CHAPTER IV--THE TROAD



Methley recovered almost suddenly, and we determined to go through
the Troad together.

My comrade was a capital Grecian. It is true that his singular
mind so ordered and disposed his classic lore as to impress it with
something of an original and barbarous character--with an almost
Gothic quaintness, more properly belonging to a rich native ballad
than to the poetry of Hellas. There was a certain impropriety in
his knowing so much Greek--an unfitness in the idea of marble
fauns, and satyrs, and even Olympian gods, lugged in under the
oaken roof and the painted light of an odd, old Norman hall. But
Methley, abounding in Homer, really loved him (as I believe) in all
truth, without whim or fancy; moreover, he had a good deal of the
practical sagacity


"Of a Yorkshireman hippodamoio,"


and this enabled him to apply his knowledge with much more tact
than is usually shown by people so learned as he.

I, too, loved Homer, but not with a scholar's love. The most
humble and pious among women was yet so proud a mother that she
could teach her firstborn son no Watts' hymns, no collects for the
day; she could teach him in earliest childhood no less than this,