many a reader who never knew that the strain had held all Greece enchanted two thousand years ago. It has been scarcely possible to add anything to the quiet beauty of the original Greek, but the English poet has at least shown exquisite skill in the setting of the jewel. But Homer has always been held as common property by later poets. Milton's classical taste had previously adopted some of the imagery; the "Spirit" in the 'Masque of Comus' speaks of the happy climes which are his proper abode:—
And west winds, with musky wing,
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and cassia's balmy smells."
Gladly would Menelaus have kept the son of his old comrade with him longer as a guest, but Telemachus is impatient to rejoin his galley, which waits for him at Pylos. His host reluctantly dismisses him, not without parting gifts; but the gift which the king would have had him take—a chariot and yoke of three swift horses —the island-prince will not accept. Ithaca has no room for horse-coursing, and he loves his rocky home all the better.
Such leave I here—thy grace, thy rightful vaunt,
Lord of a level land, where never fail
Lotus, and rye, and wheat, and galingale:
No room hath Ithaca to course, no mead—
Goat-haunted, dearer than horse-feeding vale."
There is much consternation in the palace of Ulysses when the absence of Telemachus is at last discovered.
