powerless, and silent, until they have partaken of the blood of the sacrifice. Such is the voice of nature, if it be not something greater than nature; or the glimmering light of primeval tradition, that spoke of the Great Sacrifice in the midst of that spiritual darkness, to them who wandered beneath the shadow of death."--Williams on the Lord's Passion.

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