er's poetry. It
must be in the reader ere he can see it in the book. Unless he be ready
for its spirit, it will not appear, certainly it will not speak. There
must be a rise into the vision of Homeric poetry on the part of the
reader, as there is a rise into the vision of the Goddess on the part
of Ulysses. The two sides, the human and the divine, or the Terrestrial
and the Olympian, must meet and commune; thus the reader, too, in
perusing Homer, must become heroic and behold the Gods.

_BOOK FOURTEENTH._

The Book begins with another transition in place; Ulysses passes from
the sea-shore, with its haven, grot, and olive-tree up into the
mountain, to the hut of Eumaeus. We have quite a full description of the
latter's abode; there is a lodge surrounded by a court and a wall;
within this inclosure are the sties, and the droves of swine over which
he is the keeper, with four assistants. Nor must we omit the fierce
dogs, savage as wild beasts. Such is the new environment which Ulysses
enters, and which has at its center a human being who gives character
to this little world. Again we catch a clear quick glimpse of the Greek
landscape in one of its phases.

The spiritual transition is, however, the main thing. Ulysses passes
from Pallas, the deity of pure wisdom, to Eumaeus, the humblest of
mortals in his vocation. Yet this poor man too has the divine in him,
and manifests it in a supreme degree, not, however, in the form of
reflective wisdom, but in the form of piety, of an immediate faith in
the Gods. Still this faith has its sore trial. Such is the contrast
between the two men. Ulysses has brought with him the Goddess of
Wisdom, whose words he has heard, and with whom he has held communion.
Hardly does Eumaeus know Pallas, he has not the internal gift of seeing
her in her own shape. Thus both these men share in the divine, but in
very different ways.

From this difference in the two men spring both the character and the
matter of the Book. It is a play, a disguise; a play between Wisdom and
Faith, in which the former must be in disguise to the latter, yet both
have the same substance at bottom. For Faith is Faith because it cannot
take the form of Intelligence, yet may have in its simple immediate
form all the content of Intelligence.

Eumaeus has an open single-hearted piety; he cannot play a disguise, he
hates it for he has been deceived by it when assumed by lying fablers.
For this reason he is not intru