at the pains to measure a good big ship.

I will add no more however on this head. The leading
characteristics of the Iliad, as we saw, were love, war, and
plunder. The leading idea of the Odyssey is the infatuation of man,
and the key-note is struck in the opening paragraph, where we are
told how the sailors of Ulysses must needs, in spite of every
warning, kill and eat the cattle of the sun-god, and perished
accordingly.

A few lines lower down the same note is struck with even greater
emphasis. The gods have met in council, and Jove happens at the
moment to be thinking of AEgisthus, who had met his death at the
hand of Agamemnon's son Orestes, in spite of the solemn warning that
Jove had sent him through the mouth of Mercury. It does not seem
necessary for Jove to turn his attention to Clytemnestra, the
partner of AEgisthus's guilt. Of this lady we are presently told
that she was naturally of an excellent disposition, and would never
have gone wrong but for the loss of the protector in whose charge
Agamemnon had left her. When she was left alone without an adviser--
well, if a base designing man took to flattering and misleading
her--what else could be expected? The infatuation of man, with its
corollary, the superior excellence of woman, is the leading theme;
next to this come art, religion, and, I am almost ashamed to add,
money. There is no love-business in the Odyssey except the return
of a bald elderly married man to his elderly wife and grown-up son
after an absence of twenty years, and furious at having been robbed
of so much money in the meantime. But this can hardly be called
love-business; it is at the utmost domesticity. There is a charming
young princess, Nausicaa, but though she affects a passing