COMPARISON OF HOMER WITH TASSO.

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heroism of Achilles. In so far as the Gerusalemme is the development of character, Tancred is by far the most important personage in it, and there are many points in which he contrasts favourably with Achilles. Of course the question is not which of two heroes one likes best, but which of the two poets describes best. The character of Achilles, whether you like him or not, is wonderfully drawn. Is that of Tancred equally so? As regards Helen and Armida, Gladstone disputes Helen's being a consenting party to her original abduction, but she appears to have acquiesced in it by the time the poem commences, and does not, I think, show any desire to return to Menelaus. She is, however, very skilfully treated, and kept in subordination to the plot; and no attempt is made to create any interest in her beyond a gentle pity, not wholly unmixed with a feeling that she is partly to be blamed, while Paris is always held up as contemptible. Armida, on the other hand, is thrust upon our notice, and all the blots in her character are patent."

To call Pope's Homer "miserable" is, no doubt, to speak hastily, as in a private note, not in a public essay. The rhetoric of Homer's speeches has always an incomparable rendering in the famous English version. But in the many passages where Homer is not rhetorical, doubtless we feel in Pope a lack of the magic, the simplicity, the truth of the "Ionian father of the rest," the first and greatest of all poets. In comparison with him, what translation is not "miserable"? Mr Gladstone, in his apology for Helen, has omitted, I think, the curious tradi

tion in Eustathius which tells us that Paris deceived her, as Uther, Arthur's father, deceived Ygerne, by magically putting on the shape and semblance of her husband. Perhaps Homer knew this tradition, and alludes to it, where Penelope, after the slaughter of the wooers, still declines to recognise Odysseus.

What manner of writer Lord Iddesleigh might have been if literature had conquered in his mind the attractions of politics, it is impossible to say. His position made it wholly needless for him to adopt literature either as crutch or staff. He had not that studious fervour which compelled Gibbon, Mr Grote, and other men like them, to live laborious days of learned application. When he wrote it was either on some political or social question in the Quarterly Review,' for example, or for the purpose of pleasing his friends at Exeter, or his undergraduates at Edinburgh, or, finally, for his own diversion and the diversion of his children at home.1 His lecture at Exeter on "Nothing" was a most successful and playful tour de force, and the more original, as he doubtless knew nothing of a rare work on the same topic by "Nobody," a book of the early part of the century. Nobody could have spoken better on "Nothing," a topic which might even have taxed the practised ingenuity of Swift. Lord Iddesleigh's genial activity found scope in producing articles,

1 It was no doubt to oblige a friend and former secretary of his own, Mr Marwood Tucker, that he wrote at one time in the 'Globe.' Mr Tucker mentions that Lord Iddesleigh asked him to cut about his articles as freely as if they were those of the youngest contributor.

LORD IDDESLEIGH'S "HAMLET."

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verses, parodies, charades, fireside plays, and often pieces of pure nonsense-indeed in the difficult field of nonsense he had very considerable skill. It was the custom at Pynes for the family to act plays during Christmas-tide, and to enjoy a mild feast of Unreason. For these games Lord Iddesleigh used to contrive dramas sufficiently unreasonable. In 1878, his play (written in collaboration with Mr John Northcote) was "Hamlet, with Hamlet Omitted." Among the "properties" one finds "skates for Ophelia." It seems that Ophelia has been affrighted by the Ghost, who "is mad for her love," and the stage manager seizes this opportunity to "place" a "real ghoststory." Polonius, most naturally, inquires of Ophelia what her shadowy wooer was like, and receives the no less natural answer, "Why, very like a whale." It appears that the Ghost is also mad, Ophelia having repelled his addresses. The spectre carries his infatuation so far as to stab Polonius, whereon Laertes threatens to kill the Ghost, who replies with candour, "I wish you would, for killing a ghost would make him come alive again." Yet this is rather the inference of a ghost new to his business than a sound spiritual theory, as any one may learn from "Grettir v. Glam" in the saga. Nothing can be more proper than the precaution taken by the King, who habitually wears great quantities of cotton-wool in his ears. ""Tis conscience that makes cowards of us all," and as the King says

They'll

"They'll poison me in the garden for my estate. pour it into my ears. That's what happened to the Ghost. I'll take care it shan't happen to me.