think _the terrible_ in those two passages seems to me so much to
preponderate over the nauseous, as to make them rather fine than
disgusting. Who is to read them, I don't know: who is it that
reads Tales of Terror and Mysteries of Udolpho? Such things sell.
I only say that I will not consent to alter such passages, which
I know to be some of the best in the book. As an author I say to
you, an author, Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take
the work such as it is, or refuse it. You are as free to refuse it
as when we first talked of it. As to a friend I say, Don't plague
yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I assure you I will
not alter one more word.

As the reader will see, Lamb made only the one alteration; nor did he
add a preface recommending the works of Homer.

I have set up _The Adventures of Ulysses_ from the second edition,
1819, because it probably contains Lamb's final revision of the text.
The punctuation differs considerably from that of the first edition,
but there are, I think, only four changes of words. On page 251, line
34, "and" was inserted before "snout"; on page 257, line g, "does"
was substituted for "do"; on page 266, line 7 from foot, "over" was
substituted for "above"; and on page 276, line 5 from foot, "it" was
inserted after "keep."

The suggestion has been made that, since Lamb states in the preface
that this work was designed as a supplement to _The Adventures
of Telemachus_, he was also the author of one of the versions of
Fenelon's popular tale. But this, I think, has no foundation in fact.
We know from Lamb's letter to Godwin that the impulse to write _The
Adventures of Ulysses_ came from Godwin, and it was natural that he,
a bookseller, should wish to associate this new venture with a volume
so well known and so acceptable as the _Telemachus_. Now and then in
the story Lamb deliberately refers to Fenelon's work, as when in the
fourth chapter he says:--

"It were useless to describe over again what has been so well told
already; or to relate those soft arts of courtship which the goddess
used to detain Ulysses; the same in kind which she afterwards
practised upon his less wary son, whom Minerva, in the shape of
Mentor, hardly preserved from her snares when they came to the
Delightful Island together in search of the scarce departed Ulysses."

This is drawn not from Chapman or Homer, but from the Archbishop of
Cambrai. Lamb