Page:The Odyssey (Butler).djvu/14

vi Italian public ever since they appeared (without rejoinder) in the Athenæum for January 30 and February 20, 1892. Both contentions were urged (also without rejoinder) in the Johnian Eagle for the Lent and October Terms of the same year. Nothing to which I should reply has reached me from any quarter, and knowing how anxiously I have endeavoured to learn the existence of any flaws in my argument, I begin to feel some confidence that, did such flaws exist, I should have heard, at any rate about some of them, before now. Without, therefore, for a moment pretending to think that scholars generally acquiesce in my conclusions, I shall act as thinking them little likely so to gainsay me as that it will be incumbent upon me to reply, and shall confine myself to translating the Odyssey for English readers, with such notes as I think will be found useful. Among these I would especially call attention to one on xxii. 465—473 which Lord Grimthorpe has kindly allowed me to make public.

I have repeated several of the illustrations used in The Authoress of the Odyssey, and have added two which I hope may bring the outer court of Ulysses' house more vividly before the reader. I should like to explain that the presence of a man and a dog in the upper illustration is accidental, and was not observed by me till I developed the negative. In an appendix I have also reprinted the paragraphs explanatory of the plan of Ulysses' house, together with the plan itself. The reader is recommended to study this plan with some attention.

In the preface of my translation of the Iliad