the strain had died away in the distance did they unbind their captain, in spite of his angry protests. They pass the strait that divides Sicily from Italy, where on either hand lurked the monsters Scylla and Charybdis—impersonations, it may be, of rocks and whirlpools—but which they escaped, with the loss of six out of the crew, by help of Circe's warnings and directions. But that our own Spenser's 'Faery Queen' is perhaps even less known to the majority of English readers than the Odyssey of Homer (by grace of popular translations), it might be needless to remind them how the whole of Sir Guyon's voyage on the "Idle Lake" is nothing more or less than a reproduction of this portion of Ulysses' adventures.[1] The five mermaidens, who entrap unwary travellers with their melody, address the knight as he floats by in a strain which is the echo of the Sirens'—
That art in mightie arms most magnifyde
Above all knights that ever batteill tryde,
O turn thy rudder hitherwarde awhile:
Here may thy storme-bett vessell safely ryde:
This is the port of rest from troublous toyle,
The worldes sweet Inn from pain and wearisome turmoyle."
The enchantress Acrasia, with her transformed lovers—the "seeming beasts who are men in deed"—is but a copy from Circe; while the "Gulf of Greediness" yawning on one side of the Lake—
"That deep engorgeth all this worldes prey"—
and on the other side the "Rock of Vile Reproach,"
- ↑ 'Faery Queen,' Book ii. c. 12.
