My purpose in making this digression was, as I said, to point out into
what trifles the second childhood of genius is too apt to be betrayed;
such, I mean, as the bag in which the winds are confined,[10] the
tale of Odysseus’s comrades being changed by Circe into swine[11]
(“whimpering porkers” Zoïlus called them), and how Zeus was fed like
a nestling by the doves,[12] and how Odysseus passed ten nights on the
shipwreck without food,[13] and the improbable incidents in the slaying
of the suitors.[14] When Homer nods like this, we must be content to say
that he dreams as Zeus might dream.

[Footnote 9: _Od._ ix. 182.]

[Footnote 10: _Od._ x. 17.]

[Footnote 11: _Od._ x. 237.]

[Footnote 12: _Od._ xii. 62.]

[Footnote 13: _Od._ xii. 447.]

[Footnote 14: _Od._ xxii. _passim_.]

15
Another reason for these remarks on the _Odyssey_ is that I wished to
make you understand that great poets and prose-writers, after they have
lost their power of depicting the passions, turn naturally to the
delineation of character. Such, for instance, is the lifelike and
characteristic picture of the palace of Odysseus, which may be called a
sort of comedy of manners.