ing a camel.

[295] Which, however, evidently was not saying much, as he immediately
added that he was ready to give her up provided they gave him another
girl, lest he be the only one of the Greeks without a "prize of
honor." Strong individual preference, as we shall see also in the case
of Achilles, was not a trait of "heroic" Greek love.

[296] I have already commented (115) on Nausicaea's lack of feminine
delicacy and coyness; yet Gladstone says (132) "it may almost be
questioned whether anywhere in literature there is to be found a
conception of the maiden so perfect as Nausicaea in grace, tenderness,
and delicacy"!

[297] How Gladstone reconciled his conscience with these lines when he
wrote (112) that "on one important and characteristic subject, the
exposure of the person to view, the men of that time had a peculiar
and fastidious delicacy," I cannot conceive.

[298] It will always remain one of the strangest riddles of the
nineteenth century why the statesman who so often expressed his
righteous indignation over the "Bulgarian atrocities" of his time
should not only have pardoned, but with insidious and glaring
sophistry apologized for the similar atrocities of the heroes whom
Homer fancies he is complimenting when he calls them professional
"spoilers of towns." I wish every reader of this volume who has any
doubts regarding the correctness of my views would first read
Gladstone's shorter work on Homer (a charmingly written book, with all
its faults), and then the epics themselves, which are now accessible
to all in the admirable prose versions of the _Iliad_ by Andrew Lang,
Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers, and of the _Odyssey_ by Professor George
H. Palmer of Harvard--versions which are far more poetic than any
translations in verse ever made and which make of these epics two of
the most entertaining novels ever written. It is from these versions
that I have cited, except in a few cases where I preferred a more
literal rendering of certain words.

[299] In all the extracts here made I follow the close literal prose
version made by H.T. Wharton, in his admirable book on Sappho, by far
the best in the English language.

[300] P.B. Jevons refers to some of these as "mephitic exhalations
from the bogs of perverted imaginings!" Welcker's defence of Sappho is
a masterpiece of naivete written in ignorance of mental pathology.

[301] The most elaborate discussion of this subject is to be found in
Moll's _Untersu