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wearisome, but any one who will dwell for a moment on each of these sudden little pictures as they are almost thrust upon him in the rapid, onward rush of the story, will see how vivid, pointed, and diversified they are. Homer often forgets the essential point of comparison in drawing out the details of his simile-as, for instance, in the last of those we have read, where the fury of the lion has nothing really to do with the shield of Ajax. He is carried away by the sight, as it were, of the lion and his cubs and the hunters, just as he is also in the first of our similes, where he tells us how the shepherd, having missed his blow crouches down in the steading while his flock, abandoned and panic-stricken, falls a helpless prey to the lion who, leaving them tossed in heaps upon each other, leaps furiously out of the fold again. All this is far enough away from the Trojan war, but in itself how bright, true, and masterly it is! How the very inconsequence of some of the details, coming, as they so often do, right in the midst of the barren and grisly catalogue of the slain and the manner of their slaying, serves to let cool breaths from the wide world all round into the tumult of the fighting. Ruskin, discoursing of Infinity, says, if we remember right, that there is no great picture without some hint of distance about it to illuminate and to calm it. We can hardly suppose Homer knew this as a principle and virtuously acted thereupon; and yet it is curious to see how often his instinct has led him to do so how often he relieves not merely the tediousness of bloodshed but also the terror or excitement or pity of some momentous crisis with hints of the very peacefullest and most ordinary occupations, such as are going on all over the world outside the scene of the war, or were wont to be carried on in Troy itself in the distant times of quiet. There is not space for many instances, but here are one or two. When the night of the embassy to Achilles and the adventure of Odysseus is beginning, the Trojans, victorious so far, settle down by their watch-fires, and these fires-one of the most beautiful similes in the Iliad are said to be 'as when in heaven the stars shine about the bright moon very clear, what time the air is all windless, and all the peaks stand out, and the topmost headlands and the hollows; and the immeasurable air is cleft open from the height of heaven, and all the stars are seen and the shepherd's heart is glad' (VIII. 555 seq.).

In the eleventh book again there is another, this time not a simile. 'Now as long as it was dawn, and the holy day increased, so long the darts of both sides struck home and the people fell; but what time a wood-cutting man maketh ready his meal in the woody glades of a mountain, when he hath given his hands their fill felling great trees, and weariness cometh upon his soul, and there taketh him about the heart the desire for sweet bread, even then by their valour did the Danaans break the ranks, shouting to their comrades down the lines' (xI. 84 seq.).

The most remarkable instance, though, is that which occurs in the midst of the chase of Hector round the city; Achilles pursues him past the watch-tower and the fig-tree along the waggon-track till they come to two fair springs, where there rise two fountains from eddying Scamander. For the one floweth with hot water, and there is made a smoke from it round about as it were of flaming fire; and the other, even in summer, floweth forth like to hail or cold snow or water that is turned to ice. And there hard by them are broad troughs for washing, beautiful, made of stone, where the matrons and the fair daughters of the Trojans were wont to wash their shining garments, in the old times of peace, before that the sons of the Achaians came' (XXII. 145 seq.).

Of course to properly appreciate these, one must have read up to them; coming upon them as one is meant to do in the course of the story, one is astonished at the way in which they enhance and refine the significance of the scene to which they belong.

All this is wandering a little away from the object we were pursuing, i.e. some idea of the home-life and the ordinary avocations of the Homeric folk. Beside the rich man, and the poor man who was his thrall, there seems to have been a class of artificers and handicraftsmen who were very important persons. They made the ships and the armour, the houses and the house-furniture, in which each household took delight. Homeric art is confined to the beautifying of these things; and they being costly and the fruit of much skill and toil, bring with them a sober, satisfactory joy of possession. The processes of making are not alluded to in any detail, and the wrought shields and cuirasses and tripods are described much in the irresponsible fashion of a fairy-tale. Probably this is due to the fact that the art of working in metal was a foreign one, known to the Greeks more by its products than by their own practice.

Homer mentions one or two artificers by name. There is Phereklos, the man who made the ships in which Paris brought Helen to Troy. He was the son of Tekton (the constructor) who was the son of Harmon (the fitter). He was much beloved by Pallas Athene ; Meriones slew him (v. 57 ff). Then there is Tychios who made the shield for Ajax. He lived in Hyle, by far the best of curriers; and he made the shield of sevenfold hides of bulls overlaid with bronze. Another of these men, though we are not told his name, is he who made Pandarus' bow.

Here too we may make mention of Podaleirios and Machaon. These were the sons of Asklepios, cunning leeches. 'A leech is as good as many other men,' Homer says. Their way of healing is prompt and astonishingly efficacious. They 'cut out arrows and spread soothing medicines.' Paieon, on Olympus, does this for Ares when he is wounded, and his hurt is healed as quickly as milk curdles when you

pour fig-juice into it. Of course, he is a celestial chirurgeon, but his terrestrial counterparts are not far behind. When Machaon was wounded, and conveyed to the huts by Nestor, this is what he took to help him recover :-Pramnian wine, mixed with cheese of goat's milk and white barley scattered upon it. Plato thought it was an inflammatory mixture, and respected the Homeric heroes for being able to stand it; he uses it to illustrate the excellence of kill-or-cure methods of leechcraft. Skill in the use of drugs was not, however, absolutely confined to Podaleirios and Machaon: Achilles had been instructed in it by Cheiron the centaur, and Patroclus had learnt from him, as we find when he applies the bitter root to the wound of Eurypylus and succeeds in healing it.

It is not possible in a short paper such as this to touch on onehalf the little bits in the Iliad which give one a momentary insight into the everyday ways of the world as Homer saw them. Perhaps it is all the better so, for the main object of these papers is to persuade somebody to really read the Iliad, and reading is apt to be flat unless there is plenty left for the reader to discover for himself. Only to realise the better what an amount there is here to discover, let us just run through two books of it as an example, and pick out those lines which deal with some familiar form or employment of human life, and so close this rather rambling dissertation.

We take Books XII. and XIII. Passing over the bronzesmith who made Sarpedon's shield of bull's hides and gold (290), we come to the well-known simile in which the equal balance of victory is likened to the scales in the hands of the honest woman, who carefully makes the weight and the wool even, labouring to earn a scant living for her children (430). But we must go back a few lines; we have passed over the two men measuring the boundaries of their land with their rods and their contentions (420); they stand on each side of the boundary like the Lykians and Danaans on either side the wall.

In the thirteenth book we have Kassandra's lover, Othryoneus of Kabesos, coming to win her, not with gifts of wooing as was customary, but as the prize of a complete victory over the Greeks (865). Further on we hear of a certain lady Hippodameia, dearly loved by her parents, because she excelled all maidens of her age in loveliness and skill and prudence (430). Idomeneus (470) is said not to have been afraid at the onset of Aeneas as a tender boy is afraid. Then about 150 lines further there is the threshing-floor with the black beans and pulse, the whistle of the wind, and the winnower with his shovel; and the next simile likens Ajax the son of Oileus, and Ajax the son of Telamon, inseparable as they fight to defend the ships, to two wine-dark oxen who drag the plough side-by-side through the fallow.

The two books we have lighted upon are none of the richest in these

things. On the contrary, the action is near its turning-point; all the power of the poetry is concentrated on the struggle at the wall and round the ships, so that there is very little to spare for simile and digression, and perhaps most of the others would have given more. But even these two are enough to show that there is a wealth of familiar allusion, of loving and straightforward pourtrayal of the men and women of the fields, and of peaceful times scattered up and down what at first sight seems the impetuous and all-engulphing story of the war with Troy. FLORENCE HAYLLAR.

STUDIES IN THE ILIAD.—V.

Questions.

AUGUST.

17. Compare the women of Shakespeare, or of any one novelist, with those of Homer.

18. Select from Books XIII.-XVIII. (inclusive) the passages you think most striking, and comment on them.

19. Discuss Homer's view of old age as exemplified in Priam, Nestor, and the references to Peleus and other old men in the course of the Iliad.

20. How far does the tragic element in Homer differ from the tragic element in modern poetry and prose literature ?

Will Daphne kindly send her address to Miss Hayllar, Harewood, Leeds.

Church history Society.

THE REFORMATION.

III. THE DAYS OF WOLSEY AND CRANMER.

Questions for August and September.

29. Give the order of events of the Reformation Parliament-underlining successive Acts, and inserting contemporary events of English history bearing on these, with dates of beginning and end of Parliament; or

Show the general course the Reformation took in England, contrasting it with the Lutheran.

30. Sketch the characters of Bishops Fisher, Tunstal, Stokesley, and Gardiner ; or

Short accounts of Thomas Cromwell (previous to suppression of monasteries), Tyndal, and John Frith.

31. Compare the Act of Submission and the New Court of Appeal with the Constitutions of Clarendon, and with Magna Charta. Show the immediate use of this Court and its subsequent fate; or

Give some account of the assertion of Royal Supremacy and of the abolition of Papal Jurisdiction, mentioning, in this connection, the end of Fisher. 32. Give a brief history of Wolsey, bringing out his action in the King's Divorce case; or

Give a character of Cranmer at this period, with the circumstances of his election to the Primacy, and showing what led to it.

Books specially recommended: Perry's History (Second Period); Aubrey Moore's or Dixon's works; and for (32) Cameos, or any good English history.

Answers to be sent to Bog-Oak, care of the Publishers, by October 1st.

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