Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/77

Rh It has been thought that here we have possibly the bread-fruit tree of the South Sea Islands, with some hint of the effect produced by their soft and enervating climate, and that the voyage of Ulysses anticipated in some degree the discoveries of Anson and Cook. It is curious that, in Cook's case, the seductions of those islands gave him the same trouble as they did Ulysses; for several of his crew thought, like the Greek sailors, that they had found an earthly paradise for which they determined to forget home and country, and had to be brought back to their ship by force. But the lotus-land of the poet is an ideal shore, to which some of us moderns may have travelled as well as Ulysses. Its deepest recesses will have been reached by the Buddhist who attains his coveted state of perfect beatitude, the "Nirvâna," in which a man has found out that all having and being, and more especially doing, are a mistake. It is the dolce far niente of the Italian; the region free from all cares and responsibilities—"beyond the domain of conscience"—which Charles Lamb, half in jest and half in earnest, sighed for.

Bearing away from the shore of the Lotus-eaters, Ulysses and his crew next reached the island where the Cyclops dwell—a gigantic tribe of rude shepherds, monsters in form, having but one eye planted in the centre of their foreheads, who know neither laws, nor arts, nor commerce. Adventure and discovery have always a charm for Ulysses; and it was with no other motive, as he pretty plainly confesses, that he landed with his own ship's crew to explore these unknown regions. The present adventure had a horrible conclu-