he had now been deprived in a passage which echoes the opening
of Chapter V of _Ex Voto_, where he points out the resemblances between
Varallo and Jerusalem.

Early in 1888 the leading members of the Shrewsbury Archaeological
Society asked Butler to write a memoir of his grandfather and of his
father for their Quarterly Journal. This he undertook to do when he
should have finished _Ex Voto_. In December, 1888, his sisters, with the
idea of helping him to write the memoir, gave him his grandfather's
correspondence, which extended from 1790 to 1839. On looking over these
very voluminous papers he became penetrated with an almost Chinese
reverence for his ancestor and, after getting the Archaeological Society
to absolve him from his promise to write the memoir, set about a full
life of Dr. Butler, which was not published till 1896. The delay was
caused partly by the immense 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,