Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/135



resemblance which these Homeric poems bear, in many remarkable features, to the romances of mediæval chivalry, has been long ago remarked, and has already been incidentally noticed in these pages. The peculiar caste of kings and ehiefs—or kings and knights, as they are called in the Arthurian and Carlovingian tales—before whom the unfortunate "churls" tremble and fly like sheep, is a feature common to both. "Then were they afraid when they saw a knight"—is the pregnant sentence which, in Mallory's 'King Arthur,' reveals a whole volume of social history; for the knight, in the particular instance, was but riding quietly along, and there ought to have been no reason why the "churls" should dread the sight of a professed redresser of grievances. But even so Ulysses condescends to use no argument to this class but the active use of his staff; and Achilles dreads above all things dying "the death of a churl" drowned in a brook. It is only the noble, the priest, and the divine bard who emerge into the light of romance. The lives and feelings of the mere