the yawning water lays bare the ground between the ridges of the sea.' Virgil even ventures on repetition by adding: 'the surging flood rages mingled with the sand.' I do not present the whole tempest here, but shall return to it in subsequent pages to institute further comparisons. We shall use it in discussing the Syrtes.

The lament of Odysseus follows the tempest: "Then were the knees of Odysseus loosened, and his heart melted, and heavily he spoke to his own great spirit.' How much more expressive are the words of Aeneas, which, by being directed to the gods and animated with fitting gesture, seem alive with feeling: 'He groans, and raising his clasped hands to the stars'! And the lament itself, 'O blessed, ever blessed they,' etc., is nobler than the words of Odysseus: 'Thrice blessed those Danaans, yea, four times blessed, who perished on a time in wide Troy-land, doing a pleasure to the sons of Atreus! Would to God that I too had died, and met my fate on that day when the press of Trojans cast their bronzeshod spears upon me, fighting for the body of the son of Peleus! So should I have gotten my due of burial, and the Achaeans would have' spread my fame; but now it is my fate to be overtaken by a pitiful death.' This is all subdued. But what feeling Virgil arouses! Placed 'before their sires' eyes' ('O blessed, ever blessed they, whose lot it was before their sires' eyes beneath Troy's lofty walls to die'). The scene is before mine as well. Then note the apostrophe, with its elegiac praise of Tydeus, and the majestic advance in the words, 'There lies valiant Hector slain by the spear of Aeacides,' and the spirit in the verses: "There was slain stout Sarpedon, there Simois bore swiftly beneath his stream and rolled along so many shields and helmets and bodies of the brave.' In the closing scenes of the tempest Virgil again surpasses Homer, and no wonder, for Homer has Odysseus alone and on a raft.

Similar observations may be made on the other like episodes in Homer, as on the trifling lines in Book Nine: "Thus

the ships were driven headlong, and their sails were torn to shreds by the might of the wind'; and in Book Twelve, where the account is trivial and superficial: 'And the ship ran on her way for no long while, for of a sudden came the shrilling West, with the rushing of a great tempest, and the blast of wind snapped the two forestays of the mast, and the mast fell backward and all the gear dropped into the bilge. And behold, on the hind part of the ship the mast struck the head of the pilot and brake all the bones of his skull together, and like a diver he dropt down from the deck, and his brave spirit left his bones'; and further, after the lightning: 'And lo, my company fell from out the vessel. Like sea-gulls they were borne round the black ship upon the billows.' So writes Homer, with which compare the following: 'Before the chieftain's eyes a mighty sea. strikes from above on the stern; forth is dashed out rolled into the sea the helmsman.' Homer dwells upon the breaking of the bones of the pilot, but our poet substitutes: 'Whilst thrice in the same place the billow whirls the ship, and drives it round and round, and the devouring eddy swallows it in the sea.' Then he omits the pedantic comparison as inapt, and the insignificant expression, 'were borne upon the billows,' is replaced by 'scattered here and there they are seen floating in the wide water.' Note how the words 'scattered' and 'in the wide water' define the fury of the sea. Servius is wrong in calling this a depreciation, a trifling description of a great phenomenon, and in saying the vastus ('wide,' in the expression in gurgite vasto) is added because gurges signifies calm water. This is quite incorrect, for gurges means any swiftly-running water; it is the Greek yopyós (rough, wild, spirited). Indeed, the very nature of the spondaic metre illustrates the difficulty of swimming.

In the Sixth Book of the Odyssey occur these lines, which are repeated in the Thirteenth: 'Woe is me! to what man's land am I come now? say, are they froward, and wild, and unjust, or are they hospitable, and of God-fearing mind?

How shrill a cry of maidens rings round me!' The following passage is shorter, for the occasion is different, yet it is most charming: 'As soon as the genial light of day was granted, determined forth to go, and explore the strange lands, to find what coast had driven him to, who possessed it, men or beasts-for he sees all uncultivated-and then to carry back to his comrades the report of his search.' This passage, and that in the Tenth Book of the Odyssey, furnish material for an interesting comparison. Aeneas seizes his bow, while of Odysseus it is said: "Then did I seize my spear and my sharp sword, and quickly departing from the ship I went up unto a place of wide prospect, if happily I might see any sign of the labour of men and hear the sound of their speech.' There he slays a deer, but Aeneas, on his part, slays a herd. The Virgilian passage surpasses the Homeric in splendor as much as in the number of deer slain, for compare the speech, 'My comrades, ye who know we are not unversed in ill ere now,' with the speech of Odysseus: 'Friends, for all our sorrows we shall not yet a while go down to the house of Hades, ere the coming of the day of destiny; go to then; while as yet there is meat and drink in the swift ship, let us take thought thereof, that we be not famished for hunger.'

A passage in the Twelfth Book of the Odyssey comes nearer to the Virgilian sentiment: 'Friends, forasmuch as in sorrow we are not all unlearned, truly this is no greater woe that is upon us, than when Cyclops penned us by main might in his hollow cave.' But our passage is both stronger and more embellished. Virgil speaks of many things, but most beautiful are the lines: 'Recall your spirits and hope'; 'Endure hardness and reserve yourselves for better days'; 'Perchance the day will come, when the memory even of this will be a pleasure.' Thus he proposes that they gain solace from their perils, for nothing gives more pleasure than the memory of perils escaped, and of triumph over danger.

Also, if the mode of feasting here, and in the Third and Seventh Books of the Aeneid, be compared with that in the Tenth and Twelfth Books of the Odyssey and the First and Ninth Books of the Iliad, Homer will be found diffuse and prolix, Virgil more picturesque and precise. Compare Homer's 'and pierced it through with spits,' with Virgil's 'and fixed them quivering on the spits.' Nay, more, with divine judgment, among such details as, 'Some strip the skin off the ribs,' Virgil inserts that refined sentiment, "They express their regret for the friends they have lost.'

Not less exalted praise is Virgil's when we observe his imitation of the lines from the Ninth Book of the Odyssey, which run, ‘I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, who am in men's minds for all manner of wiles, and my fame reaches unto heaven.' 'I am the pious Aeneas,' he tells us first of all, 'who rescued from the foe my household gods, and in my fleet carry them with me.' He does not rashly babble about his prowess, for he is both a pious man and a brave. His bravery was shown by rescuing his gods from the foe, his constancy in carrying them with him, and his prudence in taking them in his ship.

When the disgusting grammarians abuse Virgil for the line, 'I am known by fame above the sky', they ought rather to condemn Homer for saying, 'My fame reaches unto heaven'; especially since it is a question if the fame of any man's woes is able to reach clear to heaven. But it is right that the renown of our hero, who had delivered his household gods from servitude, who was protecting them, and carrying them to the place to which the command of the gods and the oracles of the gods directed, should be known in the abode of the gods. Homer's words hardly bear comparison with those of Virgil. One cannot explain it, but it is the distinctive excellence of Virgil always to be august.

Upon the lines in the Seventh Book of the Odyssey, "Tis hard, O queen, to tell my griefs from end to end, for that the gods of heaven have given me griefs in plenty', Virgil builds the superstructure: 'O goddess, if I were to go back

to the first beginning, and tell the tale throughout, and thou hadst leisure to hear the story of our disasters, before I had ended, Vesper would close Olympus, and lay the day to rest.' The effect of 'from end to end' is heightened by 'back to the first beginning,' and 'if thou hadst leisure'; the effect of 'griefs in plenty' by 'to hear the story of our disasters'; and the expression, "tis hard', is most brilliantly defined by the verse, 'Vesper would close Olympus, and lay the day to rest.' The difficulty is due to the long series of events. When he comes to narrate these events, Virgil again far surpasses Homer.

In the Ninth Book of the Odyssey we read: 'But now thy heart was inclined to ask of my grievous troubles, that I may mourn for more exceeding sorrow. What then shall I tell of first, what last, for the gods of heaven have given me woes in plenty.' Virgil, on the other hand, writes these divine and immutable verses: 'Ineffable, O queen, is the sorrow you bid me revive; how the Greeks utterly destroyed the power of Troy and her woeful realm.' Thus he places in his introduction the seeds of those thoughts which he will develop in his narrative. The grievous troubles are not his alone, so he first sets forth the common woe, and then tells of his own. Thus he first declares the wretchedness of the Trojans, and then explains the cause, 'the woeful realm destroyed', and does not straightway take refuge, as does Homer, in the hackneyed complaint that the gods are the authors of evil. Then 'the sad sights I have myself beheld'; not only beheld, but which I suffered, and of which I was a part. Yea, a great part. Then with a question he sets forth the suffering of his countrymen, when he asks what enemy of theirs could refrain from tears in telling such a tale. Lastly, he says that the time of day makes the telling more difficult. Surely all this was not done without the aid of that divine excellence of his; so that Virgil seems not so much to have imitated Homer as to have taught us how Homer should have written.