value of the characters. Suppose, for example, that Homer had
written the _Odyssey_ on the principle of _The Ring and the Book_, how
disturbing, how weird an experience it would be to read the story from
the point of view of Antinous! Without contradicting a single material
fact, without telling a single deliberate lie, the narrative would so
change the whole world around us, that we should scarcely know we were
dealing with the same place and people. The calm face of Penelope
would, it may be, begin to grow meaner before our eyes, like a face
changing in a dream. She would begin to appear as a fickle and selfish
woman, passing falsely as a widow, and playing a double game between
the attentions of foolish but honourable young men, and the fitful
appearances of a wandering and good-for-nothing sailor-husband; a man
prepared to act that most well-worn of melodramatic roles, the
conjugal bully and blackmailer, the man who uses marital rights as an
instrument for the worse kind of wrongs. Or, again, if we had the
story of the fall of King Arthur told from the stand-point of Mordred,
it would only be a matter of a word or two; in a turn, in the
twinkling of an eye, we should find ourselves sympathising with the
efforts of an earnest young man to frustrate the profligacies of
high-placed paladins like Lancelot and Tristram, and ultimately
discovering, with deep regret but unshaken moral courage, that there
was no way to frustrate them, except by overthrowing the cold and
priggish and incapable egotist who ruled the country, and the whole
artificial and bombastic schemes which bred these moral evils. It
might be that in spite of this new view of the case, it would
ultimately appear that Ulysses was really right and Arthur was really
right, just as Browning makes it ultimately appear that Pompilia was
really right. But any one can see the enormous difference in scope and
difficulty between the old epic which told the whole story from one
man's point of view, and the new epic which cannot come to its
conclusion, until it has digested and assimilated views as paradoxical
and disturbing as our imaginary defence of Antinous and apologia of
Mordred.

One of the most important steps ever taken in the history of the world
is this step, with all its various aspects, literary, political, and
social, which is represented by _The Ring and the Book_. It is the
step of deciding, in the face of many serious dangers and
disadvantages, to l