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PREFACE

Fourteen years ago, in introducing my 'Stories from Homer' to the public, I expressed the hope that they would 'represent Homer not unfaithfully to readers, old and young, who did not know him in the original.' The book has found, on both sides of the Atlantic, many such readers, and not a few, I am proud to think, who, knowing the original, have judged this adaptation to be not altogether unworthy of it. If I could have anticipated so warm a welcome for my little work—the sale now exceeds twenty thousand copies—I should not have attempted to compress into a single volume the substance of the two poems. The two volumes which I