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 his Greek, he bought a
copy of the _Odyssey_ and was so fascinated by it that he could not put
it down. When he came to the Phoeacian episode of Ulysses at Scheria he
felt he must be reading the description of a real place and that
something in the personality of the author was eluding him. For months
he was puzzled, and, to help in clearing up the mystery, set about
translating the poem. In August, 1891, he had preceded me to Chiavenna,
and on a letter I wrote him, telling him when to expect me, he made this
note:

It was during the few days that I was at Chiavenna (at the Hotel
Grotta Crimee) that I hit upon the feminine authorship of the
_Odyssey_. I did not find out its having been written at Trapani till
January, 1892.

He suspected that the authoress in describing both Scheria and Ithaca was
drawing from her native country and searched on the Admiralty charts for
the features enumerated in the poem; this led him to the conclusion that
the country could only be Trapani, Mount Eryx, and the AEgadean Islands.
As soon as he could after this discovery he went to Sicily to study the
locality and found it in all respects suitable for his theory; indeed, it
was astonishing how things kept turning up to support his view. It is
all in his book _The Authoress of the Odyssey_, published in 1897 and
dedicated to his friend Cavaliere Biagio Ingroja of Calatafimi.

His first visit to Sicily was in 1892, in August--a hot time of the year,
but it was his custom to go abroad in the autumn. He returned to Sicily
every ye