same qualities are attributed to him--his
soft-flowing tongue, his cunning, and his eloquence--they are held in
very different estimation. The Homer of the Iliad has little liking for
a talker. Thersites is his pattern specimen of such; and it is the
current scoff at unready warriors to praise their father's courage, and
then to add--

[Greek:
alla ton huion
geinato heio cherea mache, agore de t' ameino.]

But the Phoeacian Lord who ventured to reflect, in the Iliad style, on
the supposed unreadiness of Ulysses, is taught a different notion of
human excellence. Ulysses tells him that he is a fool. 'The gods,'
Ulysses says, 'do not give all good things to all men, and often a man
is made unfair to look upon, but over his ill favour they fling, like a
garland, a power of lovely speech, and the people delight to _look_ on
him. He speaks with modest dignity, and he shines among the multitude.
As he walks through the city, men gaze on him as on a god.'

Differences like these, however, are far from decisive. The very
slightest external evidence would weigh them all down together. Perhaps
the following may be of more importance:--

In both poems there are 'questionings of destiny,' as the modern phrase
goes. The thing which we call human life is looked in the face--this
little chequered island of lights and shadows, in the middle of an ocean
of darkness; and in each we see the sort of answer which the poet finds
for himself, and which might be summed up briefly in the last words of
Ecclesiastes, 'Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the
whole duty of man.' But the world bears a different aspect, and the
answer looks different in its application. In the Iliad, in spite of the
gloom of Achilles, and his complaint of the double urn, the sense of
life, on the whole, is sunny and cheerful. There is no yearning for
anything beyond--nothing vague, nothing mystical. The earth, the men,
the gods, have all a palpable reality about them. From first to last, we
know where we are, and what we are about. In the Odyssey we are
breathing another atmosphere. The speculations on the moral mysteries of
our being hang like a mist over us from the beginning to the end; and
the cloud from time to time descends on the actors, and envelopes them
with a preternatural halo. The poet evidently dislikes the expression of
'suffering being the lot of mortals,' as if it had been abused already
for u