y. The
Egyptian part of this Fourth Book, therefore, will show a
transformation of style as well as of thought, and changeful Proteus
will become a true image of the Poet. The work will manifest a symbolic
tendency; it will have an aroma of the wisdom of the East, taught in
forms of the parable, the apologue, with hints of allegory. The world,
thrown outside of that transparent Greek life, becomes a Fairy Tale,
which is here taken up and incorporated into a great poem. We shall be
compelled to look thoroughly into these strange shapes of Egypt, and,
if possible, reach down to their meaning, for meaning they must have,
or be meaningless. We shall find that this Fourth Book stands in the
front rank of Homeric poetry for depth and suggestiveness, if not for
epical lucidity.

What did not Telemachus see and hear at Sparta? That was, indeed, an
education. He saw the two great returned ones, the woman and the man.
Helen he saw, who had passed through her long alienation and was now
restored to home and country after the Trojan discipline. In her, the
most beautiful woman, the human cycle was complete--the fall, the
repentance, the restoration. Then the eager youth saw Menelaus, and
heard his story of the Return; he is the man who seeks the treasures of
the East, and brings them to Hellas in the Hellenic way. He finds them,
too, after much suffering, never losing them again in the tempests of
his voyage, for does he not spread them out before us in his talk? Both
the man and the woman, after the greatest human trials, have reached
serenity--an institutional and an intellectual harmony. The young man
sees it and feels it and takes it away in his head and heart.

The present Book falls easily into two distinct portions. The first is
the visit of Telemachus to Sparta and what he experiences there. Sparta
is at peace and in order; the youth to a degree beholds in it the ideal
land to which he must help transform his own disordered country. The
second portion of the Book goes back to Ithaca (line 625 of the Greek
text). Here we are suddenly plunged again into the wrongful deeds of
the suitors, done to the House of Ulysses. They are plotting the death
of Telemachus, the bearing of whose new career has dawned upon them.
Ithaca is truly the realm of discord in contrast to the harmony of
Sparta and the House of Menelaus, which has also had sore trials. Hence
Sparta may be considered a prophecy of the redemption of Ithaca.

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