me till I developed the negative. In an appendix I have also
reprinted the paragraphs explanatory of the plan of Ulysses'
house, together with the plan itself. The reader is recommended
to study this plan with some attention.

In the preface to my translation of the "Iliad" I have given my
views as to the main principles by which a translator should be
guided, and need not repeat them here, beyond pointing out that
the initial liberty of translating poetry into prose involves
the continual taking of more or less liberty throughout the
translation; for much that is right in poetry is wrong in prose,
and the exigencies of readable prose are the first things to be
considered in a prose translation. That the reader, however, may
see how far I have departed from strict construe, I will print
here Messrs. Butcher and Lang's translation of the sixty lines
or so of the "Odyssey." Their translation runs:

Tell me, Muse, of that man, so ready at need, who wandered
far and wide, after he had sacked the sacred citadel of
Troy, and many were the men whose towns he saw and whose
mind he learnt, yea, and many the woes he suffered in his
heart on the deep, striving to win his own life and the
return of his company. Nay, but even so he saved not his
company, though he desired it sore. For through the
blindness of their own hearts they perished, fools, who
devoured the oxen of Helios Hyperion: but the god took from
them their day of returning. Of these things, goddess,
daughter of Zeus, whencesoever thou hast heard thereof,
declare thou even unto us.