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Updated: June 24, 2025
A valuable essay might be written on the Dog's Place in Literature; in the poetry of the East, hundreds of years before Christ, the dog's faithfulness was more than once celebrated. One of the most marvellous passages in Homer's Odyssey is the recognition of the ragged Ulysses by the noble old dog, who dies of joy. In recent years, since the publication of Dr.
A petty king sets sail for his native land, somehow losing himself ten years among the isles of Greece and we have the Odyssey. But time and genius have glorified them. Not the deeds, but Homer and Æschylus and the hallowing years are great. We no longer write epics we live them.
Everybody seems to have known some part by heart, but they were in separate songs, and Pisistratus first had them written down and put in order, after which no Greek was thought an educated man unless he thoroughly knew the Iliad and Odyssey.
One has just left me, a gentleman who lives at a distance across the bog; he comes to talk with me about Greek, and the Odyssey, for he is a very learned man, and understands the old Irish, and various other strange languages. He has had a dispute with Bagg. On hearing his name, he called him to him, and, after looking at him for some time with great curiosity, said that he was sure he was a Dane.
Pope's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are certainly not for those who can read the great originals in their own tongue, or even for those who have a taste strong and refined enough to enjoy the severe fidelity of a prose translation.
And what made the sense of resemblance the more striking was the sea, which one feels to be always near, though one may not see it, and which any turn of the valley may bring into view. We found out a little tower with an overgrown garden, of which the owner might have been taken for a husbandman of the Odyssey. He could scarcely speak any French, but was not without a certain grave dignity.
If my views about the Odyssey, for example, will, in the long run, save students from perplexity, the students will be sure to adopt them, and I have no wish that they should adopt them otherwise.
The truth of such a story may seem improbable; the invention of such a story would be little short of miraculous. Prescott's work, if removed from its place among histories, must stand in the first rank among works of imagination, must be classed with the "Odyssey" and the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments."
Take even the irrational incidents in the Odyssey, where Odysseus is left upon the shore of Ithaca. How intolerable even these might have been would be apparent if an inferior poet were to treat the subject. As it is, the absurdity is veiled by the poetic charm with which the poet invests it.
But without multiplying evidence, as we easily might, from every part of both Iliad and Odyssey, the sceptical and the believing forms of thought and feeling on this very subject are made points of dramatic contrast, to show off the opposition of two separate characters; and this is clear proof that such thoughts and feelings must have been familiar to Homer's hearers: if it were not so, his characters would have been without interest to his age they would have been individual, and not universal; and no expenditure of intellect, or passion, would have made men care to listen to him.
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