ABSTRACT
When, more than ten years ago, we were all of us reading the 'Lovers of Gudrun', and were dazzled by the strange new brilliancy of the unsetting sun ofthe North, many must have said that it would be a good day for English literature if the'double might ofhand' that had drawn Jason and Medea as unerringly as it had drawn Kiartan and Gudrun would turn to the one complete epic ofGreece, and tell us, once for all, of the wanderings ofOdysseus. It was something ofdisappointment, or at least ofhope deferred, when Mr. Morris gave us the more elaborated, yet far less perfect, Aeneid. Sigurd, it is true, quenched all regrets for a time. Ifstronger or nobler poetry than its final portion has been written during the present century, I admit myselfunable to name it. And now an instalment, at all events, of the long-desired Odyssey is in our hands; it is not to be thought of that it should remain an instalment. If the charm of writing it be, as it must be, even greater than the charm of reading it, Mr. Morris can surely not pause, still less desist; to do so would argue him more, or less, than human.
