Page:The Odyssey (Butler).djvu/18

x other hand, who will mark his Iliad and his Odyssey from the copies in the British Museum above referred to, and who will draw the only inference that common sense can draw from the presence of so many identical passages in both poems, will, I believe, find no difficulty in assigning their proper value to a large number of books here and on the Continent that at present enjoy considerable reputations. Furthermore, and this perhaps is an advantage better worth securing, he will find many puzzles of the Odyssey cease to puzzle him on the discovery that they arise from over-saturation with the Iliad.

Other difficulties will also disappear as soon as the development of the poem in the writer's mind is understood. I have dealt with this at some length in pp. 251—261 of The Authoress of the Odyssey. Briefly, the Odyssey consists of two distinct poems: (1) The Return of Ulysses, which alone the Muse is asked to sing in the opening lines of the poem. This poem includes the Phæacian episode, and the account of Ulysses' adventures as told by himself in Books ix—xii. It consists of lines 1—79 (roughly) of Book i., of line 28 of Book v., and thence without intermission to the middle of line 187 of Book xiii., at which point the original scheme was abandoned.

(2) The story of Penelope and the suitors, with the episode of Telemachus's voyage to Pylos. This poem begins with line 80 (roughly) of Book i., is continued to the end of Book iv., and not resumed till Ulysses wakes in the middle of line 187, Book xiii., from whence it continues to the end of Book xxiv.

In The Authoress of the Odyssey, I wrote:—

The introduction of lines xi., 115—137 and of line ix., 535, with the writing a new council of the gods at the beginning of