f chivalry and romance. Master as he is of
decorative and descriptive verse, he has all the Greek's joy in the
visible aspect of things, all the Greek's sense of delicate and
delightful detail, all the Greek's pleasure in beautiful textures and
exquisite materials and imaginative designs; nor can any one have a
keener sympathy with the Homeric admiration for the workers and the
craftsmen in the various arts, from the stainers in white ivory and the
embroiderers in purple and gold, to the weaver sitting by the loom and
the dyer dipping in the vat, the chaser of shield and helmet, the carver
of wood or stone. And to all this is added the true temper of high
romance, the power to make the past as real to us as the present, the
subtle instinct to discern passion, the swift impulse to portray life.

It is no wonder the lovers of Greek literature have so eagerly looked
forward to Mr. Morris's version of the Odyssean epic, and now that the
first volume has appeared, it is not extravagant to say that of all our
English translations this is the most perfect and the most satisfying.
In spite of Coleridge's well-known views on the subject, we have always
held that Chapman's _Odyssey_ is immeasurably inferior to his _Iliad_,
the mere difference of metre alone being sufficient to set the former in
a secondary place; Pope's _Odyssey_, with its glittering rhetoric and
smart antithesis, has nothing of the grand manner of the original; Cowper
is dull, and Bryant dreadful, and Worsley too full of Spenserian
prettinesses; while excellent though Messrs. Butcher and Lang's version
undoubtedly is in many respects, still, on the whole, it gives us merely
the facts of the _Odyssey_ without providing anything of its artistic
effect. Avia's translation even, though better than almost all its
predecessors in the same field, is not worthy of taking rank beside Mr.
Morris's, for here we have a true work of art, a rendering not merely of
language into language, but of poetry into poetry, and though the new
spirit added in the transfusion may seem to many rather Norse than Greek,
and, perhaps at times, more boisterous than beautiful, there is yet a
vigour of life in every line, a splendid ardour through each canto, that
stirs the blood while one reads like the sound of a trumpet, and that,
producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight, exults the senses no
less than it exalts the soul. It may be admitted at once that, here and
there, Mr. Mor