ractical problem of life comes to the
front in their case. Both are willing to meet unjust violence with
dissimulation, till they get the power to act openly. They put down a
dishonest world with dishonesty, and then proceed to live honestly. It
is another phase of that subtle play of the Negative, with which
Ulysses had to grapple repeatedly in Fableland, and of which the
Odyssey is full. Every situation seems to have its intricate ethical
problem, which the reader has to solve as he solves such questions in
actual life. Our opinion upon this element in the poem we have already
given, and need not repeat it here.

We must note that Ulysses still keeps up his romancing in order to
explain his presence in Ithaca and his beggarly appearance. He
introduces a kind of story, which we have called the Novelette in
distinction from the Fairy Tale. The scene is usually thrown back
eastward to Crete, the Trojan War furnishes the background, the famous
Cretan hero Idomeneus is usually in some way connected with the
stranger who is speaking. No less than five such Novelettes are found
in the last twelve Books--some long, some brief. He tells one to Pallas
(XIII. 256), to Eumaeus the longest one (XIV. 199), to Antinous a short
interrupted one (XVII. 425), to Penelope (XIX. 172), finally one to his
father Laertes (XXIV. 304), in which the scene seems to be changed to
the West from the mention of Sicania.

For the reader who may wish to follow out in detail these eight Books,
we append a general survey of each, in which the thought and the
structure are suggested, yet by no means elaborated. We have in the
preceding pages given quite fully what we deem the main points of the
Odyssey; there remains only this winding-up of the work in a rapid
summary.

_Book Seventeenth._ We now pass from the country and the hut of the
swineherd to the town and the palace of the king. This is an important
transition, and evidently marks a turning-point in the last twelve
Books of the Odyssey. The change of location brings us to the scene of
the forthcoming deed, and into the presence of the two conflicting
sides. The structure of the Book moves about two centers, Telemachus
and Ulysses.

I. Telemachus is first to start for the city, where he arrives, and is
received with great joy by the household. The mother asks him whether
he has obtained any tidings from his father. But he shuns her question,
bids her make fresh vows to the Gods, and goes off t