se quantity of
documents he had to sift and digest, the number of people he had to
consult and the many letters he had to write, and partly by
something that arose out of Narcissus, which we published in June,
1888.

Butler was not satisfied with having written only half of this work;
he wanted it to have a successor, so that by adding his two halves
together, he could say he had written a whole Handelian oratorio.
While staying with his sisters at Shrewsbury with this idea in his
mind, he casually took up a book by Alfred Ainger about Charles Lamb
and therein stumbled upon something about the Odyssey. It was years
since he had looked at the poem, but, from what he remembered, he
thought it might provide a suitable subject for musical treatment.
He did not, however, want to put Dr. Butler aside, so I undertook to
investigate. It is stated on the title-page of both Narcissus and
Ulysses that the words were written and the music composed by both
of us. As to the music, each piece bears the initials of the one
who actually composed it. As to the words, it was necessary first
to settle some general scheme and this, in the case of Narcissus,
grew in the course of conversation. The scheme of Ulysses was
constructed in a more formal way and Butler had perhaps rather less
to do with it. We were bound by the Odyssey, which is, of course,
too long to be treated fully, and I selected incidents that
attracted me and settled the order of the songs and choruses. For
this purpose, as I out-Shakespeare Shakespeare in the smallness of
my Greek, I used The Adventures of Ulysses by Charles Lamb, which we
should have known nothing about but for Ainger's book. Butler
acquiesced in my proposals, but, when it came to the words
themselves, he wrote practically all the libretto, as he had done in
the case of Narcissus; I did no more than suggest a few phrases and
a few lines here and there.

We had sent Narcissus for review to the papers, and, as a
consequence, about this time, made the acquaintance of Mr. J. A.
Fuller Maitland, then musical critic of the Times; he introduced us
to that learned musician William Smith Rockstro, under whom we
studied medieval counterpoint while composing Ulysses. We had
already made some progress with it when it occurred to Butler that
it would not take long and might, perhaps, be safer if he were to
look at the original poem, just to make sure that Lamb had not
misled me. Not having forgotten all h