This difficulty, inherent in navigation as a subject for the Epic Muse,
has, I think, been very shrewdly detected and hit off in a parody of Mr
Noyes' poem by a young friend of mine, Mr Wilfred Blair:--

Meanwhile the wind had changed, and Francis Drake
Put down the helm and drove against the seas--
Once more the wind changed, and the simple seaman,
Full fraught with weather wisdom, once again
Put down the helm and so drove on--_et cetera_.

Now Homer actually has performed this feat which we declare to be next to
impossible. He actually does convey Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca, by a
ten years' voyage too; he actually has narrated that voyage to us in
plain straightforward words; and, what is more, he actually has made a
superb epic of it. Yes, but when you come to dissect the Odyssey, what
amazing artifice is found under that apparently straightforward
tale!--eight years of the ten sliced out, to start with, and
magnificently presented to Circe

Where that Aeaean isle forgets the main

--and (one may add), so forgetting, avoids the technical difficulties
connected therewith.

Note the space given to Telemachus and his active search for the lost
hero: note too how the mass of Odysseus' seafaring adventures is
condensed into a reported speech--a traveller's tale at the court of
Alcinoüs. Virgil borrowed this trick, you remember; and I dare to swear
that had it fallen to Homer to attempt the impossible saga of Nelson's
pursuit after Villeneuve he would have achieved it triumphantly--by means